Really have no idea why they went with this style of box art instead of the Amano art… Anyway, we are still quite in the middle of FF4 but I will obviously be playing this too. It has a mechanic I’m really excited to revisit and mess with it in the worst way possible.
I know very little about it. I prefer the storytelling of the even-numbered FFs so far, but I’m hoping this one gives us a reprieve from (vague FF2/4 spoiler) characters randomly dying for incredibly stupid reasons.
Clearly it’s all for some kind of 罰が当たる pun and not whatever you’re thinking.
I’m excited to give it another chance. The job system has never been my favorite, but I’m a very different gamer than I was 20 years ago, so I’m going in with an open mind. Last time I never finished it because I got stuck on a boss somewhere 50-75% of the way through.
Given how amazing FF6 is, that’s unlikely to change, even if you do enjoy FF5 a lot.
I really like FF5! As far as the older FFs go, I feel that this one is one of the more underrated ones. I just don’t see people talk about it as much as 4 and 6 (in my experience at least), even if it was the FF that introduced GILGAMESH
FF5 is one of the early FFs that I played for the first time later in life rather than childhood (the others being 2 and 3, which I HATED and are why I didn’t join the FF club sooner) and while it doesn’t take the artistic leaps that made FF6 beloved, it is a fantastic entry in the series. I can’t wait to replay it with y’all!
Sometimes his name was translated as Butz, which is even more questionable!
FF5 is also where the games start to get long! HLTB says about 35 hours compared to 23 hours for FF4. That’s based on the “main + extras” number, though based on the completionist number of 51 hours (compared to 26 hours for FF4) it sounds like there are a lot of extras in this game too.
By the way FF5 is the first one to have kanji even in the original Super Famicom version. It’s only a subset of the kanji available in the Pixel Remaster but it does make a big difference in my opinion:
I am very happy to leave the full-kana part of this club behind us…
I also find the Japanese easier to read than FF4, but I admit that I don’t know how much of this has to do with the fact that I’m playing FF4 in the original full-kana version. That being said, I also feel like there’s fewer long dialogues/exposition dumps, and the dialogue is very straightforward for the most part. I’ve played a brisk 5 hours already and I only looked up a small handful of words.
Also I prefer the look and soundtrack of the original over the Pixel Remaster, but that’s very subjective…
Also over 20 years ago I briefly attempted to learn Japanese (I think I must have totaled about 100 hours of study before giving up) and FF5 is one of the game I used to practice back then, I remember spending so long looking up individual kanji and trying to make sense of the Japanese, it all felt rather hopeless. It feels good being able to read that stuff easily after all these years. 19yo simias would be proud, although probably also frustrated that I “lost” 15years of study in the meantime…
I’m about halfway through the game, and I’d say this game has more cutscenes and long dialogues than FF4, but it tends to use simpler language and shorter sentences. So basically, more lines, but the lines are shorter and simpler, and are often intercut with all the new sprite animations they added for this one. The dialogue is more “natural” (if I can even properly judge that). It feels a little 少年アニメ to me, but not to the point of them stuffing 200 lines of filler into every scene.
Oh, there are also several totally optional story scenes peppered throughout the game.
FF4 feels like a high school kid trying to be mature and serious, but ends up writing wooden characters with cliched backstory. FF5 feels like a slightly more confident young writer, one who’s learned how to show you who a character is through the way they talk and behave, rather than expositing their tragic backstory. A writer who realizes its okay to write short stories once in a while instead of epic fantasy novels, and that characters aren’t just there to prop up the convoluted plot.
Ah, same here, my only regret with Japanese is “why didn’t I start sooner”
But I’m also thinking that it might not have stuck if I had tried sooner, seeing as tools like Wanikani, Yomitan, KanKan facilitated the journey so much. And of course the book clubs and the online community, so who knows (but definitely envious of the people around here that are 10-20 years younger)
And to be back on topic, no idea if I’ve played FFV before, but I think not… we’ll see when we start!
(but definitely envious of the people around here that are 10-20 years younger)