In previous incarnations, Final Fantasy V held a curious place in my estimation. Disregarding side releases like Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy V has my favorite character development system of all time. On the other hand, its story is positively weak, and the translation we finally got in Final Fantasy Anthology was an unintentional joke. Beyond that, the programming was so flawed in the last Final Fantasy rerelease on the Game Boy Advance that I honestly dreaded what would happen to FF5’s rerelease. I don’t think I ever expected less out of a title with the words "Final Fantasy" in its name.
The story of the game begins like you expect many of these games. It turns out that the natural world is behaving strangely – the seas are still, the winds die down, the earth dries up... pretty much the standard "balance of nature is decaying" deal. The shift in the world is noted by Lenna, the princess of the kingdom of Tycoon, the pirate Faris, and the wanderer Bartz. Bartz and Lenna meet up with each other when they find an old man, Galuf, literally fall from the sky, and it’s not long before they meet up with Faris and get charged to help preserve the world against a sinister power out to destroy the crystals.
The basics of the story are extremely bland, but many games have managed to make similar setups work. The problem with Final Fantasy V, consistently, is that it takes the most idiotic method in every single situation to present and/or resolve a plot point. By the time you actually find out the sinister force behind the destruction of the crystals is a fellow named ExDeath, you’ll come to the conclusion that it would take a massive amount of stupidity to save the world. Fortunately, when you find out that ExDeath is literally a tree that absorbed all the evil in the world – and seriously, that’s his origin in-game – you’ll realize that he is in fact that stupid from the concept up and you can easily defeat him when the time comes.
Moreover, with an incredibly small cast of playable characters (there’s only one that doesn’t join up immediately before you get to the first crystal), you’d expect there to be some significant development for each character. The truth is, there is some character development, but at least half of it is completely optional. If you go into certain houses or certain towns, you’ll get a bit more from a character as they detail their past and start growing in personality. Look, it’s one thing when you have a huge cast like Chrono Cross or the Suikoden games. But FF5 has a cast of five – the miniscule amount of character development is just a sign that the scenario writers were extremely lazy back when they wrote the game, and Square Enix was too hesitant to improve matters now.
Those who might remember the translation from Final Fantasy Anthology will also note very early on that they’ll be contending with a new translation. The pink-haired princess of Tycoon was long called Lenna by those who imported the original version, but the Playstation rerelease had her name as Reina. However, she’s now Lenna on the GBA, letting you know that we’re dealing with new dialogue. And quite frankly, the new dialogue is extremely weak. It’s not like Bartz and crew were particularly bright or well-spoken before, but I swear they babble like idiots now. And if I see one more "folksy old-timer" expression of shock in the vein of Galuf in this game, I will severely hurt someone.
The silliness in the dialogue, though, hurts more than anything else. Final Fantasy 5 is one of the most brutal in terms of body count, as ExDeath actually surpasses everyone except Kefka in Final Fantasy history for most effective at eliminating people. The game has plenty of moments of high drama, which invariably get ruined by absurd dialogue meant to lighten the mood but instead deflate the effectiveness of various plot points. Moreover, the desire to make several video game jokes (there’s a Super Mario Bros. reference in the bonus dungeon, and one ability references the infamous E3 2006 Sony press conference) detracts from the overall impact of the game. I’m not saying you couldn’t make a good game with such silly jokes – the first two Earthworm Jim games are proof of that. However, it’s clear that the phrase “comic timing” means nothing to Square Enix’s translation crew.
But to be fair, nobody ever played Final Fantasy V for its plot. No, people enjoyed FF5 because of the battle system. As you progress through the game, you get jobs which you can switch between, and use the abilities learned in one job while working on another. For the most part, the balance between the classes works well, although some work better than others due to the secondary abilities attached to them – Blue Mage, Ninja, and Chemist certainly gain much from their extra abilities. There are a few tricks that you can use at the endgame to take advantage of many more abilities at once, as you’d might expect. For the most part, the balance between what you’re able to perform and the enemies works well. There are quite a few enemies where you might want a particular ability on hand to handle (I’ve found a sufficiently-trained Blue Mage or Time Mage covers most of your bases). However, until the endgame, the balance between what you can do and what you have to fight works out rather well.
There are four new classes, and they also factor into the balance, but not nearly as much as it might first appear. Three are available right after you unlock all the legendary weapons in the game, and these three balance well with the others. They have abilities that in some circumstances can expedite battles, but one is specialized, one is expensive to maintain, and one is flaky in execution. They balance well with the other classes, and they merely open up new possibilities without skewing the game’s balance. The final class, Necromancer, might in theory be unbalancing, but you don’t get it until after you’ve beaten the bonus boss at the end of the bonus dungeon, so by that point you’re pretty much overpowering things anyhow.
After FF4 Advance, though, I wasn’t worried so much about the class abilities making me too overpowered. I was afraid that Final Fantasy V Advance would have the same clock speed issues that slowed enemies tremendously and made the game far too easy. Fortunately, FF5 Advance solves the clock speed issue. If you play the game with the graphical bars to show when your next turn will arrive, those suffer from slowdown for some odd reason. However, the battle speed for both you and the enemies works just fine, and I can deal with a wonky time active time gauge if it means the game functions as it should. The battle system works, and everything stays well-balanced.
Similarly, the new items found in areas of the bonus dungeon also keep the game well-balanced. While there are new weapons and armor that are a tweak more powerful than what’s ordinarily available, they do not have extra abilities that make the game ludicrous, like the extra weapons in FF4 Advance. In fact, the ones that have extra abilities are a bit weaker than what are ordinarily available, making you choose between the extra power of your old items or the new abilities on the new ones. That balances the new items well, and the game doesn’t become a joke with the new equipment in hand.
If anything, the new equipment might be a little inadequate. Final Fantasy V was the first game to introduce optional bosses which were in there simply to give bragging rights to whoever defeated them: Omega and Shinryuu. Well, if you like optional bosses of absurd strength, you’re in luck. First, Omega and Shinryuu are still around. In fact, there’s one place in the optional dungeon where they have over a half-dozen copies of Omega running around looking to wipe the walls with you. But on top of those, there are a couple of upgraded versions of each – Omega Mk. II and Neo Shinryuu. I’m always up for more absurd bosses. Particularly since I never got to finish Shinryuu in the original. Anyhow, the addition is a strong one for those who had taken care of the first with little effort.
The game’s graphics, much like FF4A before it, very heavily borrow from the original 16-bit versions. The background during fights look a bit cleaner, but beyond that the game’s graphics are much as they were. In some ways, this isn’t a thrill – the characters themselves look a bit stupid in many job outfits, particularly Faris and the fifth character to join. However, the monsters look particularly sharp, and there are quite a few designs in this game that beat out the other 16-bit Final Fantasy games, particularly during the final fight.
Since there isn’t really any other place to do it well, a note should be made that this is the first game I’ve ever seen that has a spoiler on the freaking box. There is a screen shot on the back of the box that ruins something later in the game. Moreover, the instruction booklet also ruins this a bit near the end. People anal about spoilers might wish to skip these and play the game immediately. I’ll tell you now, there isn’t anything in the controls you couldn’t figure out on your own, and the game’s tutorial on using the job system will fill you in enough to do well.
The game’s music, well, I’m a bit torn on it. First, the good news – Square Enix has figured out the proper development of sound on the portable systems, so the game carries a faithful reproduction of the soundtrack. However, this highlights the fact that the game has a very uneven soundtrack. In the original game, I loved half of the soundtrack and hated the other half. It really doesn’t help that one of the tunes I didn’t like played during most cave sequences. On the other hand, "The Battle On The Big Bridge," sometimes known as "The Battle With Gilgamesh," is one of the finest songs ever put in a video game. You open up a jukebox when you beat the game, and I’m glad for that just so I can listen to "Big Bridge" repeatedly.
In terms of a remake compared to the original, Final Fantasy V Advance manages to faithfully reproduce the experience of the original game. The biggest problem with that is that Final Fantasy V was never a great game in the first place. FF5 is certainly a good game, but the excellent battle system finds itself saddled by one of the worst stories put together in Square’s history. If you value a good story above all else in a role-playing game, just skip this. However, if you like a really solid battle system and can deal with bad writing, FF5 Advance is certainly worth your time.
