Final Fantasy 5 Beginner Club W01
| Week 01 | 2026-09-18T15:00:00Z |
|---|---|
| Next week | 📿 Final Fantasy 5 - Week 2 |
| Home Threads | FFBC / FF5BC |
Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:
Please be extra-mindful of spoilers, as these games become more and more plot-driven it’s important to avoid revealing even minor details of future events, characters and locations. If you’re not sure if something is spoilery or not, better just throws it in a [spoiler] just in case.
Stopping point
After crossing the canal and finding your way back to the world map on the other side.
週刊完璧主義通信
As these games get more and more complex, it gets harder and harder for me to keep track of all missable content. I’ll try my best in those threads, but if you truly want a 100% playthrough you may want to double-check that I’m not forgetting anything with external guides like for instance this page but of course that also means a lot more potential spoilers.
In particular I won’t bother pointing out every single missable chest (there are way too many of those since many locations eventually become unrevisitable in this game) or every single rare piece of gear that can be stolen from or dropped by specific enemies that are only temporarily accessible.
Missable enemies
Canal
You can only encounter two types of enemies in the canal, but they’re both unique and this location can’t be revisited so you’ll have to make sure to defeat both to get a full bestiary:
Akashelia’s quest
There’s an episodic subquest running through most of FFV: you can learn to play the piano. Well, your party members can. In most towns there will be a piano available, sometimes in plain sight, sometimes hidden or hard to reach. If you manage to play all pianos in the game, you’ll unlock a reward.
This week we have access to a first piano in Toul’s 酒場. You’ll have to figure out how to reach it, however…
The hero and the chicken
So this isn’t really missable but some people might want a heads up for this: much later in the game we’ll have the opportunity to acquire one (and only one) of two weapons: the Brave Blade or the Chicken Knife. They are both extremely powerful weapons, but each comes with a gimmick:
- The Brave Blade starts off extremely strong but gets weaker every time you flee.
- The Chicken Knife starts off extremely weak but gets stronger every time you flee (up to a certain limit).
I will talk more about these weapons when they become relevant but I thought I’d mention them at the start of the game because they consider the total number of times you fled throughout the entire game, not from the time you acquire them. In other words, if you intend to get the Brave Blade, you probably don’t want to ever flee an encounter.
Note that both weapons (at max power) are about equally as strong. In fact the Chicken Knife has a small advantage overall, so you won’t get punished for fleeing as long as you pick the right weapon when the time comes.
青魔法コレクター会報
For the blue mage enjoyers in the audience I’ll try to list the blue spell that become available every week. Naturally this week we can only start learning magic after getting the Blue Mage job, so you may have to backtrack to get some of the spells.
If you’re grinding for a specific 技, remember that the blue mage party member (or one with the Learn ability active) must be hit in order to learn it, so turning your entire party to blue mages will usually increase the likelihood of success.
Also note that some/most of these spells can also be learned later, many all the way to the end of the game, I’m just listing them when they first become available.
Caves
- 吸血 from the スティールバット
Wind Shrine
- ゴブリンパンチ from the ブラックゴブリン
- アエロ from the モールドウインド
More details
Unfortunately once more we start of with some unpausable text. Don’t worry though, it’s pretty much the only time it’s going to happen in this game. Look up the spreadsheet or a youtube video if you struggle to keep up.
To summarize: the king of Tycoon notices that the wind seems to be weakening, so he decides to go check on the wind Crystal, leaving his daughter Lena in the castle. When he arrives in the Wind shrine, he realizes that the Crystal is shattering. Meanwhile, a meteor crashes. A lone adventurer and his chocobo are nearby and decide to go investigate.
That’s right, we’re doing Crystals again.
You’ll gain control on the world map, surrounded by mountain ranges. You can only reach one location: the impact site to the East.
Note that on the Super Famicom version the main character doesn’t have a default name in game (much like FF1, FF2 and FF3) but he does have a canonical name: バッツ.
Once you’re done there, you can return whence you came. This time you want to take your chocobo to the North West to trigger the next events.
You’ll regain control once again on the world map, where you just have to continue northward to a nearby cave.
That’s right, we’re doing caves again.
The good news is that this game has a lot more dungeon diversity than FF4, they’re just meeting the cave quota early. There’s a spring that heals you early in the cave, so you can familiarize yourself with the combat system at your leisure. We can only たたかう at this point though, so there isn’t much depth… You can also flee by holding the trigger buttons together, like in FF4.
Navigating the cave shouldn’t be too difficult. On the other side, you’ll be able to sail a ship. Eventually a crewmate will propose to take you to the Wind Shrine, if you say “no” you’ll just have to find your way there by yourself but it doesn’t change anything. There’s a town on the West shore we could explore as well, but there isn’t much to do there at this point so I recommend leaving that for after.
The Wind Shrine
Once inside the shrine, go immediately left to the room with all the NPCs. You can talk with them to get some information about the situation in the temple. At the bottom of the room there’s a 壺 that heals you. When you’re ready, take the stairs on the right side and find your way to the top.
After the cutscene you can walk behind the altar to teleport out. At this point you’ll get a small tutorial on the job system. I give more details about the mechanics in the “gig economy” section below if you want to have a look. I also have an individual entry for every job.
So what’s next? There’s a canal South of the shrine but the gate is locked, so the only place left to visit is the town of Toul on the West shore.
Toul
The town has various shops, in particular you probably want to buy your first white and black spells here. You can often find good gear in dungeons but most spells can only be bought in shops (except for blue magic that’s learned from enemies). Besides, unlike some previous games, this time the spells are handled at the party level: If you learn a spell then the entire party knows it. There are also no limitations to the number of spells you can learn, your entire party can eventually know all the spells in the game. What limits your ability to use them is the job system.
If you go upstairs in the pub you’ll be able to trigger a strange cutscene that has interesting lore implications. There’s also a piano on the first floor that you can play.
There a house West of the town’s entrance where you can get all sorts of tutorials if you say that you’re a 初心者.
Finally you can visit the mansion on the other side of the river to the North to obtain the key to the canal.
Note that you can revisit the pirate cave at this point for additional dialogue if you want, although it’s perfectly optional and you’ll have plenty of other opportunities to revisit the location later if you prefer.
Canal
It’s pretty straightforward, just follow the path. Eventually you’ll reach another section that you have to explore on foot. There are a few treasures to be found, in particular after the scripted campfire scene you can find the World Map key item which does exactly what it says.
As always the Pixel Remaster comes with a world map by default so it’s not quite as useful as in the original version but it does also show you unvisited locations if you use it from the menu.
If you struggle with the boss: she has two forms, living and undead. The living form has high magic resistance and low physical resistance, the undead version is the other way around. Also the undead version is especially weak to fire as well as healing spells
Map
Miscellaneous
You may want to wait after the Wind Shrine to read this:
The gig economy
Jobs
FF5 brings back the job system introduced with FF3. If you’re not already familiar, it means that you can assign classes such as “black mage”, “thief” or “monk” to individual party members. Jobs can be reassigned at any moment (outside of combat) from the menu without any penalties, so you can experiment at your leisure.
Assigning a class to a party member changes:
- Their attributes: for instance black mages have high intelligence so their spells are powerful, thiefs are agile so they move faster and are better at avoiding attacks, monks are strong and have a lot of health.
- Their commands: black mages can cast black magic, thieves can steal, monks have the 蹴り special attack.
- Passive/innate skills: those are not actions you can pick in combat but are automatically activated. Monks can counter-attack, thieves find hidden paths, knights will defend weak party members.
- The gear they can use: black mages can use rods and wear robes, thieves can use boomerangs and wear light armor, monks fight empty-handed and can only wear light armor as well.
You start the game as a 素っぴん (Freelancer in English) who has no special skill, has average stats but can equip all the gear in the game.
So far, it’s very similar FF3, and if you’ve played that game you know that its system is a bit limited and unbalanced. Some jobs tend to be much better than other and so you often end up using the same lineups as everybody else. But FF5 introduces a small tweak that adds a huge amount of depth to the system: abilities
Abilities
A character has two levels: their actual level that goes up when you accumulate experience points (EXP) and the level of their current job that increases with the ability points (ABP) which you also gain when winning encounters.
Every time a job levels up, the party member unlock new abilities. Let’s take a concrete example: if you give Lena the black mage job, she immediately gains the 黒魔法Ｌ６ command that lets her cast any black magic spell (you still have to buy/unlock the spells however). Then if you gain 10 ABP you’ll level the black mage job up, which will give Lena the 黒魔法Ｌ１ ability. This ability lets you cast level 1 black magic only.
So, what’s that about? Black mages can cast all black magic, and then you unlock the ability to cast level 1 black magic, what’s the point? Well you see, once unlocked these abilities can be equipped even if you change jobs. So for instance now if I wanted I could reclass Lena into monk and still give her the ability to cast low level magic spells:
Doing this will also increase the Lena’s MP and intelligence beyond what the monk would usually grant, since it’s not a spellcasting class.
The more you level up the black mage job, the stronger the ability becomes. Eventually you’ll be able to grant another job the ability to cast all black magic spells, but only if you keep training the black mage job.
This ability to mix and match job abilities is what grants the FF5 job system its flexibility and depth.
Jack of all trades, master of some
When you’ve learned all abilities from a job, it becomes “mastered” and something important takes place: the 素っぴん (Freelancer) starting class inherits the passive abilities of the mastered job (with some exceptions) and stat bonuses of the mastered job (unless they already got a bigger bonus from a different mastered job).
So if you master the Monk, the Freelancer will gain a big bonus in Strength and Stamina as well as the “counter-attack” ability. If you then master the thief job with the same character, the Freelancer will gain a big Agility boost as well as the ability to detect hidden paths. Note that this is always per-character, not for the entire party.
In other words, the more jobs you master, the more powerful the 素っぴん becomes. But if you switch to the 素っぴん to make use of this power, you’re no longer training any job, so there’s a tradeoff there too.
Battle formations
Like in previous games, you can organize your party members across two rows. Backrow members receive less damage from physical attacks but also deal less physical damage themselves. As a result you generally want your spellcasters and ranged fighters on the backrow and your melee fighters on the front row.
募集・ナイト
- Number of levels to master: 6
- ABP to master: 690
This job has the passive 庇う (cover) ability that protects critical party members. They can use knight swords and heavy armour which are generally quite powerful. At level three they learn the 両手持ち (two-handed) ability that lets you two-hand a weapon for double damage. It’s quite good, although it will eventually be ouclassed by another job’s related ability later.
It’s not bad, especially in the early game, but you may want to move on to more interesting jobs eventually.
募集・モンク
- Number of levels to master: 7
- ABP to master: 700
The monk has the highest Strength and Stamina in the game (and will therefore grant the highest bonus for these attributes to the Freelancer upon mastery). Their innate abilities are カウンター (counter-attack) and 格闘 (bare-handed combat).
At job level 2 you unlock 格闘 for use with other classes, which is really good even if those other classe are not fighting bare-handed because it also grants a big strength bonus regardless of the weapon used. Not really useful for a knight who already has high base strength, but makes a huge difference for classes that are normally physically underpowered.
Any party member who’s a mainly a physical fighter will want to master the monk eventually, and even for spellcasters the high Stamina (and therefore HP) can be interesting. That said, they can be really fragile, especially in the early game. All offense, no defense.
募集・シーフ
- Number of levels to master: 7
- ABP to master: 635
The thieves have the highest Agility bonus of any job, so they act the fastest. They can steal items from enemies and bosses (which includes some really powerful items in this game).
They have some interesting passive abilities:
- ダッシュ (dash): lets you run in towns in dungeons
- 隠し通路 (hidden path): displays secret paths in towns and dungeons
- 警戒 (vigilance): prevents back attacks
In terms of active abilities they have 盗む(steal) by default and can learn ぶんどる (mug) later, which replaces normal attacks with an attack+steal combined action. There’s also とんずら (flee) that lets you escape a battle immediately (unless the battle in inescapable, like most bosses).
Being able to see secret paths in towns and dungeons can be helpful to find hidden treasures, especially during a first playthrough, although this is less powerful in the Pixel Remaster given that you have access to full maps of every level that often reveal treasures anyway.
This class is fine. The stats are pretty average (the extremely high agility is good but it mostly only increases the rate at which your ATB gauge fills up) but the jobs has a lot of potentially useful abilities if you want them. Once mastered the passive abilities and high agility are passed to the Freelancer, which is nice too.
募集・白魔道士
- Number of levels to master: 7
- ABP to master: 580
Is white mage. Can use white magic. High magic bonus naturally, but significantly lower than the black mage (+25 versus +31 respectively). You probably want at least one party member being able to cast white magic though.
Note that some spells that were classified as white magic in earlier games have been reclassified as “spacetime magic” here and therefore won’t be available with this job. That includes spells like haste, levitate, slow or teleport.
You can multicast some white spells on your entire party by moving the cursor towards the right of the screen.
募集・黒魔道士
- Number of levels to master: 7
- ABP to master: 730
Highest magic bonus of any job. Can use all the black magic in the game.
The main issue with the black mage is managing MP depletion and you don’t unlock non-elemental attack spells (Flare) until the very highest levels. If you end up against a boss without elemental weaknesses, it can be a bit tricky. Many bosses and enemies do have weaknesses though, and in those cases the black mage can often out-damage the physical attackers. Be careful with enemies that use reflect however…
Note that some spells that were classified as black magic in earlier games have been reclassified as “spacetime magic” here and therefore won’t be available with this job. That includes spells like meteor, slow or mute.
You can multicast some black spells on all enemies by moving the cursor towards the left of the screen.
募集・青魔道士
- Number of levels to master: 4
- ABP to master: 350
Up until now you may have noticed that the Wind Crystal gave us the same jobs as the starting classes in FF1, but this one is the exception: instead of the Red Mage, we get a Blue one instead.
So what’s Blue magic? It’s spells you learn from enemies. This game introduces the concept but it’ll come back in many future games, although the specifics of how the spells are learned vary from game to game. In FF5 to learn a Blue spell you have to have an enemy successfully use the corresponding ability on the blue mage (or a party member with the blue mage’s “Learn” ability active), then you must win the battle (i.e. not flee).
So for instance the goblins we can encounter this week sometimes use the “Goblin Punch” attack. This happens to be a blue spell. If a Goblin lands a Goblin Punch on a blue mage, the party will learn the Goblin Punch blue magic. Note that the spells are shared by the entire party, only one of them has to learn it for everybody (it’s true for all spells/summons in this game, not just blue magic).
Blue mages can become extremely powerful because some blue spells are borderline overpowered. There’s a blue spell that casts protect, shell and levitate at once on the entire party for instance. The problem is that learning the spells can be tricky, especially if you’re not using a guide. You need to find the right enemies and make sure that those enemies use the right attacks, which can be difficult. I’ll attempt to assist with the 青魔法コレクター会報 section in these weekly threads (see above), but even then getting some spells will require patience and dedication.
If that sounds fun to you, go for it, otherwise ignore it and never look back.
La fiesta
If you already played FFV and want to spice things up a bit, you can try a “Four Job Fiesta” run. The website for the challenge is here:
https://www.fourjobfiesta.com/
There’s an official charity event held yearly (the next one in June), but you can use the website to start an “offseason” run at any time if you want: Off Season Fiesta Runs
The idea is that when you press “Submit Query” at the bottom of the page you’ll be given a list of 4 jobs (with default settings) and those are the only 4 jobs you can use. Furthermore, from the point you unlock a job on the list, at least one of your party members must use the job at any given time. You can have all the details of the ruleset here: Help - Final Fantasy Five Four Job Fiesta
Track of the week
Participation
- I’m playing along
- I will catch up later
- I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion
- I have played this game before (in part or in full) in English
- I have played this game before (in part or in full) in Japanese
- I have never played this game before
- I have taken part in the FF1 club
- I have taken part in the FF2 club
- I have taken part in the FF3 club
- I have taken part in the FF4 club
- It’s my first participation in one of these clubs
- Super Famicom
- Pixel Remaster
- PlayStation
- GBA
- Other
If your going for all chests, be extra careful this game >_<
