I actually don't have a great sense of how far into Final Fantasy V I am. I'd guess around halfway, largely because I've hit a pretty serious "midpoint shift" moment.
A midpoint shift is a moment in a movie where the dynamics of the story undergo a big change around the halfway point. The clearest example I ever saw was Jaws, in which the small-town politics and establishment of the dangers that this shark poses to the community give way to three men out on a boat trying to hunt the thing down.
Anyway, in FFV, the moment that I suspect represents that midpoint is when the party travels to another world - seemingly a literal other planet. It's actually pretty cool - the aesthetic of "Galuf's World" (in contrast with "Bartz' World") is markedly different. The mountains are a different shape, the combat backgrounds are different even in similar environments, there are all new monsters to fight, and the array of "fantasy races" are different. Having encountered a werewolf back on Bartz' world, we now discover that they're a group of people allied with Galuf's kingdom, and are quite friendly.
Now, I also figure that we're going to find a way to return, but that could be very near the end of the game - a kind of last hurrah for the setting(s) of the game with perhaps some last-minute sidequests.
But I'm here to talk about the Job system.
I think just about every aspect of the Job system in V is an improvement over the one in III. Job levels have a much clearer benefit, with a new job ability unlocked at each of these points. And you also have an incentive to level different jobs on a single character, being able to mix and match features, such as getting the fast-hitting Ninja, who dual-wields weapons, and giving them the Mystic Knight's Spellblade ability, which adds a magical effect to each of their hits (I can tell you, casting Drain on a weapon can be nasty - though not recommended if you're fighting undead).
Granted, there are aspects of this I don't yet have a great sense of - the one character I have who has "mastered" a job (Lenna has hit the maximum level of Blue Mage, which is only 4, I think) I've now shifted to leveling other jobs. For some reason she needs a full 999 ABP (the alternate XP for Job levels, which you rarely get more than two of in an encounter) to get her next level of Red Mage.
The Blue Mage's whole deal is that they can learn abilities used by monsters. And I've got a reasonable little portfolio of Blue Magic. But while Blue Magic is the automatic class feature when you are currently a Blue Mage, the "Learn" feature that actually allows you to gain those abilities is not. And I haven't been able to figure out if equipping a class gives you all the passive features that the class has, or only the ones you have equipped (I'd think the former, given that when I have a Thief in the party, I move across the screen very quickly, but I don't know for certain).
So there's already a bit of a challenge here in figuring out how to set up your character. But on top of that, there are a lot of Jobs. Currently, I have (if I can remember them all) Freelancers, Knights, Monks, White Mages, Black Mages, Blue Mages, Time Mages, Thieves, Rangers, Bards, Beastmasters, Berserkers, Mystic Knights, Ninjas, Samurai, Chemists, Dancers, Dragoons, and Red Mages.
In other words, that's a lot. Even if you're still keeping certain characters to certain types of Jobs - like early on I had Galuf as a Monk, then got some levels in Knight and Mystic Knight, but then after he departed the party briefly, he came back as a White Mage, and so he's a bit all over the place. Indeed, I think only with Lenna have I really focused her on only a few jobs - she's been mostly Blue Mage, Red Mage, and a bit of White Mage and Summoner.
The customizability is fun, but if we're meant to experiment and play around with different things, there's a fair amount of catching up to do. Job levels tend to require more ABP to level up higher levels (and weirdly it's not consistent, so it's a lot easier to get a 4th level Mystic Knight than a 4th level Red Mage) but given that, aside from bosses, even this far into the game I'm not getting more than 2 ABP per encounter most of the time, it's not exactly easy to catch up.
The Pixel Remasters have options to increase the rate at which you gain XP, Gil, and in this game, ABP. I tend to shy away from these because I want the game to feel balanced, but I've made a rule for myself that if I feel the need to grind, I can adjust those temporarily. I haven't boosted XP, but in order to be able to buy equipment for my characters and get these Job levels up, I consider it worth it.
I believe that Jobs as a system are part of Final Fantasy XIV, though likely work differently. But they don't seem to have returned in any of the single-player games (though I think that one of the characters in IX is a classic Black Mage with the face hidden in shadow).
There's a lot about this system that I like, but after the really smooth progression in FFIV, where I think apart from some extra-hard optional dungeons I never felt that my characters weren't keeping up with the challenges presented by the plot, here I feel - actually that I'm powerful enough, but that the grind of leveling up Jobs is getting in the way of making me feel like I can really experiment with the system.
Again, these are complaints for a game that's over 30 years old, so I realize I'm kind of shouting into the wind here. I do like this game, and really feel like the SNES era of the series has been a giant leap forward. Naturally, this whole run through of these games is leading up to my fully-committed tackling of FFVI, which my best friend considers his favorite game of all time, and which is often cited as the best of the Final Fantasy series (though VII is of course in strong contention).
Also I might return to FFVIIRebirth at some point and see if I can get through the Gi dungeon on Hard Mode - I tried it earlier and arrived at the boss with almost no MP left, which seemed to make it impossible.
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