PixlBit

Well, I've been putting it off for awhile, but I've finally almost finished Final Fantasy V. The operative word, however, is "almost"...

...because of *this* mother-fool. Seriously.

In all honesty, Final Fantasy V hasn't been quite as fun for me as I had hoped it would be. The overall concept - an RPG that prizes intricate mechanics above story - is definitely up my ally, but there's something about the execution that didn't set right with me. Perhaps it's a matter of expectation vs. reality, though; I had thought, for some reason, that the game was going to be a lot more open-ended than it actually was, and when it turned out to be just about as linear as Final Fantasy IV, I was kind of let down.

There's also the matter of difficulty: despite FF5's insane flexibility for character growth, it's probably the hardest Final Fantasy I've encountered so far in my chronological playthrough of the numbered entries. Most of the people that will tell you about how easy FF5 is probably have an extremely thorough knowledge of the mechanics; in fact, the screenshot above is from a solo run of the game using only a chemist. Despite seeming less than remarkable from a quick glance, their "Mix" ability lets them create some remarkably useful concoctions on-the-fly in the heat of battle; knowing the proper combinations of items necessary to make these, however, requires either a heavy dose of trial and error or a chart. Many of the classes have abilities like this, the mechanics for which are not always obvious; for instance, the Samurai's "Gil Toss" ability can do a ton of damage, but how is it calcuated? How much gil does it cost to use? How the heck am I supposed to know any of this on my own? And that's not to mention equipment with benefits that are poorly translated or explained... but I suppose that's what I get for playing the PS1 version.

But hey, at least I'm not playing FF5 on iOS. That Korean-MMO aesthetic and those cheap-o fonts make me want to vomit.

Anyway, I'm going to take another shot at the final boss tonight, this time with a four-mimic setup with dual-casting and Chemist abilities mixed in. It's probably overkill, but hopefully it'll work... because I'm about ready to start Final Fantasy VI. (BTW, are there any bone-crushingly awful bugs in the PS1 version of FF6 that were not present in the SNES version?) Up to this point, my rankings each game, from favorite to least favorite, are as follows:

FF4
FF5
FF3
FF1
FF2

I've beaten other entries as well, but I'm not adding them until I get to them in the list again. Thoughts?