Okay, so I've gone over every other Final Fantasy game I've actually played, this would actually be the last one I've got to cover. Number five is a pretty good one as far as I'm concerned, especially since it was quite possibly the best use of the job system and inclusion of elemental crystals. Also, it was the first to spawn an anime, which I hope to see some day. The job system was very special because if you had an end game in mind you could create a super character, nay a super party. Every time you master a job, its traits become a permanent part of the character when they go jobless. Arguaby the ultimate physical character would be monk, ninja, hunter as monk gives counter and higher HP, ninja gets you two weapons simultaneously, and hunter give you the ability to attack four times, which means you can hit eight times in one turn, ten if counter gets triggered. Magic characters get a boost from red mage's doublecast and if you set them with mime they get three slots which means doublecast and it can be applied to two other types of magic. The possibilities are endless!
Plotwise it's not bad, kind of straightforward and not terribly original, but not bad. The main character is Bartz who rides a chocobo, wields a sword from the get go and is probably the most generic RPG hero in the franchise, if not the entire genre. One day Bartz meets Princess Reina and an old man who can't remember anything except that his name is Galuf. The Princess was out looking for her father who had gone to look for the Wind Crystal when a meteor interrupts her travels and draws Bartz's attention. The three go to find the king together because the amnesiac thinks that's something along the lines of what he was doing before he lost his memory and Bartz has nothing better to do. They need to get across the sea and since the wind crystal stopped working, nobody can sail except one mysterious crew of pirates led by Faris who catches the party trying to steal their ship and surprisingly agrees to help. As it turns out, the pirate ship still works because rather than wind in the sails, it moves by being pulled by a sea serpent. They get to the wind crystal but it breaks and the crystals call out for these four to save the world and to this end grants them the power of jobs so they can use magic and other cool abilities. Their next stop is the water crystal, and along the way, they discover that Faris is a girl. Again they are too late to stop the crystal from breaking, but they get more jobs. Then they leave the mountain locked region they've been stuck in to look for the fire crystal. They are pormptly imprisoned where they meet the game's Cid who helps break out and once again they are too late to save the crystal and they discover someone is actively destroying the crystals. Now the crystal of Earth is the only one left, and aong the way to find it we get the big reveal, Faris is actually Reina's long lost sister Sarissa! So as you can imagine, this crystal does not have a much brighter future than the others, and it would seem the world is in for a bleak end, but it's not over yet. As it turns out the crystals were used to seal an evil bing known as ExDeath and now that they are broken, so is the seal and now he is ready to destroy the world again. A mysterious girl arrives to help out claiming to be Galuf's granddaughter Kara, and Galuf remembers he was one of the Warriors of Light who sealed ExDeath and no he wants to send ExDeath back to the world they came from. Galuf succeeds leaving Bartz, Reina and Faris behind, but they don't give up, they follow Galuf back to his world through a meteor portal with the help of Cid. shortly after they get to Galuf's world they are captured by ExDeath's henchman Gilgamesh. That's right, the Gilgamesh who keeps showing up in every other FF game, but more on that later. The whole group goes on a desperate quest to find a way to defeat ExDeath once and for all, and along the wya they find out Bartz's father was also a Warrior of Light who fought alongside Galuf against ExDeath. Galuf has a final showdown with ExDeath which is impressive because you can't lose this fight, even if Galuf hits 0 HP the battle continues until ExDeath is defeated, the downside being that Galuf actually dies after the battle, the party even tries using phoenix down and white magic, but Galuf went beyond his limits and he's dead for good...but Kara inherits all of his job mastery so it's cool, you just trade an old guy for a little girl with the same stats, if that makes any sense at all. Also, the party accidentally destroys the crystals of this world without realizing what they are and then things get really wierd. Apparently, the two worlds were one but were seperated by breaking the crystals in two, which was done because a wizard created a powerful void magic that could only be stopped by putting it between the two worlds that resulted from seperating them. Now that the two worlds have become one, there's a whole bunch of new crap which is actually good because most of it is stuff you can use against ExDeath. Oh did I forget to mention, he's not dead after all? Yeah apparently under his armor the bastard was acually some sort of tree demon and he left a twig on the party so that he could regrow later, and then he took the power of the void and actually puts holes in the world, I mean he literally just zaps spots and they become empty holes that water just flows into and it's gone. Many of the targets are places that the game designers just didn't want you going back to this late in the game and if you missed something important, screw you, but storywise the big deal is Bartz's home is one of the first places hit and he goes berserk. Ultimately there is a big showdown...blah, blah, blah...
Gilgamesh gets thrown into the void and from there he randomly falls out into other dimensions and makes appearances in various other games including FFVIII and FFXII, and yes this is actually the same Gilgamesh, he apparently is forever stuck between dimensions dropping out randomly for cameos as the most prolific single character in the series. It's also believed that Lone Wolf and Gogo who first appear here are somehow the same guys that reappear in FFVI but with just that one appearance they pale in comparison to Gilgamesh and Omega Weapon who apparently also crosses dimensions after it's first appearance in this game. One more fun fact, You must get collect hte spells Ifrit, Titan, Holy and Flare in order to complete the game, but they are the only spells you have to collect and you could get through the game without getting any other spells, though you're stupid as hell if you do try that. Go ahead, do it, let me know how it goes. Originally released on SNES, it was re-released on PS1, GBA, and iPad.
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