Final Fantasy Challenge: Final Fantasy V Part III. “The laws of the universe mean nothing!”

Copyright Square Enix

At some point near the end of the game, while fighting Necrophobe and Gilgamesh had his big long speech about the party, I just said “I love this game.” While I’m a little disappointed in the final boss oscillating between being a pushover and just wiping me out, I ultimately found that this was one of my favorite Final Fantasy titles ever. It’s up there with VII and IX as the A-Tier games in the series. Now that I have completed it, I can say that I have completed every single mainline Final Fantasy game. All I have left for this project are games I held off for the end because I’d played them all before (except for XII, because I’d had the Zodiac Age for a year and hadn’t touched it), so I can confidently say that this will remain as one of my favorite games in the series, ever. It’s not quite on the top of the A-Tier list, that’s Final Fantasy XVI, but it’s definitely fighting it out with IX. I do think VII might edge it out a bit, but we’ll see. Obviously, spoilers for the endgame are going to follow.

The merged world was really cool. First, it was fun to see how the worlds merged together, how well it all fit together and where things “should” have been the whole time. It’s pretty interesting, especially with the foreshadowing we had before, such as the Sealed Tome split between the two worlds, the sealed basement in Castle of Bal and all of the kingdoms in Galuf’s World seemingly missing their towns. I mean, towns probably should have been built in the 1000 years since the split, but I get why the developers didn’t do that.

I liked all of the dungeons in the merged world, save for the Fork Tower. I normally like split dungeons, but the physical side was a huge pain in the ass. They had that Counter Knight guy who would just fuck up Faris or Bartz whenever they attacked him. I kept running into those guys, so I’d just get merc’d every time I fought them. Too much of a pain in the ass for me. Also, the Omniscient, the mage boss, was more lame than cool for a magic duel. I just kept Reflect up and he couldn’t do anything. The Minotaur wasn’t so bad, but he he did a bunch of damage. What’s funny is that I could have gone and picked up a bunch of the Sealed Weapons and made my life easier, but I thought you had to get all of the tablets first. I will say, going back and getting all of the Sealed Weapons before I did the final one for me, the Great Sea Trench, did make things easier. I just gave Krile the Sage Staff and she just killed everything down there. Hell, I actually meant to recast float (because of the possession ability one of the Unknown monsters has), hit teleport instead, and I didn’t have a problem going back through the dungeon. I was like “oh shit, more free AP.” Managed to max out Berserker for Bartz there.

Istory Falls and Pyramid of Moore weren’t really anything to write home about, but the Pyramid was crazy hard without Lenna. It kind of sucked, because I wound up having Lenna be a few levels behind for the rest of the game, although that did save my ass when I got caught with a Level 5 Death near the end of the game. Allowed her to run away. Even though the last few dungeons might have felt basic, I do like that each of them connected to their element and felt unique. The Great Sea Trench being connected to the kingdom of the dwarves and being in an underwater volcano was cool. The Pyramid had tons of traps and everything, like you’d expect a pyramid to have. The only one that didn’t have an impression on me was Istory Falls. It was just a water dungeon. I do like that it was all technically optional, I could have plunged into the Interdimensional Rift any time I wanted, but I do like that the first two set up things later, and that after you complete the Island Shrine, you can tackle the rest of the dungeons in any order. I actually didn’t know I had missed a tablet, because for some reason I thought the Fork Tower was one, but nope, I was wrong. That was the last one I did.

The Interdimensional Rift isn’t my favorite final dungeon, but it’s up there. Kefka’s Tower, Northern Cave and Sky Fortress Bahamut have it beat, but this one was really good. I do like that it’s combination of all of the important places of the tablets and Exdeath. Also, the final one just kind of being in space was cool. A lot of the bosses were complete pushovers thanks to the fact I had Spellblade and Rapid Fire, meaning I could easily throw around 40,000 damage a turn, and nothing had more than 60,000 a fight. Which probably explains why all of them can just hit like a fucking truck. This game would be hard if it wasn’t so easy to abuse.

The only guy I really struggled against was Neo Exdeath. I beat Exdeath’s first form like it wasn’t even there, but Neo Exdeath continually kicked my ass. I tried a strategy I saw online, though, when I found out that the bottom one was weak to Break and the back one could be one shot. I was told Zantezuken didn’t actually hit, but I accidentally hit Odin instead of Bahmaut and Odin fucking cut that part in half, so there we go. Then Bartz Break Bladed the bottom part and it was just a matter of healing and clean up after that. Shame I killed him before I could raise Faris, and I got the less good ending.

I do think the story in the final third is not bad. Like I said, this isn’t the most narrative driven game in the series, but it is more than the Famicom games, and it gets more involved as it goes on. Exdeath surviving as a splinter to sneak into the merged world was brillaint. Also, him becoming a tree again at the end of the game is also very cool. We get some examinations of the characters, but they are fairly limited. It’s not as great, but like I said in the last one, at least there’s no meat left on the bone by the end. Of course, I also started Final Fantasy VI already and the contrast in narrative and character just from the first two hours I’ve played so far is stark. Still, it’s why VI is S-Tier.

By the end, I had turned my team into absolute killers. I wound up going after both superbosses, and Shinryu was the easiest. I just had to get a chance to go, because the first two times I fought him, he just hit me with Tidal Wave and killed me. However, I used the Golem/Berserk combo and Flare Bladed him to death with Bartz and Faris while Lenna kept summoning Golem and Krile did her best to keep everyone hasted. Omega was a challenge. All it took was for me to get Thundaga Blade up on Bartz and Faris, but surviving the set up was a challenge, since Blaster just killed someone and he had tons of other moves to fuck people up. I tried a Reflect strategy at first, but that’s what caused him to use Blaster. So, I switched to a haste strategy, and he did kill Lenna and Krile, but by then, Bartz and Faris had their Thudaga Blades up, and it was time for them to go. 16 hits at 40000-5000 damage each was more than enough. So, I have finally beaten some super bosses. It’s just Omega and Shinryu, but I did it.

I do like that Omega is just out there walking around. He looks funny on the field, especially after the Omegascape Raids in Final Fantasy XIV, and him just kind of being an asshole. I wish we had more Alpha. Shinryu was kind of just a big dragon, so whatever.

Ultimately, I loved this game. I’ve enjoyed all of these games, even II for what it was, and I’m glad I’m back in the swing of things. I am going to take a break after VI, mostly to play Shinobi and Doom: the Dark Ages, but I’ll hopefully be back to VII and VIII Remastered soon after. I’ll probably do a write up of XVI soon, because I found my notes already. I think I’ll wait until my friend finishes, since I’m kind of playing along with him as he streams.