so, im a coward. i tried my best, i really did, but when i reached the final boss of FFV, all of my party members were level 38, and there was not a chance i was going to beat the final boss. so, just like with Live-A-Live back in the day, i gave up at the final boss. i know, its super anticlimactic, but this game has already taken up nearly two months of my life, i kinda just wanna move on. also, i know, i know, i don't like fantasy settings. listen, it's a long story on how i got into Final Fantasy enough to play at least a little bit of nearly every game in the series in a little over two months, and im still letting my FF1 review sit in the oven for a bit. so you'll just have to roll with me, okay? i want to review every game in the series at some point, and writing reviews for these long ass RPGs takes forever.

with that said, MAN this game was really really good. the job system is a real standout, its so much fun seeing all of the different possibilities and combos you can make happen with different abilities, and there is a sort of zen enjoyment i get out of grinding for ABP to master each job. if you were wondering, by the way, the jobs i mastered on each character are as follows: Knight, Thief and Samurai for Bartz, Monk, Berserker and Geomancer for Reina, White Mage, Summoner and Blue Mage for Faris, and Time Mage and Black Mage for Krile. (unfortunately, i only found out 95% of the way through the game that Berserker kind of fucking sucks, and i tried to run it on both Reina and Galuf for WAY too long... oops. i also didn't know Ranger was super good either, so i never even used it.) it's also important to note that, besides some of the MMOs (which don't count to me because i only plan on playing Final Fantasies 1-10) this was the last game to ever do the job system, and the only other game to do it was Final Fantasy III. i didn't get very far into FFIII, because it's a really hard game and comes pre-packaged with everyone's favorite: Famicom RPG jank! but from what i did play, i do really prefer the job system in 5 over 3. in FFIII, you have a resource you have to spend to switch jobs, which really limits your ability to experiment and try out new things whenever you want. FFV remedys this by letting you change jobs whenever you want with no drawbacks, and it really opens the doors to allow you more freedom and options, i love it.

now, with that said... i feel like FFV is the first Final Fantasy i've played thus far that could be pinned with the category of "wiki game." usually this title is given to games like Terraria or lots of roguelikes, a game with so many systems and mechanics and unexplained features that it feels like you NEED a wiki to understand and figure out certain things. i would say FFV can definitely be enjoyed without the use of a wiki, of course, but i can't deny that i was looking up stuff a lot. a lot of equipment pieces have secondary effects that aren't listed anywhere in the PS1 version, such as the Red Shoes, which have the effect of increasing the chances of using the Sword Dance, one of the randomly selected skills you can get from using the Dance command as a Dancer, which deals a ton of damage. how do i know this? by looking it up, of course, because the game didn't tell me anywhere. at one point, one of my party members was randomly taking passive damage throughout battles and i couldn't find out why. turns out, she had an item called the Thornlet equipped, which has the best stat boosts in the game among all helmets, but deals passive damage to you at all times. (this item was actually, excuse the pun, a huge thorn in my side. whenever you change jobs or abilities, you automatically equip whatever the game deems as the most "optimal equipment", and because the Thornlet technically has the most stat boosts out of all equipment, it would always automatically equip that and the Hex Ring, another equip with a similar gimmick. it was really frustrating whenever i just wanted to shuffle around my setup.)

and even when the PS1 version does explain stuff, it doesn't do a great job, due to the rushed translation and lack of character space. if you're unaware, there's a thing when it comes to fonts called "monospace." this is where every character or letter is the same size, not accounting for any gaps in between the letters. this works fine in most Japanese games, because pretty much every Japanese character is the same size, and usually fit neatly in a square. for English letters, however, monospace fonts don't work very well, and instead it's recommended to use a "proportional" method of printing letters. this becomes an issue when translating a Japanese game to English, because you don't just have to translate and rewrite the text, you also have to reprogram how the game prints words. this isn't just an issue for readability, however. a word that takes 12 letters in English may only take 3 characters in Japanese, or even just one if you're using Kanji. this means that, if you just use the monospace system in English, you're going to have a LOT less space to write your text, which leads to having to compromise for space. one of the jobs, the Chemist, has a full on crafting system using unique items you find throughout the world, and i didn't even know this until i looked it up. all of these crafting materials i kept finding had the description of "Cures alchemy" in the menu, so i thought they were just some weird variety of status healing item. the Samurai job has a skill called "$toss", and when selected it deals a ludicrous amount of damage to every enemy you're currently fighting. at first i thought this was just some janky text formatting error from the shoddy PS1 translation, and i couldn't figure out what it was. i suspected it might be me throwing my sword, or using some HP, or some other resource, but only after looking it up did i find out it's supposed to be "Money Toss," and you're spending gil to deal damage to enemies. so here i was, wasting all my money on enemies over and over... one of the Samurai's other abilities, Fdraw, (or what i assume to be "Fast Draw") just had the description of "Route enemies". what the fuck is that supposed to mean?? well, i looked it up, and apparently it actually instakills every enemy when used. man, how was i supposed to know that?? to be fair, all of this is relegated to the shitty PS1 port, which i don't recommend playing. i only played it because i got it for a good price, and like to play my stuff on real hardware whenever possible.

the sprites in ffv, compared to ffiv, were such a step up. going directly from iv to v really exemplifies how much nicer the game looks overall. that isnt to say ffiv is a BAD looking game of course, i think it has a lot of charm in its spritework and has a very iconic look, but ffv was just much prettier as a whole. if you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and look up "Exdeath Tree Form Sprite" on google images, it's an absolutely insane looking sprite for the hardware and blew me away the first time i saw it. i love how a lot of the more mechanical areas look, stuff like the catapult and the first part of the N-Zone were really neat looking. Speaking of the N-Zone (or the interdimensional rift, if you're playing anything but the PSX version) was a really cool final dungeon aesthetically. it reminded me a lot of the Dream Den from Pikmin 2, just this collage of different areas all stitched together into this surreal, strange locale that has very little cohesion, something about that is just really cool to me. in fact, the bonus dungeons in the GBA version of FF1 were like that too, and they were some of my favorite parts about that game. now, gameplay wise this dungeon was miserable, but ill get to that later.

also this game is geuninely really funny sometimes. the way they wrote Faris in the localization is really funny, she speaks in strong pirate-speak the whole game, and i know some people don't like that change... but i thought it made for some pretty entertaining moments. i also really enjoyed basically any scene with Gilgamesh, especially the "fight" with him in the N-Zone. he tries to be your rival the whole game, but in the end he just gets lost and confused and scared in the final dungeon and gives up. Then, later on, he comes back to help you defeat a boss, Necrophobe, and has a lot of really funny dialogue there. i also really liked one of the more remote characters, that being Famed Mimic Gogo. he's this weird cat jester guy you can meet in a very secluded part of the underwater section, and in his fight he mimics everything you do. so, how do you beat him? give him nothing to work with! that's right, you do absolutely nothing for about three minutes, and he tells you that's the way of the mimic: doing absolutely nothing. he's got such a killer design too, i love Gogo with al my heart. i also heard that he's in Final Fantasy VI, so that makes me even more excited to play that game!

now, i would say my only really big issue with this game was the difficulty. I know back in the day, Square didn't release the game in the states due to it being "too hard," and i didn't get that at first. however, once you're about 80% of the way through the game, it grows a nasty set of teeth and gets REALLY hard. the final hunt for the tablets before going to the final dungeon was what really got me, i struggled pretty hard with those mini dungeons and their bosses. and then, holy moly dude, the N-Zone was a miserable final dungeon. encounters are insanely common, long, things can wipe you out in an instant, and the bosses were brutal. Save points were scarce too, and once you enter, you are not allowed to go back to the overworld to get supplies. I mentioned Necrophobe earlier, i spent like two hours trying to beat him so i could get access to the save point he was guarding. the strategy i ended up settling on was grinding my party to get the Bard's !Hide ability, using hide on everyone, and then waiting for the barriers to expend all of their MP so they couldn't wipe me out instantly with Flare and Holy. Twintania also kicked my ass several times, the guide i was using told me i could just use Break on it when it started charging Gigaflare, but like... it never gave me enough time to do that! i eventually just got lucky and selected Break before it randomly went into its Gigaflare phase, and it just felt like dumb luck. Thankfully, i didn't get Shinryu'd because i already knew where the chest was, but i ALMOST did. this whole dungeon was my final boss, i don't feel the need to fight X-Death.

overall, FFV is a really cool and enjoyable game with a brutal final stretch, but if you're willing to put in the time, it's an excellent play. give it a shot! just... don't play the old mobile/steam version, that is an ugly videogame right there. i've heard good things about the GBA version, and the pixel remasters are always a good bet too.

UPDATE: as of July 23rd, 2025, i have actually beaten the game! the catch is, i had to use a glitch to do so. the Chemist job, as mentioned earlier, has a "crafting" system where they can mix powerful potions mid-battle using certain items. if you mix a Holy Water and a Maiden's Kiss, you'll get a Kiss of Blessing, which inflicts whoever it's used on with Berserk, Image, and Haste. the important factor here is Berserk, as it has some weird interactions with bosses, namely that it changes how their AI works. additionally, it will override any mid-battle scripts and cutscenes, such as the one where X-Death turns into Neo X-Death. im sure you can see where this is going. if you inflict X-Death's tree form with Berserk, he can never turn into Neo X-Death, which is the part of the fight i had a lot of trouble with. this makes the fight trivial, as the first phase really isn't that bad. now, is this cheating? it depends on who you ask, but in my opinion, it felt like Neo X-Death was cheating me, so i feel perfectly fine doing this. the ending was really cool, they did a lot of REALLY impressive visual effects and the sprites were really detailed for a SNES game. there's also a bonus FMV in the PS1 version, which is what i played, where you get to see... well, i don't wanna spoil it! you'll just have to see for yourself!