Final Fantasy V

"Look beyond the hype, and you'll find a decent game, but nothing wonderful."

Sickened. That's what I am.

After getting a belly full of ass-kissing about FF5, I've decided I'll write my own review, a review obviously not brainwashed by the inexperienced, biased, over-hyped viewpoints on this average game.
I too, went through a phase where I adored FF5, that is, until I finally played through and finished the game, and realized it was indeed not God's gift to the RPG world, nor was it the ''Successful Sibling'' in the Final Fantasy series. If anything, I'd call it ''confused,'' because the game just can't seem to figure out what kind of a RPG it is.. allow me to categorize my complaints:

STORYLINE - 3
Ever play FF3? No, I mean the REAL FF3, not Nintendo's attempt at making you believe there were only three Final Fantasy games. The unreleased NES game we never received.
If you have, you probably noticed that the storyline was even more two-dimensional and bland than the graphics (which weren't too bad for their time.) You had three generic characters, which you named, and they functioned as the typical ''Light Warriors'' out to save the Crystals. Character interaction consisted of generic hero-things in quotes, like ''Princess! We'll save you!'' and ''No! We won't allow you to destroy our world!'' but overall, there was not much of a plot.
Now, take the plot of FF3j, make it 16-bit, give the characters names you can't change (except for one) and you have... the same exact thing, except you don't get the delight of having an extra-baggage of a partner to talk to periodically, like you had in 3.
First, I'll reflect on the naming thing. Control is given to ''?,'' some dude with a chocobo, who rescues a girl from some monsters. At this point, most players figure out that ''?'' is going to be the hero of the story, and such a hypothesis becomes stronger when you get to name ''?'' and none of the other three characters who join within the next five minutes.
Time marches on, and it turns out, your party of four characters is chosen to be the new ''Light Warriors.'' Gone is the principal of ''?'' being the hero, and appearing is the question of ''why the hell can't I name my other characters?''
It's not a big deal, but it's annoying enough. On to more important things..
The backbone of all good RPG plots is a worthy opponent making a worthy mess of the situation, for a worthy enough cause. If the cause isn't ''worthy'' enough, the bad guy has to be interesting enough to cause the player to not dig into the situation and ask ''WHY is he trying to destroy the world, and what are his plans for the future once that is accomplished?''
In FF5? We start with regular people, who become possessed by little bubble things, and do naughty things to the crystals, like ''overload their power'' and ''make them explode.'' It becomes apparent in the story that the world depends on these four Crystals, and will slowly die without them.. but as the Crystals blow up left and right, our HEROES (plural) are given ''Jobs'' from the Crystal Essenses (or some nonsense like that,) and are given the ultimate ''Job'' of ''saving the other Crystals.'' Unfortunately for our heroes, they are not given instructions as to how they'll repair these crystals when they all blow up. (This is why God never makes planets that run on Crystals anymore. We're far too reckless.)
As the story ''progresses'' (and I use the term loosely,) we are introduced (sort of) to Exdeath, AKA ''Mwahahahaha'' AKA ''Bad Guy.'' Exdeath eventually appears, and then goes away again, not really doing anything constructive with his time, except randomly destroying things on rare occassions. We're never told why he's doing this, why he's taking so long to do it, or what he's trying to accomplish. We're sort of given a background on him (Tree? Wizard? Tree??? Wizard?? TREE??!!?? WIZARD??!!)
Back on the characters.. there's little personality to them. In Square's translation, Faris talks like an actual pirate, which I like.. otherwise, you could switch everybody's names around, and not know the difference. Moderately comical events happen between them all frequently, but if I wanted a comical RPG, I'd play Super Mario RPG or Earthbound. The little interaction that takes place is meaningless. A proper example is a certain character (who will remain nameless) in the story, goes from a complete enemy to the heroes, trying to kill them, to a good buddy. You see this character a few times in the middle of the game, as he tries to kill you, then you see him at the end, when he acts like he was a childhood friend of yours, and proceeds to give everybody a pep-talk on how they can better themselves. I'm still trying to figure out why everybody refers to this character as ''THE MAN!!''
I give the story (which includes characters, plot, and dialog) a 3. Had it been released 10 years earlier, maybe it would get a higher rating.. from somebody else.

However, you can learn something scientific from FF5: If you throw a rock in the air really high, it'll warp to another world.

GRAPHICS - 7
The graphics fit in perfectly with the FF Evolutionary Scale, improving slightly over FF4, and paving a road for the ''mature'' graphics of FF6.
The spell animations could have used a little more work, but they fit their parts nicely. The monsters look less-cartoony than FF4, the environments and characters are much more colorful, and have more animation frames than 4. I like that a lot.

MUSIC & SOUND - 3
The Sound effects are a slight step above FF4, of course sound effects don't really matter too much in a RPG (The ''Bio'' spell retained it's incredibly cool noise, thankfully.)
The music, on the other hand, left a LOT to be desired. I'm a big critic on video game music, but I will gladly praise FF6's soundtrack to this .. trash. Let's reflect on a few scenes:

-Rescuing the girl at the Meteorite-
The ''Panic'' Theme
This wonderous melody, consists of 30 seconds (at most) of gliding up and down (what sounds like) a xylophone, and alternately hitting two low notes on a keyboard over and over. A large step above the ''Panic'' theme of FF4. (Note my sarcasm)

-The Battle Theme-
I believe this would be the shortest FF battle song in existance, and usually, if the song's short, the song's repetitive. Lesson #1: Never, ever, EVER make a short repetitive song for a RPG, which you know will be played over and over for each Battle. As far as following the battle-theme-format, the ''rush'' noise played at the beginning is done with that stupid wimpy xylophone, and a rising string section plays over the bass intro, leading you to believe that a very catchy exciting battle song is coming. Instead, you're given a preview to Super Mario RPG's battle music, except less catchy.
If you were having guests over, and you had 15 minutes to make dinner, clean the house up, and set the table, this is the kind of song that would be playing in the background for you. The song is not fit for combat, it's fit for an episode of The Iron Chef.

-The Boss Theme-
Overall, this is a semi-decent song.. but not for what it's used for. I could imagine this song being the theme of whenever the bad guy enters the scene in a RPG, but not as boss music. If I wanted to be really sick, I could try to pass this one off as more Iron Chef music. And speaking of The Iron Chef..

-Gilgamesh-
I'd say this song is one of the better pieces in FF5. Everybody likes the song, and I think because of it, everybody likes Gilgamesh. Still, Gilgamesh is not exactly much a bad guy in the game, and didn't even deserve his own song. It amazes me how they'll give a song to an enemy who does 1 HP attacks on your characters, and serves as Exdeath's sidekick for 15 minutes, but they won't let you name your other characters.
This could have been some good ''regular'' boss music. It's a great song - get the MIDI.

-Overworld-
Without giving away the plot, I'll just say there are three overworld songs.. the first which you can play while you go out to get your mail. FF4's overworld music did justice.. FF5's first overworld song almost made the game not worth playing. The second song, however, started to pick things up. It was a decent song.. then the third.. which I could relate to getting the mail during a snowstorm.

-Exdeath-
A generic song, for a generic bad guy. It does an okay job as a generic bad guy theme song, though.

The rest of the music, I won't comment on, because it frankly doesn't deserve much more of my time. The FF5 ''Theme'' music is shoved down your throat on frequent occassions, and left me with a bitter aftertaste.
Don't buy any soundtracks to this game. You'll be wasting your money.

GAME PLAY - 5
Most of us got our taste of FF5 before/during the era of FF7, and to us non-Japanese, it was a whole new experience! Wow! You get to PICK your own JOBS for your characters, THEN you get to ''customize'' them, by doing things like making a White Mage who can fight, or a Knight who can Jump! It sounds like a dream come true, and people seem to think it is, too.
Each Job has a number of levels, which raise by acquiring meager amounts of ''ABP'' (I guess ''AP'' would be too confusing) earned after each battle. As you rise in levels, you learn abilities attached to those jobs, which you can equip, one at a time, on your current job. Want a White Mage with Bare-handed fighting? Train with a Monk for a few hours until you acquire that ability. Want a White mage with Bare-handed fighting, who also counter-attacks? Too damn bad.
And if you want to get anywhere in this game, you're going to have to fight.. A LOT. You'll need lots of ABP to make your characters more useful, and lots of money to supply new equipment for your new jobs. Every time a Crystal explodes, you gain new jobs, which leads players to HOPING the Crystals blow up. These jobs range from moderately useful, to completely useless. Some jobs will put a semi-useful ability at the end of the level growth, so you have to go through battle after battle of stupid abilities until you finally get that ''Equip Ribbon'' skill you've always wanted.
Magic becomes even more fun to play with. Like in the FF games of yore, you have to purchase spells, available at various towns. Each spell set has a ''level'' assigned to it, meaning you can't get by with just learning the ''Black'' command, then having a Knight use it.. if you want to use a level 5 Black spell on another job, you have to go up six levels with a Black Mage, first. This method is reminicent of Secret of Mana's ''Level up your weapons/magic, then do it all over again five minutes later'' system.
One semi-cool thing about the Job System is once a character ''Masters'' a Job, when he reverts to his normal form, he automatically has all of the non-command abilities set on him, and two spots open for commands. This ultimately leads to a party of four pumped-up war machines, who can attack eight times per turn and almost completely heal themselves with a simple Cure spell. Final Fantasy Tactics did a much better job (no pun intended) with this system than 5 did. Get ready to waste hours of fighting, enduring the Iron Chef Battle Music, becoming obsessive-compulsive thinking you have to master EVERY SINGLE Job there is, when only a small handful feature useful stuff.
Also, this isn't worth mentioning, but all of Reina's Job Forms look positively stupid, except for ''Dancer..'' which is one of the more useless Jobs.

OVERALL
Don't get me wrong.. I liked FF5; it's a very enjoyable game to play, much like the rest of the series. However, I do not believe it's worth all the praising reviews and stuff that it gets. FF5 was still in it's immature NES stages.
I suggest playing it if you have nothing better to play, or if you want to explore the history of Final Fantasy. Get the ROM, or try to find Anthology, but if you want a RPG with incredible plot, and a nice solid play system, go for FFT, 7, or 8.

OVERALL RATING: 5

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/00, Updated 06/07/00