Four Job Fiesta

[Warlock]

While I have Final Fantasy V on the brain, this looks like it could be fun: www.letsplaying.com/FF5FF/

The basic idea is similar to the single-class challenge in FFT; for each of the four job sets you gain over the course of the game, you're assigned a single class that you can use from it. Can you finish the game using only those four classes?

Seems like it could be a fun way to 'remix' the game- on one hand, many classes in FF5 have a decent spread of abilities; on the other, there are a lot of 'gimmick bosses' in the game. Some are clearly more useful than others- conventional wisdom seems to be that Chemists, with their wide spread of magical effects, are the most useful class, while the uncontrollable Berzerker is clearly the least useful.

Reading this is kind of tempting me to play through FF5 again...

- HC

[Kalisiin Kumaki]

They are always coming out with challenges to make the old games more fun again, like doing solo on Dragon Quest games, etc.
The funny thing is, I DID solo on DQ9 all the way till I beat that Dark Knight way in the beginning...because I did not KNOW you could create other characters, I was expecting to find them along the way, lol.

This sounds like fun if you're into FF. As we all know, I only like the original FF.

[Warlock]

So basically, I'm totally doing this for the hell of it. I started a few days ago; I'll be updating this thread with notes on my progress.

First job: Theif. This means I'll have access to better equipment than I otherwise would, but there are only a couple sections in the game where that's overwhelmingly powerful. I'd argue that this may be the worst of the Wind Crystal classes, honestly; not a whole lot of really useful things to pass on, and how useful stealing is varies widely as you go through the game. Not that great in and of itself, either.

Early bosses have been tough, since I don't have many tricks I can pull at this level and with this class. Mostly things have just been a matter of leveling up until my band of theives could successfully chip away at whatever's life.

[Warlock]

The moment any Four Job Fiesta-er fears: my job from the Water crystal: BERSERKER.

Berserkers hit really hard in FF5, but there are so many gimmick bosses as you go through the game that it's not always terribly useful. Their weapon-of-choice are axes, which fall off in power as you go through the game. They don't have any abilities that are that useful for other characters, and I'm basically stuck on any enemy requiring magic. Or... you know... mass healing.

Making my way through to the Fire crystal has been a trick. Beating the Liquid Flame boss actually essentially required waiting until it ran out of MP and could no longer heal effectively. Lack of mass healing is becoming a real problem, too.

-HC

[Warlock]

Fire Crystal job: Bard. This is gonna be a shitshow.

Bards have some useful support abilities, and FF5 is one of the games where they're not totally hopeless, but on the most part... Ehh. They weren't exactly one of my high-tier choices. The Ancient Library was a pain in the butt, and once again the boss was a matter of leveling-up until I could chip away at it. At least now that I have the ship, I have access to some better weapons to win/steal.

I've been keeping most of my dudes as Berserkers, strangely enough; physical attacks are the only real way I have of inflicting damage anyway, and Berserking increases their damage by a bit. I even have a theif with Berserk, who's throwing a boomerang from the back row.

The way my luck has gone this far, I'll probably get Dancer from the last crystal. :/

- HC

[Warlock]

FUN FACT: Elixirs are easier to come by than Hi-Potions in the first world of Final Fantasy V.

- HC

[Warlock]

Last job: Dragoon. Probably the worst of the Earth Crystal jobs, but not bad overall. Jumping doesn't work well with my other jobs, but the HP-draining Lancet will come in handy.

- HC

[Warlock]

So I stopped making regular updates, but I have been continuing on this little escapade. I finished up this morning (see obligatory last-boss-disintegrating screencaps); I'm not going to bother with the bonus dungeon.

To recap what I've said before: normally, as you go through Final Fantasy V, you'll find four different crystals which each give you a set of usable 'jobs'. You can switch between these at will, and can equip one previously-learned ability from another job- allowing you to create, say, a Knight who can use White Magic, or give anyone the ability to Steal from enemies. The Four Job Fiesta is an optional challenge, whereby you pick one job at random from each crystal, and only use those four (note that the base 'Freelancer' class isn't allowed). Since the Fiesta officially runs in June and I wanted to try it now, I used random.org to make my selections. The secret Mime job, as well as the new jobs added in the Advance version, aren't used in the challenge.

My four jobs ended up being Theif, Berserker, Bard, and Dragoon. It wasn't a particularly strong set of jobs- none of them are the generalists a challenge like this called for- but I managed to make it work.

Stuff I learned from running through this:

• Berserkers, despite their drawbacks, are actually fairly effective for a challenge like this one. There are times when you'll need to switch them to something else for a gimmick boss, but in general they're a reliable source of damage. Their axes are significantly more powerful than their stats suggest due to the way the combat math in FF5 works (Basically: axes partially bypass a target's defense). Later on, you get access to Hermes Sandals... Berserkers with Auto-Haste. God help us all.
• The last ability that a Theif learns is called "Artful Dodger". It gives a character that equips it a significant bonus to their Agilitiy, which- among other things- determines how long they need to wait between turns. It doesn't sound super-powerful on paper, but it practice, it gives you a significant bonus to how fast you go. In the normal game, there are better abilities to put in your ability slot; in a challenge like this, though, it's a big advantage for virtually any class.
• Bards aren't a particularly well-regarded class, but it's worth noting that Sing is possibly one of the most useful 'support abilities' in the game. The very first song Bards learn causes the Stop status condition, which prevents enemies from moving for some time. The thing is, there are very few enemies in the game who resist Stop until you're in the last few dungeons- a fast character with Sing can quite effectively keep entire enemy parties locked down while the rest of your party wails on them. I used this to breeze through a lot of the midgame dungeons.

The hardest parts of the game were mostly the early bosses, when Berserker was my only fighting class and I didn't have many options to go on. I had to resort to running this thing out of MP before I could make much headway; I thought I'd need to do the same with this guy, but his AI seemed to malfunction halfway through the battle and he stopped counterattacking. This fucking thing, normally a footnote in the game, was probably the hardest enemy I faced due to my lack of mass healing abilities and small supply of items at that stage in the game. Beating this guy was a challenge, but was doable after getting a little creative- turns out that if you hit him while he's stopped, he won't reset the battle. The last boss wasn't exactly a pushover, either.

I love little challenges like this. I've done similar runs with similar restrictions on a couple of games in the past. It's a way to breathe new life into an old game- to explore it in a way that shakes up the game's balance, to find which easy parts are now hard and which abilities you once ignored that have become indispensible. There are the occasional games that are made much more interesting this way; to this day, I wholeheartedly believe that Final Fantasy 8 was originally designed to restrict each character to a single GF at a time, if only because playing the game that way improves it so much. The only question now is- what to try next?

- HC


ETA: I'm thinking maybe "FF6 without magicite", though that probably rides the line between interesting and annoying.

[Kalisiin Kumaki]

Very interesting.
Sounds like a good challenge to try if you're wanting a re-play. Never played FF5 to begin with myself. I - as many know - ragequit the whole series over the ABP battle system and the Count spell.