And so it begins! For the Four Job Fiesta, I'm going to be playing the PC version of Final Fantasy V for the first time. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is a reworked port of the mobile version, which was an enhanced port of the GameBoy Advance version, which was an enhanced port of the Super Famicom game. Though it might not be; I know the GBA version added some new content to the game, and I don't know if that exists in the mobile or PC version. I guess we'll find out... maybe!

Anyway, from the title screen we have a few cool things that weren't in the original SFC game: an on-line instruction manual for the game, a music player that lets us listen to any of the background tracks from the game, and a bestiary which contains enemy data, but only once you've defeated an enemy in battle. So right now, ours is completely empty, as I haven't started the game yet.

Selecting new game, we get an image of... the top of a castle... and a sky. And it's kinda dark. And we get to stare at this for... quite a while. Many seconds. I actually started to think maybe the game had frozen or something. It's been a long time since I've played this, in any version, so I don't remember it taking this long...

If you've played the original or the PlayStation port, you'll recognize easily that the graphics are revamped for this version. Everything has a more 'hand-drawn' look to it, which is pretty nice. Except the character sprites are... well, you'll see...

After a couple hours, the screen finally brightens up and pans down to show more of the castle. There's a dragon sleeping on a landing on the roof of the castle, and the music is pretty nice. Seems like a peaceful scene.

The dragon yawns or makes some other kind of noise (it's actually a very cute noise and I always think of that noise when I think of this game lol) and a man appears from one of the doors in the back and approaches. The man is super hot but we can't tell yet because he needs to talk first. Right now he just looks like a bad RPGMaker sprite.

But before he gets to talk, a girl walks out from the same door and talks first.

The girl's name is given as Lenna, and she addresses the man as her father, asking him if he "really has to go."

Mmm.... Daddy Tycoon...

Anyway, we learn that there's "something wrong with the wind" and Daddy's going to go to the Wind Shrine to... do something. And Lenna is to stay behind and protect the castle. He hops onto the back of the dragon and they fly away together, waving goodbye to Lenna.

We cut to a couple other scenes apparently going on simultaneously or something. First we see a man on a boat commenting that the wind just stopped. Then we see an old man with no character portrait inside a cave say that he "must hurry." We see Lenna again, who also notices the wind has stopped, and begins to worry about her father. And lastly, we're brought to a boy and his Chocobo hanging out by a fire.

Then suddenly the world starts shaking, and a meteor comes crashing now...

The boy jumps on his Chocobo friend and rides toward the sound of the crash to investigate.

And now we finally have control of the game! We're controlling the Chocobo for right now. And now that we can actually play, let's...

Look at menus!! My favorite :D

There's really not a lot to talk about here -- Final Fantasy is a pretty "standard" RPG series (though it's because the franchise itself sets a lot of standards and encouages a lot fo trends), so you won't find too much in the way of unique or interesting systems since we're playing this game 25 years after it was released, though Final Fantasy V does have a fun job class system that was pretty complex and interesting when the game was first released in 1992.

Opening the "Item" menu, we can see that we begin our adventure with three potions. The "Magic/Skills" menu doesn't really have anything, as we have no skills or magic at all. "Equipment" shows that our boy starts out wearing leather armor with a broadsword in-hand. "Status" shows information about the character -- typical stuff like strength and defense. "Row" allows us to change the formation of the party, which basically just consists of changing the order your four characters will stand, and changing whether they stand in the front or the back.

"Config" allows us to manage game settings like text speed and stuff, as well as see the bestiary and exit the game. There's a curious setting to allow 8-directional movement (the original game only used 4-directional movement), so I tried it out. It felt weird, because I'm used to the game being not only in four directions, but also locked to a grid. But even after changing to 4-direction mode, it seems this version of the game still does not lock to a grid, so the character movement feels awkward no matter what. So I switched back to allow the diagonal movement again...

The last two options are for saving the game. Despite this being a newer release of the game, it still uses the old system of only allowing you to save your game at special save points or on the world map. Saving in towns, buildings, dungeons, etc. is allowed; however, there's now a "Quick Save" option that allows you to create a save anywhere, with the caveat that the game exits at the same time. This allows you to leave the game without losing progress if you have to interrupt your play, but it doesn't allow you to "abuse" the save feature to manipulate luck.

Without too much to look at, we move on. The only place we can go is to the meteor's crash site, which is a bit northeast of the forest we began in. There are no battles while you're riding a Chocobo, so this is the only thing we're able to do in the game right now.

Arriving at the crash site, our boy tells his Chocobo to wait for him a bit further away from where the meteor landed, and so we learn that the bird's name is Boko. Boko also seems to be able to understand human speech and is quite obedient.

Arriving at the crash site, we find two goblins carrying away a girl. If you don't recognize the horribly under-detailed character sprite, it's Lenna, from before.

Since we're a game hero, we do what we have to do: challenge the goblins to a fight and save the girl.

And so we get to see our first battle scene! The enemy sprites have been redrawn and look very, very nice! And the player sprites are... super ugly and have weird unfitting weapon sprites attached to them. Anyway, those are some nice-looking goblins! But I guess even when you look at the old Final Fantasy games, including the original Final Fantasy V, the enemy sprites were always way more detailed than the player sprites. And everyone loves cool enemy sprites!

The battles in Final Fantasy V use a battle system called "Active Time Battle," or ATB. It's kind of a signature of Final Fantasy games, though it didn't enter the series until Final Fantasy IV, and the infamous little loading bars didn't exist until this title.

Active Time Battle is just turn-based battle, but with loading bars, and you're punished for the length of time it takes you to choose commands. That's... literally it. Enemies and players have an ATB Gauge that fills up over time based ont their Agility, and when their bar fills up (enemies' bars are hidden from player view), they get to act. The enemy acts automatically, while the player has to navigate menus to choose an action.

While the player is navigating menus, the ATB Gauges continue to fill. So if you just sit and don't press any buttons, the enemy will continue to take turns. You can turn the battle mode to "Wait" mode, which makes it so the ATB Gauges pause once you're in a submenu, but they'll continue to move while you pick one of the basic actions like Attack or Item.

Because it works this way, it offers no advantages to the player whatsoever, but for every frame you spend picking your actions in the menus, the enemy gains an advantage.

There are some clever things that can be done with ATB, though it's hardly ever utilized in interesting or meaningful ways. The first boss in Final Fantasy IV, for example, had periods of time in which it would retaliate to any attacks with a devastating counterattack. So you actually wanted to avoid selecting commands for your characters until the enemy stopped being in this state. Of course, this is something that could be done with a normal turn-based system, too, but with ATB, instead of pressing a "wait" or "defend" command, you get REALISTIC WAITING ACTION GAMEPLAY. I've always wanted games to simulate the act of waiting for things! I'm surprised ATB didn't spawn a series of queue-standing games where you stood in lines and waited while holding a controller.

In Final Fantasy VI, they updated the ATB system to allow you to change between party members who have a currently active turn and input commands for any of them -- unlike in the first two games to use the system, where you were "stuck" on the menu of the character whose gauge first filled up until you input a command. This did allow for a unique bit of strategy that wouldn't work well in a normal turn-based system, but Final Fantasy games tend to be easy enough and enemies lacking in depth and strategy enough to the point of rendering this feature of the system nearly useless.

And as the series progressed, ATB seemed to be used solely because it was a staple of the series; in Final Fantasy IX, the battle animations are so long that the ATB system literally does nothing at all except for show loading bars that in effect mean nothing at all.

Final Fantasy X-2 actually did utilize the system well, introducing a few new mechanics to the ATB system, including a "combo" system that allowed for attacks to get bonus damage based on the timing of the action. And then Final Fantasy XIII used a modified ATB system that was fun and engaging, but the rest of the nature of the battles are different enough that it's pretty much a completely different battle system, anyway.

And that's my ATB rant because I hate ATB.

After defeating the goblins thanks to our awesome loading bars of justice, we ask the girl if she's okay, and she introduces herself as Lenna, and asks for our name. And we finally get to name our character! The default name is Bartz and I feel weird naming characters in Final Fantasy games as the characters aren't generic, so I'm going to leave it as Bartz.

After telling Lenna his name, Bartz says that he and Boko simply travel wherever the road takes them. And this is a reason why Bartz is one of my favorite FF protags: he is just a vagabond with no ultimate goal. I think that's pretty cool.

Anyway, Lenna seems to be in a hurry to get somewhere, so she is about to part with Bartz and run off, but then they overhear some kind of moaning, and someone utters "Help me..." from somewhere. The voice seems to be coming from where the meteor landed.

So, since we are a game hero, we're going to do the obvious thing to do in this situation... ignore the voice and look for treasures!

There's actually a sort of "secret" passage hidden underneath the environment objects here -- you can walk under a certain part of these trees to find a little path that winds around to a treasure chest containing a Phoenix Down, an item that revives a fallen ally.

And that's our only little detour. I mean, we really should check up on the agonizing person, right?

Approaching a body we find laying next to the meteor, we meet an old man who seems to have hit his head in the impact and lost his memory. Sakes alive!

If you know me at all, I'm sure I don't have to tell you this but...

HOT DAMN, we have a sexy character on our hands here XD

hnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh mustache.........

Er, uh... so Stachedaddy here remembers one thing: that his name is Galuf. And then Lenna excuses herself again, because she really is in a hurry to the Wind Shrine.

But upon hearing that, old Galuf gets the feeling that that was where he was headed, too. So he's going our way~

The two decide to travel together and invite Bartz to come along. Unexpectedly, though, Bartz doesn't want to, and the two head off on their own. A little unconventional for a game hero.

As they're departing, Galuf says, "Godspeed, and all that whatnot!" which is ridiculously cute. I've only played the PlayStation port in English before, and this is a completely re-localized script. So far it seems pretty good. The original had a lot of quirky and cute stuff, and this one seems to, too. Just... different quirky and cute stuff. So now there's twice as much quirky to enjoy!

We regain control of Bartz again and continue our life as a vagabond. But like before, there's nowhere we can really go -- there's the forest we came from and everywhere else is just mountains or water which we can't pass simply by riding Boko.

When we approach the passage west of the water, though, Boko screeches to a hault, flinging Bartz off his back and into the canyon wall ahead. Bartz scolds him ("Bad, bad Chocobo!") and asks him why he stopped like that. Boko doesn't actually talk, aside from saying "Kweh," the Chocobo sound, but Bartz seems to know what Boko is thinking anyway. A weak old man with amnesia and a little girl who just was attacked by goblins are probably not all that safe on their own, and maybe we really should have gone with them.

And so our solo travels end again as quickly as they began again, and we're off to catch up to Lenna and Galuf.

Pretty much as soon as we start moving, the earth starts shaking again, and the canyon walls start to landslide. Boko is pretty good at jumping over stuff, I guess, but we can hear cries of Galuf and Lenna in the distance, so we hurry to catch up to them. Of course, it's not that easy -- goblins are jumping down from the top of the canyon and getting in our way.

Two of the goblins ended up dropping leather caps, though! Which is pretty good because Bartz had no hat and hats are good. Always hat. Equipping it, I realized that the items in the game have funny descriptions, something that didn't exist in the original version. The leather armor says, "Gets sticky in the summer," and the cap says "100% cow leather!"

Also, I realized that by moving Bartz to the back row, he will take 0 damage from the goblins' attacks... so he's pretty much invincible. Not that the goblins are much of a threat anyway.

We catch up to Galuf and Lenna soon enough, though, and load them on Boko's back (I guess, they just do the weird old RPG thing where they merge into your body and disappear). Later, Bartz is sitting atop some weird spire thing while Boko tends to the injured friends. Cold, Bartz.

Though upon hearing Lenna wake up, he jumps down the cliff and says good morning. Apparently the road to Tule (where the Wind Shrine is) has been covered in rubble and is inaccessible now. But I'm pretty sure it was inaccessible before because there was no such road when we had control of Boko earlier...

Bartz offers to help Lenna get to the Wind Shrine safely, and Galuf accuses him of only helping because he thinks Lenna is hot (she is though) with his face still planted in the grass.

Anything, Galuf~? <3

And so we head off to... wherever we're even able to go. Which is just another little path to the north. At the end we find a cave, though, which apparently only just opened because of the shockwaves from the meteor impact (which I guess also caused the landslides), and decide to try going inside. Bartz tells Boko that the cave is too dangerous for Chocobos and makes him wait outside lol.

Inside the cave, we finally encounter some enemies other than goblins, so we add Steel Bat, Stroper, and Devil Crab to our bestiary. And we now have Lenna and Galuf in the battle party, too!

Lenna comes equipped with Leather Armor like Bartz, and she also is weilding a Knife. It's not terribly strong, but it's something. And we give her the other Leather cap that we swiped off a goblin's corpse earlier.

Galuf, on the other hand, has nothing more than his clothes. Since he has no weapon, he attacks in battle by punching. It's not very strong, but he at least gets to hit two times. It ends up dealing only a little less damage than Lenna's knife attack.

The cave is pretty simple, just a few little passages. We find a spring that fully restores the party when we walk into it.

Eventually, we reach an area with a weird pirate guy standing guard over what seems to just be a wall. But we peek over the edge of the cave floor and see that he pushes a button on the wall that opens a secret door. So now we know how to continue through the cave.

In the treasure chest near where we saw this event, there was yet another Leather Cap, so now we have hats for all! We also unintentionally are building some kind of weird leather harem.

We find just some more twisting but simple passages behind the secret door, and then a little opening in the cave where we can see outside. We can't travel out that way, though, as it's just a ledge overlooking the water. But we do see something suspicious -- a ship is sailing in the water despite the fact that there is no wind!

Everyone is rightfully confused and we carry on. We eventually find where the little purple guy had headed to -- there is a pirates' cove in the back of the cave!

The ship we saw before seems to have docked in the water here, and Lenna wonders if we shouldn't ask the pirates for a lift to the Wind Shrine. Bartz tells her that that's not exactly a safe idea, so Galuf suggests instead that we just steal their ship! Bartz is surprised at Galuf's daring nature, to which he just responds with laughter. I'm not sure why these pirates are not hearing all this when they're literally just around the corner.

But it seems we've decided to steal a ship... and that's where we'll close the chapter for today. I know the beginning is a bit slow, and I'm sorry for those of you who already know the story of FF5 lol. The actual Four Job Fiesta challenge doesn't start until we reach the top of the Wind Shrine, which will be coming up very soon.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned~

---