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Final Fantasy 5 was one of the Final Fantasy games that was not originally brought over to North America back in the 90s. We got the original Final Fantasy, of course, but our versions of two and three were actually four and six. I remember finding this out pretty early, probably from magazines like Game Pro, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and the like, and wondering what these other games could be like! This was before I could even access roms and things like that, a decade before Youtube playthroughs of games I have never even played or even touched, so these games were only present in my life via gaming websites, sometimes not even in English, and super cool friends who imported games. 

When I finally played the real Final Fantasy 2, I was less than impressed. The same came for Final Fantasy 3, although a friend has convinced me to give that one another try. Final Fantasy 5 turned out to be “good, but not great,” and settled into the middle of the pack in regards to my favorite Final Fantasy games. I like that it has the genesis of the classic Final Fantasy job system. The soundtrack is really rad and has one of my favorite versions of the battle theme. However, many other aspects of the game definitely hinder it and have led me to never actually finishing the game despite a few different very serious attempts. We will talk about those issues in a few minutes.

My first serious playthrough of Final Fantasy 5 was when it was rereleased for the Playstation as part of the Final Fantasy collection along with Final Fantasy IV, VI, and Chrono Trigger. I remember playing it a lot in the summer. I had work from 2pm to 8pm and would play from the late morning until I had to leave for my job. I got through a lot of the game with the help of a guide, but I did run into some issues along the way with game bugs and ridiculously hard battles I barely scrapped my way through. The game, in general, seemed slow and constantly frustrated me until eventually I got stuck near the end of the game without a vital item and ended up giving up playing through the game. 

Around this time I was also doing a playthrough of Final Fantasy 4. Final Fantasy 5 is such a dramatic fall back from 4 it is unbelievable. When I begin thinking of these games sequentially, and then considering its PRELUDE? before the absolutely epic Final Fantasy 6, I could not believe it. In general, like the real 2 and 3, I found 5 to be a dud that I thought “hey, maybe one day I will come back to this game.” Maybe would be over 15 years later. 

Here is a random piece of trivia: Final Fantasy 5 was the game that pushed me to buy a Playstation 2! There is a bug in the Playstation version of this game that makes the pixels on your screen go haywire when you save the game. At first, this wasn't the BIGGEST deal because you could save, reset, and go back in. However, this also led, at least on my system, to other issues with the game freezing and sometimes crashing my system. 

I ended up going to the store one and buying a brand new Playstation 2. I didn't feel too bad because it was backwards compatible, so I could still play older games and Final Fantasy 5 actually worked right on it. I still have that PS2 in a closet at my parents house I think. 

I am pretty sure this game was one of the first things I ever charged on a credit card too. I remember preordering all those Final Fantasy reissues and new games like Bushido Blade, Legend of Mana, and Chrono Cross. One of the games came with a clock. I think another came with a plush toy. 

After remembering, and confirming with a few others, how poor the Playstation reissue of the game was, I ended up playing the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy 5 during the fall for a bit each night. The graphics in this game are pretty solid. I love the opening sequence with the dragon. You can see it in our current podcast cover art. The sprites in this game are classic sixteen bit era work and look good. 

The soundtrack for this game is quite good as well. The opening music is spectacular. The battle theme is one of my absolute favorites in the series. So many tracks on Final Fantasy 5's soundtrack sound like extensions of similar tracks from Final Fantasy 4. I found myself feeling quite comfortable diving right into the game because of how familiar its soundtrack felt due to my very recent playthough of its predecessor. 4 is one of the best games of all time, so it hard not to constantly compare the two games. 

A huge innovation in this game is finally having timers on battles! Final Fantasy 4 had “active time” battles, but 5 shows it visually on the screen for the first time. I have always found that reassuring as I am planning my battle. 4 definitely has a pattern of which of your party member is going to be up next, but the actual timer filling up works for me much better. This is a tradition that continues in the Playstation era games and still in newer retro style games like I Am Setsuna. 

This game also marks the beginnings of a job system in Final Fantasy games. While it is not as detailed as later games like Final Fantasy Tactics, the idea is already there. I followed a guide I found online pretty closely because I could not remember how I approached this game last time in regards to jobs. I love the idea of a job system in theory, but I often find them to be a bit too busy for my tastes. 

The pirates in this game remind me of Greek Romances. I wrote a paper about them in a class on classical literature and related the paper to the entire Final Fantasy series. My professor was fascinated by this and we spent some time in his office one day discussing how the series incorporated myth into it. I'm not sure if he had been too familiar with video games before this, but it was still pretty cool. 

Question in my notes: Is Faris supposed to be genderqueer? 

Eventually, I got really frustrated with this game because, despite the innovations to Final Fantasy games introduced in this game, so many other aspects of the game were lacking. Much like the end dungeon in Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5 does not do a good job showing walls and doors, which leads to confusion, for me at least. The plot is hard to follow and eventually I stopped caring. The battle system itself, while innovative, is pretty slow and choppy. This is yet another game where you can “miss” an enemy if you target one that is killed before that party members turn, which is absolutely insufferable at this point. That sort of thing frustrated me in 1991 playing the original Final Fantasy and now I cannot deal with it. Eventually, like last time, I got stuck somewhere and the guide I was using did not make it very clear what I should do next. Given I had just played through Final Fantasy 4 and had that to compared this game to, I realized my original thesis 15 years ago that this game just is not that good was probably right. Final Fantasy 5 is such a fall back from 4. 

I would not, given how long Square is taking to put out the remake of Final Fantasy 7 (ugh, one day we will get to that one...) hold my breath for this, but what this and the 8 and 16 bit Final Fantasy games need is a good collection that cleans up game play, fixes translation problems, and generally makes the games better. I'm sure there are roms out there that do such things, but it would be nice to see an official release. The PS1 versions, for the most part, are not good ports at all and those are the ones sold, as far as I can tell, on Steam, the Vita, and other places. 

I would love to have good copies of these games on a modern console. Vita or, like with Dragon Quest, the 3DS would be great. How about the Switch? Given its apparent ability, I am typing this about 10 days before its launch, to move from the television to a portable version, perhaps the Switch would be ideal for these kinds of games. I can definitely imagine playing a remastered Final Fantasy 5 on my couch and then heading to the bedroom later to play more. 

Perhaps that could be something for the new Tokyo RPG Factory to work on? 

Again, the Giraffe Feels podcast is written, edited, produced, and performed by William Wend. Giraffefeelspod is the user name to follow on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. We have a Youtube page that is linked on the website.

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