Part 6: Final Fantasy V - The Lost Levels
In the previous chapter, we discussed Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. If interested, read it here.
Let me take you on a journey back to 1997, the days of Pentium I computers and dial up internet service. My family had recently installed internet access and I would spend much of my free time back then on the family PC perusing gaming websites and forums. If I wasn’t on GameFAQs looking up walkthroughs, I was reading Geocities fan sites or discussing topics on forums. This was around the same time when Final Fantasy VII was announced to the world and many of the fans were asking themselves the same question: What the heck happened to the other missing Final Fantasy games? Naturally, I gravitated towards finding the answer to that question online.
This is how fan sites used to look back in the day. Filled with rumors and screengrabs of games taken from magazines of the unreleased FF games.
Finding a way to play Final Fantasy V was like obtaining a holy grail for many of us North American fans. Fortunately for us, this was around the time where emulators were starting to be released online. SNES (ZSNES) emulators were among the first to become available to the public. At the same time, Rom files of Japanese import games were available through bbs servers and the early rom sites. Through sites like these I was able to catch wind of a Final Fantasy V translation project being developed by RPGe. I won’t bore you with all of the details about the project (you can read more about it here if interested) but a small group of high schoolers banded together and created many of the techniques used for Japanese to English ROM translation. I was playing Final Fantasy V with their English translation as it was being developed. It was a surreal experience to play my first fan-translated game. It was a completely foreign concept to me and I had no way to be sure that it was legitimate. I had my doubts as soon as I started playing the game and saw the default name of the main character. “Butz?!? No way that is right. Oh, well, beggars can’t be choosers”, I thought to myself.
Turns out I was wrong, Butz was the official romanization of the Japanese name. I'm not immature enough to make jokes about this. Or am I?
Butz is Sir Mix A lot's favorite Final Fantasy character and he cannot lie.
I kept playing as much as the early emulators would allow. With the release of the Snes9x emulator and RPGe publishing the final patch for Final Fantasy V, I was finally able to experience the full game with no transparency layer glitches. And what a glorious translation it was. It was really impressive that high schoolers could accomplish work that rivaled Squaresoft’s localization efforts. Myria, SoM2Freak and harmony7 were the heroes we needed but didn’t deserve. When Squaresoft finally came out of their stupor and decided to bring Final Fantasy V to North America, their localization effort was lacking by comparison, which furthers highlights the outstanding work of these kids.
"We would've gotten away with keeping Final Fantasy V from North America, if it wasn't for these pesky kids!"
FFV continues the trend of captivating intro sequences.
Story and Character
The story repeats the standard FF trope of the 4 heroes of light on a quest to save the crystals from destruction. The four main characters are nothing to write home about. Butz/Bartz is the heroic main character, Lenna is the princess of Tycoon on a quest to find her father, Galuf is the amnesiac old man trying to recall his purpose and Faris is a pirate with a heart of gold and a mysterious identity.
Amano's concept art of the main cast of Final Fantasy V. From left to right, Lenna, Faris, Galuf and Butz/Bartz.
Amano's concept art of Exdeath and Gilgamesh. ExDeath is the main villain of the game and Gilgamesh is his comic relief henchman.
While the characters are very one note, the game was a leap in the storytelling capabilities of the series. They made a concerted effort to expand the number of optional story moments and interactions. These moments allow these mostly one note characters to come to life and expands their personalities and backstories. This extra attention to story scenes was the focus of a new contributor to the writing team. Yoshinori Kitase got his first opportunity to contribute to the Final Fantasy series as a scenario writer after working on Seiken Densetsu and his impact was noticeable.
Kitase comedic hijinks were in full display in scenes such as this one centering around Faris.
Final Fantasy V was the start of a trend in the series of adding more optional story scenes that develop the character backstories.
FFV was the first time the series had a comic relief villain in Gilgamesh. He comes in, drops some silly lines, loses and leaves.
Another new member was artist Tetsuya Nomura. He was a recent hire at this time and would get his first opportunity to contribute to the series as a monster designer. His monster and character designs would become more and more prominent as the series goes forward, while Amano's presence would diminish.
A sampling of Tetsuya Nomura's monster designs.
One of Nomura's creations in game.
Gameplay Mechanics and Combat
When it comes to combat, FFV continues the ATB system from FFIV but now the gameplay mechanic has more prominence. The ATB meter is visible for every character, which makes it easier to keep track of upcoming turns. It also expands upon the job system from FFIII. Characters are able to switch between twentyish jobs and they also slowly gain abilities for mastering them. The jobs are balanced enough to where most of them are viable all the way until the end game, which is a big improvement from FFIII. The characters also have a free skill slot (or two in the case of the Freelancer job) which rewards the player for mastering skills from jobs and mixing/matching abilities. The fun comes from finding synergistic combinations of abilities from different jobs(for example, the Knight’s protection ability and the Monk’s counterattack ability).
The new battle UI includes a nifty ATB meter that indicates when a character's next turn is coming up.
The player can select from more than 20 jobs for their character. Jobs that have been mastered are marked as such.
Part of the fun of creating character builds is mixing and matching new jobs with abilities from previously mastered one. The combinations are endless.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack of FFV continues the high standard set by the series. The most memorable track in the game is "Battle on the Big Bridge". A bombastic battle tune that is sure to excite. There are other standout tracks like Lenna’s Theme that have more of a melancholic feel to them. There’s a good mix of music styles in the soundtrack besides the ones I've called out below.
Remakes and Rereleases
The game was re-released a couple of times. Final Fantasy V was rereleased as a part of the Final Fantasy Anthology collection for the Playstation in 1999. This version was the first time the game was officially released in North America. This version is notorious for the quirky localization choices, like having Faris speak in a very stereotypical “pirate speech” manner throughout the whole game. This version also offered the official North American localization for the main character’s name as “Bartz”. The PS1 versions of classic Final Fantasy included some ok cg cutscenes, but are generally not recommended due to the additional disk load times added to combat.
The CG cutscenes in the Anthology collection of Final Fantasy games are nice, but the localization for FFV wasn't the best, as shown on the right.
The Gameboy Advance version of FFV a more respectable port when compared to the PS1. The localization was redone from the ground up and is closer in quality to the fan translation. This version also adds some minor gameplay changes. There are 4 new jobs exclusive to this version, a new endgame dungeon and a new Super-boss. Plus minor visual tweaks, like Amano-style portraits for each character. Out of all the official Squaresoft versions, this one seems to be the definitive Final Fantasy V experience.
The GBA version has some nifty portraits and improved localization (left) plus includes some new jobs like the cannoneer (right).
Reception and Aftermath
Final Fantasy V released in Japan in late 1992 and sold almost a million copies on its first day. It was the fourth best selling SNES game of the year, behind Dragon Quest V, Street Fighter 2 and Super Mario Kart. It was well reviewed by major Japanese publications. With all this success you’d figure there were plans to bring it over to North America and Europe, but as we discussed earlier, Squaresoft was not a believer in the North American market yet. They tried focus testing the game and it didn’t test well with casual audiences. However, Woosley did mention in an interview that they only put those plans on the backburner for a later time when the series caught on in the West (that would end up happening in 1999).
Squaresoft closed the sales gap between their rivals, but their greatest success hadn’t been achieved yet. That would have to wait until the next title in the series. In the meanwhile, Squaresoft planned to develop new 16 bit versions of their spinoff Gameboy franchises, SaGa and Seiken Densetsu. That is the subject of my next article. Let me know about your own experiences playing Final Fantasy V. Thanks for reading.
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