Final Fantasy Challenge: Final Fantasy V: Knights Do it Two-Handed

All the good quotes are in the second half of the game. I just beat a major milestone, but I don’t want to spoil it in the opening paragraph. Anyway, yeah, we’re back to doing games in bunches now, rather than just writing it all up in one go, since we’re done with the NES/Famicom titles. After all, the games are trying for more complex narratives now, so this one will likely get at least one more post. Maybe three. I’m really liking this one, even if the narrative isn’t quite as strong as IV’s was. I still kind of like the story more. So, anyway, spoilers after the break

So, I have completed all of Bartz’s world, learned of Exdeath’s resurrection and did a few things on Galuf’s world. I was actually kind of surprised at how little I knew about this game’s story. I know about only one thing in the future and I think I knew that Lenna and Faris were sisters and that’s about it. I’m not even sure I knew about the different worlds or not. It is interesting how similar the worlds actually are, and I have become aware of the third world map, so I have some theories about what that means, but I’ll hold them until the next post. Anyway, the short story is, as I said in the previous paragraph, I really like this game a lot. I found myself actually just grinding when I had a small amount of free time in between two things in my real life, and I don’t normally do that. However, the Job system has really gotten me going. I wish it were more in-depth like the one in Final Fantasy Tactics, but I kind of understand why they don’t want you to have Rapid Fire, Dual Wield and Flare Blade all at once. I might be able to pull that off with a Mimic, though, as long as I don’t have Attack or Item. Hmmm.

Anyway, the Job system is one of the things that really makes this work. I’m jumping from Job to Job way more than I did with III, not just to build characters, but just to experience different party makeups and strategies. The game doesn’t penalize me for changing out Jobs, even in the middle of a dungeon, so when I mastered White Mage on Galuf, I switched him to Red Mage to help build up Doublecast just to make sure the AP didn’t get wasted for him. I did that in the middle of a dungeon, with no penalty. Did the same for Lenna when she mastered Black Mage and I’ll probably have to do that with Faris when she finishes off Ranger, although I don’t have the knives to switch her to Ninja yet, since Bartz is using them. It’s a thinker about what I’m going to do next, and I love it. I love seeing how I’m going to build the characters into huge badasses in the future, and I like that eventually, once you’ve got them built up, you just switch over to Freelancer where they have all of their abilities and a pair of powers. It’s very cool.

My only issue is that you can’t really get in depth with it like Final Fantasy Tactics. Sure, Tactics has its own issues with Jobs and it’s not quite as easy to jump from Job to Job there, plus Job requirements (although considering it’s a tactics game rather than a regular RPG, requirements are understandable for the genre), but I do wish I could have more than two abilities. Like I said, I get it, having Rapid Fire, Dual Wield and Spellblade all at once is a lot, especially if you’re wielding Knight Swords or something instead of Knives, but man, it would be cool to rock up to Exdeath and fuck him up.

Now, the narrative is one of the things that is the most important for me, and I have to say, I’m finding I really like the one found here, even if it’s not as complex or ambitious as others in the series. Obviously, it’s a more complicated, more complex story than anything we got in the Famicom games, but it is a step down in terms of complexity and character development from IV. The characters aren’t quite as deep, the story is a lot more light hearted and the narrative is way more whimsical. Ironically, despite IX being something of a throwback to IV when compared to VII and VIII, it’s tone is actually closer in comparison to V and IV is closer in tone to VII and VIII. Yet, for some reason, I really like it more. Bartz doesn’t have a lot of character, but I like him way more than Cecil, who is a bit of a wet blanket, and we don’t have a Kain anywhere, which is nice. Faris and Lenna are fun and sweet respectively and Galuf is a big jolly guy. I do think his amnesia was a little weak as a character trait. It worked great at the ship graveyard, foreshadowing who he really was, and Krile, but there wasn’t any pathos to follow up on it, and then later when the werewolf sacrificed himself, it was kind of like “oh, this should have been sad, but we don’t know who he is.”

Still, I kind of don’t care as much. The game isn’t shooting to be crazy complicated. It wants to be a fun journey, so the characters don’t have a lot of personality they’re not living up to. I love X, but Wakka and Lulu especially have these potential character arcs, especially in regards to their relationship, that the game doesn’t really explore. People often just write off Wakka as racist, too (even though his bigotry is religious based, not based on ethnicity, but bigotry is stupid and irrational anyway), and it’s largely because his arc of understanding the Al-Bhed and coming to terms with the failings of his own religion are largely, but not entirely, left on the cutting room floor. This isn’t a thing in V. The characters may not be incredibly complex, but the also don’t leave anything on the table, so to speak. Faris and Lenna have their drama, Bartz has his insecurities and Galuf has his conflict with Exdeath and amnesia, but they also get resolved and their character arcs complete. It’s not a lot, but it is all there, so I can appreciate that.

On the other hand, it is lacking a lot of the emotional exploration it should have, which is something the later games are going to do much better at. I know this because V is the only game I hadn’t ever played, and I’ve beaten every other game now besides this, Tactics and XIII. Part of what works so well for X is Yuna’s story (she is one of my favorite protagonists now, up there with Cloud, Ashe, and the rest of the XII protagonists, and Clive) explores her emotions and fears about performing the summoning of the Final Aeon. Her relationship with Tidus, doomed as it is (even if he were a real boy. Let’s face it, he’s a dumb jock and she’s an honor’s student, they weren’t going to work out no matter what) is at the heart of wanting to see more, to do more. It’s great. V doesn’t have anything like that, at least in the beginning. It’s got cool dungeons and great set pieces and it’s a fun adventure, but it’s also not really doing a lot. That doesn’t matter though, it’s not trying to be XVI or Tactics. It wants to be the fun adventure and it succeeds at that, and that’s fine.