FFFV: The extra "F" is for "ffriendship"

How a game with a sentient evil splinter became the first essential Final Fantasy experience

(I’m currently playing through the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series and tracking my thoughts on the evolution of the games. Here are my pieces on FFI, FFII, FFIII, and FFIV.)

Man, it’s been a while! I bet you thought I forgot I was playing through this series, didn’t you? See, what had happened was, I was traveling for work for most of September and October, so I didn’t have an opportunity to do much gaming. And then, when I had a chance to dive back into this series, I did something that took a little extra time — I played through Final Fantasy V with my friends. And when it comes to FFV, in particular, that’s a really appropriate way to experience the game.

Now, our reasons for this group playthrough weren’t thematic — rather, because FFV was historically not super available in the United States¹, I had been the only person in my group chat of college buds/D&D crew who’d ever played it before. With the Pixel Remasters coming to console, a playthrough seemed like a fun activity for us to do together, as well as an opportunity to introduce my friends to something that means a lot to me. So we dove in in early November, set a series of five weekly checkpoints so we could remain relatively aligned with each other’s progression, and I wrapped on this bad boy last night.

I have to say, this was a blast of an experience. Final Fantasy V is a super rich game that encourages deep exploration of not just its world but its mechanics. And, like five monkeys on typewriters, my friends and I each set out coming up with different strategies and loadouts to save the world. We’d check in with each other for tricky directions or tough bosses, and we’d celebrate each other’s ridiculous character builds. It gave me a whole new way to appreciate this game I already loved.

Dear Friends

Of course, regardless of intentions, this group excercise did thematically enhance the FFV experience, because FFV is all about friendship. It’s a game where four strangers swiftly decide to team up with each other to stop bad stuff from happening, in large part because it’s just nicer for them to be in each others’ presence than it is for them to be apart.

This is one of the reasons I love Final Fantasy V so much — because it is so dang earnest and sweet.² FFV is this wonderful distillation of the “classic” Final Fantasy story as played out in I and III — there are crystals connected to the world’s elements that are in danger, the crystals give you cool powers connected to job classes, go! — but grafted onto this tropey formula is a heaping of charm and self-aware humor. Instead of four blank cyphers defined by their jobs, you control four PALS who quip and make jokes with each other. Instead of the personification of some universal evil haunting you (Chaos, Darkness), you have a nasty wizard who grew out of a tree with the absurd name Exdeath (who, at one point stowes away on your heroes by turning into a splinter). Instead of a battle against four elemental fields, you’ll engage in four different fights against Gilgamesh, the four-armed, weapon-hunting shogun with a heart of gold and the tongue of sitcom dad.

Indeed, FFV is like Final Fantasy meets The Simpsons — or, let’s say, Futurama³. Because the heightened, are-they-serious plot beats occasionally hold a real emotional punch: Lenna willing to give her all for her wind drake companion, Krile feeling rudderless without her grandpa. No, these more serious moments aren’t as fully realized as the epic tragedies the series was just about to deliver, but they absolutely work, especially in the context of such a sweet and snappy game, giving you just enough investment in the characters to want to make a better world for them.

And, let me tell you, adding a wink, a nod, and an occasional twist to these tropes — softening them, making them fun — also makes them feel not only fresh but vital. It’s to the point that, for me, Final Fantasy V is the classic Final Fantasy story and the ideal entry point into the series. Narratively, it’s just a scoche postmodern — enough to let us know it knows what it’s doing. But just like Futurama had you crying for Fry’s dog, by the time our heroes make a new family at the end of the game, your heart will be happy.

Hey, Why Don’t You Get a Job

And I haven’t even talked about the mechanics yet! Because, oh mama, the job system in this game sings. Remember how I talked about FFI as an attempt to bring a single-player Dungeons & Dragons experience to home consoles? FFV almost inverts that goal; this job system, which at this point has almost completely abandoned D&D, is so good that I can’t believe it hasn’t been ported to tabletop.⁴ There is, in fact, an official Final Fantasy TTRPG coming next year based on Final Fantasy XIV, which you could rightly say features an evolution of FFV’s job system — I have to say, though, I like V’s better; it feels both more simple and more robust. The job system grants this game a ridiculous amount of replayability, to the point that people in the Final Fantasy community set out on yearly charity playthroughs with specific job challenges. And, truthfully, I think the breezier story complements these more dense mechanics, the most involved we’ve seen yet in the series — it lets you back-burner the narrative in your mind for a lot of it, instead putting your focus on whatever absurd job/ability combinations you want to cook up to become an absolute monster of a Warrior of Light. It lets you focus on play in a way prior entries haven’t.

Now, in the spirit of FFV’s breeziness, I’m not sure what else I need to say here. FFV’s mechanics are absurdly well designed, the story is witty and charming, it’s just a fun game!! It’s a real bummer that it so often gets overlooked, I think largely because, though it comes from an iconic era of JRPGs, it wasn’t easily available in America until later — folks weren’t able to experience it at a formative time the same way they were FFIV or VI. But I’m here to tell you that FFV is an absolute gem of a game, and it feels like it’s nailing almost everything the first four Final Fantasy games wanted to do in better, more colorful and engaging ways. Everything in the series so far is here at its best expression except the angst of II and IV. But brother, if you wanted angst in your Final Fantasy in 1992, you’d only have to wait a couple more years….

The Grades So Far

1. By the way, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Chris Kohler’s essential book on FFV, predicated on this very point.

2. Please note I may be cribbing some thoughts from Codex Entry’s fantastic YouTube essay on the game here, which I watched at the beginning of this latest playthrough. It helped me concretize some reflections I’d had about the game.

3. I mean, come on, can’t you just hear John DiMaggio as Gilgamesh? I especially love this bit of dialogue in his final fight: “Faris, fall in love, or something!”

4. Add this to my list of “god, that would be nice to do one day” projects.