Final Fantasy Quest - The Search for Silly

It's hard to believe the amount of expressions that can be expressed in 16-bit form.

Until you play Final Fantasy V (FFV) for the first time.

Long story short, my favorite aspect of FFV are the characters. Coming off the heels of the played-straight serious FFIV, the zany hijinks of Bartz and crew are a nice change. Yes, sad stuff happens in the game, but the overall tone is more light-hearted. This game is the birthplace of Final Fantasy's best recurring character, Gilgamesh. (Also, heavy spoilers to follow after these lovely pictures).

Haha! It's not like I wanted you to show up, or anything...

*gasp!* The fiend!?!

If you're familiar with this game, what I say next will be no surprise. The job system is pretty rad. A dramatic improvement over the system in FFIII (more on that in a future article, hopefully) the job system in FFV allows a player to assign characters to whatever jobs they want. Skills mastered can be added to other jobs, so you can have a white mage that can brawl, or a monk that can heal everyone. Plus, once a job is fully mastered, it passes abilities on to the "Normal" class that you began as.

However, the best part about the job system is this:

Pirate ninja princess.

I'll say it again: pirate ninja princess. The pirate captain Faris, who is the best and most badass character in the party, can be a ninja too.

Plus, Square did the "pirate captain who is secretly a princess" thing a good ten years before Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Not such hot stuff anymore, huh!?

Story-wise, the game is somewhat predictable. The main focus, again, is trying to keep the four elemental crystals intact (and failing miserably). As I said above, the characters are the best part of FFV; namely, how they interact and react to people and events. They may be simple 16-bit sprite, but they are able to express a wide array of emotions.

What even is that pose, Faris?

There are even a number of optional spells and espers, like a few of the Bard's songs, some blue magic and the summons Shiva or Carbuncle. And unlike a few of FFIV's harder-to-get summons, these ones are actually worth finding.

Overall, this is one of the better entries in the series, and it is definitely a viable entry point for newcomers to the series. Even with the myriad of jobs, it is manageable to keep your party powerful, as all playable characters remain in the party, and which jobs you master depends on your particular play-style.

In the Faris screenshot, you could see that I had mastered all the jobs (barring Mime class). This is not a task I would advise someone to do, as it took hours of grinding to accomplish.

Anyway, I'm close to finishing it, having made a good bit of progress in World 3 (out of 3). Apologies for not getting to The After Years, I got stuck and put it aside for a bit. Because I know I love FFVI, I might pause before moving on to that entry.

Until next time, later guys!