YMMV / Final Fantasy V

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Here.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • In Japan, Final Fantasy V is one of the more popular installments, better-liked there than Final Fantasy VI. Overseas, it isn't as popular, due to its temporary No Export for You status, being the only numbered Final Fantasy game of the SNES generation not imported stateside, on top of being from the pre-Final Fantasy VII era - and when it did first come over, as part of the Final Fantasy Collection for the PS1 in the wake of the explosive success of VII, it had a notably shaky translation and the port was rather poor from a technical standpoint, so it had that working against it, too.
  • Also, whereas Japanese gamers of the time didn't like the bigger emphasis on story that VI had (specifically feeling that it still didn't go far enough compared to something like the PC-based Legend of Heroes or Sega CD-based Lunar series, which could benefit from CD-ROM and hard disk storage, leaving it in an uncomfortable middle ground of the worst of both worlds in terms of story development), Americans did like that aspect compared to what was available at the time (and, arguably, some of the beats just resonate a bit better with an American/Anglophone audience, like the Edgar/Sabin relationship) and Western critics knock this game's less dramatic story and character arcs, as well as the higher random encounter rate. All this is once again not helped by the game being years late and being compared as much to VII and VIII as its proper contemporaries, fair or not.
  • However, the later re-releases of Final Fantasy V, starting with the re-translated Game Boy Advance port and going up to the most recent Pixel Remaster release, seem to have helped the game's reputation improve in America as more people were given a chance to play it and experience an improved translation that leans much more heavily into the game's light-hearted, irreverent, silly tone. The characters appearing in spin-offs and being referenced in games such as the wildly-popular Final Fantasy XIV hasn't hurt, nor have the frequent cameo appearances of Gilgamesh in various games (most recently, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth), with Final Fantasy V being the one in which he debuted. The addition of quality-of-life improvements to the Pixel Remaster, such as the ability to modify experience, ability point, and gil gains has certainly helped alleviate issues with grinding, and the ability to toggle random encounters on and off hasn't hurt, either.
• Anti-Climax Boss: All of them overlapping with Cheese Strategy.
  • The Sandworm in the Desert of Shifting Sands is hyped up to be a Puzzle Boss where you can't rely on magic to win the battle. It constantly shifts around between three Holes in the ground, making it difficult to land a hit, and if you do try to use magic and miss, the Hole enemies counterattack hard. However, if your party has taken the time to learn the ability from the nearby Dhorme Chimaera, one Aqua Rake hits all three spaces at once and kills it in one hit.
  • Here is a quick list of bosses that can be taken out with Level 5 Death: the Adamantoise, the Launchers in the Soul Cannon fight, Archaeoaevis' second form, and Atomos after you use Dark Spark to halve his level.
  • Exdeath's second battle (after Galuf's death). He's very challenging under normal circumstances, arguably the game's Climax Boss, and takes quite a bit of punishment before he goes down. Until you learn he's level 66, that the Level 3 Flare can be gained from a Red Dragon encounter in his castle, and that it takes him out in only a few turns.
  • Triton, Phobos, and Nereid can be instantly killed with Odin's Zantetsuken via the magic lamp, if the party has taken the time to expend two of its charges.
  • Catoblepas can use Break on your party members to petrify them if you physically attack him. However, if you !Catch and release an Ironback (found in a nearby cave) against him, it steamrolls him in one hit.
  • If you have Float status during his fight, Catastrophe tries to pull you to the ground so it can use Earthquake on you, but if you cast Reflect on yourself, his attempts at gravity will bounce off and you and hit him, allowing you to float harmlessly while he is unable to hurt you and you whale on him.
  • Carbuncle can be something of a tricky boss to fight due to having a permanent Reflect status for most of the fight. However, once in a while it switches to a vulnerable state to heal itself. This vulnerable state includes weakness to every elemental type and the removal of the "heavy" flag, which prevents certain instant death effects. A Mystic Knight attuned to one of the -ga elemental spells will simply one-shot Carbuncle at this point, as -ga Spellsword attacks instantly kill anything with a weakness to that element.
  • Any attempt to use Blue Magic on Azulmagia will see it learn and then immediately copy the attack. This includes Self-Destruct, which will kill one of your party members, but also instantly kill it.
• Ass Pull: Exdeath hiding as a splinter in Krile's finger so he can get to Ghido's cave and reveal his master plan. There's one mention of Krile having a splinter prior to the reveal, and no logical way for him to have planned it so he'd get stuck on her finger.
• Awesome Music: Like all Final Fantasy games, it has a lot. See this page for examples.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • All of the Gilgamesh battles with his classic and iconic "Clash on the Big Bridge" theme.
  • The superbosses Omega and Shinryu are the first of their kind in the franchise and it shows in their challenging boss fights requiring solid preparation and strategy to stand a chance. Omega MK. II and Neo Shinryu in the remakes Bonus Dungeon also count.
  • After being The Ghost and The Unfought for a long time, the remakes allow you to finally battle Enuo, it delivers.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The team startling Bartz into suddenly waking up and falling out of bed if they visit Tycoon Castle after obtaining Hiryu. He's never noted as a Heavy Sleeper at any point in the game and this particular event doesn't connect into any later ones while never being brought up again.
• Broken Base: Admittedly minor as far as Final Fantasy is typically concerned, but there is some dissension in the fanbase on whether the Advance version or the Pixel Remaster version is the definitive version of the game. Proponents of the first argue that it was the first with the well-received new translation, has the original unaltered SNES/SFC character sprites (in comparison to the Pixel Remaster's altered to a certain extent ones—though nowhere as drastically as the iOS and Steam versions), and has extra content that the Pixel Remaster edition doesn't have, while proponents of the second argue in favor of the various Anti-Frustration Features it has as well as the fact that it is as of 2022 the only version of the game in print. The console versions update that add the original SNES/SFC soundtrack can also be considered a plus for the Pixel Remaster edition as the Advance version has the usual downgrade in sound quality of SNES to GBA conversions.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The reveal that Faris is actually a woman is much less surprising in the mobile and Steam versions. Originally, Faris's sprites generally looked fairly masculine, with the few overtly feminine ones being attached to jobs that come after the reveal, allowing her to easily pass for a pretty boy until then. The mobile/Steam versions' new sprites for Faris all make it blatantly obvious she's a woman even in the default Freelancer job, with her sprites for some of the early Wind Crystal jobs even having a prominent bust.
• Character Perception Evolution: When the game was first released and for a decade or two after, the Big Bad Exdeath was derided by the fandom as cartoonishly one-dimensional, and considered one of the worst villains in Final Fantasy. But, in major part due to his reappearances in the Dissidia Final Fantasy series where his hamminess is truly on display, opinions radically changed. He's now considered one of the best Final Fantasy villains for being an entertaining parody of cartoonishly one-dimensional baddies, as well as being very effective and intimidating.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • Atomos is potentially one of the hardest bosses in the game, but you can bypass him easily by casting Dark Spark to cut his level and make him susceptible to Level 5 Death in the SNES, PS1 and GBA versions.
  • Azulmagia will learn any Blue Magic spell he doesn't know when hit by it, and he'll immediately cast the new spell when possible. You can beat him extremely quickly by casting Self-Destruct and watching as he blows himself up. That said, this will result in one or two party members dying- the one who uses the Self-Destruct, and most likely the one Azulmagia targets with it.
  • The Tyrannosaur boss can be brought down in one fell swoop by using a Phoenix Down or an Elixir on it.
  • A common late game cheese strat is to use the Chemist's Mix ability to throw Bacchus' Wine on the enemy, which forces the Berserk status on them, then summon Golem periodically to absorb the attacks. Then on top of this, throw a Dragon Power on the enemy, which raises their level, Mimic it enough times to reach the level cap of 255, then cast L5 Death. In the SNES versions, this works on Omega and Shinryu.
• Common Knowledge:
  • There is a misconception floating around that Krile is not Galuf's biological relative, arising from her statement in the epilogue letter that Bal lacks an heir along with the dearth of information about the Baldesion family in general. There are no other hints that she might not be related—compare to Relm and Strago in Final Fantasy VI, where Thamasa's townspeople drop several hints that they aren't blood relatives and the Ultimania states she was "raised by" Strago. Although it's not said which of Krile's vanished parents was Galuf's child, there are no in-game hints that she's not related, and her Galuf-specific sixth sense hints the opposite. One of her character bios in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius explicitly refers to him as her blood relative. (It's probably exacerbated by the homage character in Final Fantasy XIV, who does tell the player that she was adopted by her world's Galuf.)
  • That Faris' crew already knew about her sex. There's one crew member who might know (as it was his father who found the shipwrecked Sarisa) and another who seems to have a crush on the "dreamy" captain, but the crew at large gives no indication, before or after ingame revelations.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Air Knife-boosted Syldra, Dark Spark + the Level X series spells, the Chemist's Drain/Succubus Kiss, Samson's Might and Dragon Power, the Bone Mail + Flame Ring combo, and the most famous of all, Dual Wield + Rapid Fire... There are so many ways to crack open the game, you have to openly restrict your equipment and job options for more challenge.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Fans have a tendency to pair Faris with the other pirates and / or Loveable Rogues in the series, like Leila (II), Locke (VI) or Balthier (XII).
  • Thanks to Dissidia, Bartz is shipped around a lot. Common pairings are with Squall and Zidane (as they share a story path), and Terra (even though they don't actually interact in-game).
  • Krile and Hope have some fanart together as a Toy Ship, likely due to Krile's elemental essence, and maybe the irony between Hope's name and personality.
  • Another Dissidia-born example, Pairing Exdeath with Cloud of Darkness is rather popular in the fandom, due to a certain memetic interest of theirs (Though it should be noted they have differing views on the Void and argue a bit over it in their Dissidia interactions).
• Cult Classic: While not one of the series' most popular games outside of its native country (where it's actually one of the most popular and beloved installments), it has garnered a good following overseas, enough to inspire a yearly charity run, the Four Job Fiesta, that anyone can participate in.
• Demonic Spiders: Skull Eaters, full stop. They're palette swaps of the low-level Nutkin enemies, but with one HP. However, they have ludicrously high defense and evasion, which means they're borderline impossible to hit, and they are capable of annihilating party members in a single Incisor attack. Also, don't be tempted to use magic—not only is it unlikely to kill them^note barring fixed damage spells but it will prompt them to quintuple.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: This game is the first that Gilgamesh appears in, a hilariously and endearingly inept Fake Ultimate Hero/one-man Goldfish Poop Gang.
  • In terms of classes, the Blue Mage debuted in this game as one of the first jobs the player can use, and is one of the most popular jobs due to its wide array of potentially powerful abilities, should the player be wise enough to obtain all of them.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • Compared to Final Fantasy IV, V greatly expanded and improved various of its aspects; even if its overall plot is simpler, it has 4x as many event scenes as IV, has 3x as many spells and abilities as IV and introduces many new job classes and styles of play while keeping most previous ones, has significantly more music tracks with many memorable ones, and improved on the ATB battle system that IV introduced by including the now standard battle bar.
  • V took everything Final Fantasy III did right with the Job System and expanded upon it immensely. While III had the Job System it wasn't too well thought out, with jobs gotten later on often just being direct upgrades to previously gained jobs. V, meanwhile, does much better at balancing the various jobs, giving each and everyone their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and rarely ever having jobs that are flat-out upgrades to previously gained ones. Even many of the jobs gained from the first crystal remain not only viable in the end game but can be rather potent in their own rights. The game's excellent Job System has aged like fine wine and remains its main strength nowadays, even when comparing it to its equivalents in following games.
• Fanfic Fuel: Reunions under the Guardian Tree of a party member (usually Bartz) who "stayed dead" after the final battle are a very popular subject for fanart.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Bearaga: The "spell" that is cast when releasing a Sand Bear as a Beastmaster; named so because it is on par with a Black Mage's -ga tier spells in terms of damage.
  • Cutezerker: Krile as a Berserker, since she looks like she's wearing tiger-themed footy pajamas.
  • Gunch: Goblin Punch, a Blue Magic spell picked up as soon as you get Blue Mages after the Wind Shrine and used in speed runs.
  • NED: Neo Exdeath, via Fun with Acronyms; similarly, tree-form Exdeath is referred to as TED.
  • Pajama Mage/Santa Mage: Geomancer outfits are very comfortable-looking, and feature Santa-esque hats, complete with little pom-poms on the ends!
• Fanon:
  • In some circles, Exdeath is depicted as a reincarnation of Enuo due to sharing his goal to take control of the Void, not to mention both of them being ancient evils sealed away. Part of this may stem from the nature of Enuo's sealing being ambiguous in some releases, causing people to believe he was sealed in the Forest of Moore in the tree that eventually became Exdeath.
  • Most fanartists who give Faris trousers in the sprite outfit seem to agree that the trousers should be white.
• Game-Breaker: Here.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The Pixel Remaster introduced a pretty nasty one where attempting to !Control enemies can sometimes cause the game to freeze completely and even ruin save files. As of yet, this bug has yet to be patched.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Vampire is supposed to be a Life Drain attack, but in the Advance port it will always fully heal the user if they target themselves, and also does max HP to current HP damage if used on enemies, thus making the ???? Blue Magic spell worthless.
  • In the original and Advance versions of the game, an oversight causes Goblin Punch to ignore the hidden damage calculation that makes the Excalipoor only do 1 damage, making it a legitimately useful weapon.
  • The US Advance version includes an item duplication glitch that allows the player to get 255 Hermes Sandals as soon as Beastmaster and Ninja are unlocked, and later in the game get 255 Ragnaroks and Masamunes.
  • The US version of the Advance translation featured a gimmick with battle RNG where after reloading a quick save, the second battle was always the rarest encounter in the area. This made it far easier to fill out the bestiary, but its best application was in the final dungeon's last room, where it guaranteed a battle against Movers, which would give 199 ABP on defeat (as well as a lot of Gil, but by that point in the game, Gil doesn't matter unless there are still things to buy), making it far easier to level up jobs than the Bal Castle basement.
  • Calm is supposed to inflict Stop on creature-type enemies. In the Japanese and American releases of the GBA version it works on everything but creature-type enemies. This includes Omega.
  • Blue Magic can be cast even while under Silence status. Unfortunately, this also holds true for enemies. Whether this is an intentional characteristic or not is unknown.
  • If multi-target Spells are reflected off your party, but at least one member does not have Reflect and thus gets damaged in the process, the AI will not execute counterattacks in response. This is one way to bypass Omega's nasty counterattacks in particular. Fixed in the Mobile and Steam versions.
  • In the Pixel Remaster version, up until it was patched, undead enemies could be instantly killed by draining their MP. Put Lance on multiple party members, and you were able to turn any difficult undead enemy into an easy victory, including the difficult Gil Turtle.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Galuf dies, the group attempt to heal him with Phoenix Down, Raises, and the like to no avail. Some time after the release of Final Fantasy VII, the most common joke is "Why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aerith?"
  • One of Gilgamesh's lines before starting a battle is "It's time we fight like men. And ladies. And ladies who dress like men." Gilgamesh is also the name of one of the Servants in the Fate series (most notably in Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero). One of his biggest adversaries just so happens to be... a woman who dresses as (or, at least, used to dress as) a man.
• It Was His Sled: Faris is a woman, and she is also Lenna's sister. Also, Galuf dies in the most awesome death and Krile takes his place. Also, Exdeath is actually a tree.
• Low-Level Run: Bosses do not reward EXP and two jobs (including Thief, which is in the first set) have a guaranteed-escape ability, so it's possible to run through the game at extremely low levels.
• Low-Tier Letdown: The popularity of the Four Job Fiesta has given several jobs a terrible reputation due to those jobs being Crutch Characters whose abilities are outshone by later-obtained jobs, or jobs that are very useful through the middle of the game, but with abilities that are weak in the final stages. The challenge requires players to use four randomly-assigned jobs through the entire game, which limits the abilities players have access to. FJF aficionados talk about these jobs as though they are useless overall because they are difficult to use under the terms of a specific Challenge Run, rather than fully utilizing the job and ability system like you would in a normal run. For the Crutch Characters, this includes Monk, Red Mage, Thief, and the dreaded Berserker. Jobs with randomized abilities like Geomancer, Dancer, and Oracle^note technically not random, but convoluted enough that you either do math or trust to luck get criticized for unreliability, particularly Geomancer for having abilities that are almost always useful in certain zones and barely useful in others. Black Mage and Bard are unpopular due to their magic having less of an impact than some other jobs in similar roles.
• LGBT Fanbase: Because of Faris' habit of starting with male pronouns/terms when talking about herself, backstory of being raised as a man, and twice ditching the princess garb, it's common to interpret Faris being trans or nonbinary in a society that isn't sophisticated enough to recognize it—which makes Faris a popular character with trans, nonbinary, and otherwise genderqueer fans.
• Magnificent Bastard: Exdeath is a relentless, boastful conqueror from Galuf's world, born from an amalgamation of evil spirits locked within a tree in the Great Forest of Moore. Originally sealed away by the Warriors of Dawn in another world, Exdeath operates from behind his seal to orchestrate his return, eventually tricking the Warriors of Light into setting him free. From there, Exdeath consistently remains one step ahead of the heroes at every turn, nearly killing them all in one fell swoop at one point. In the end, Exdeath summons the Void and uses it to annihilate whatever he pleases, while still taking precautions to stop the heroes from interfering, and while ultimately defeated, he still came deathly close to complete dominion over both worlds.
• Memetic Badass: Galuf. When you're down to 0 HP and can still fight, you know this applies.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Piano FLEX!^ExplanationThere's a subquest involving playing all of the pianos in the game, and the lead character always poses heroically after every unique piano played. It is traditional to level up in piano skills even if Bard is not used for a Self-Imposed Challenge, and it's also a vaunted Four Job Fiesta tradition to include flexing during The Run as a sub-goal to donate towards.
  • The text accompanying Neo Exdeath's Grand Cross, "The laws of the universe mean nothing!" became a meme in Japan in reaction to absurd situations. It was popular enough to return in Dissidia, though translation adjustments have led to English audiences thinking Exdeath is shouting it himself. It was originally the party observing "The laws of the universe are warping!" to signal all the incoming nonsensical status effects.
  • TURTLE! ^ExplanationShouted by Exdeath when Ghido interferes with him. This didn't really become widespread until Dissidia came out, in which Exdeath says it again (in completely unrelated context), and as with everything else he said, his statement going memetic was just una-void-able.
  • Lenna is a poison addict. ^note Lenna gets poisoned three times in the game. The first two times at North Mountain, the third at Castle Bal after you get the Dragon Grass. While the first time she is victim of a poison arrow, she willingly poisons herself the other two times to save the Wind Drakes. The third time, she even gives off the inadvertent impression that she's telling the player "Yep, I'm about to poison myself again." Her leitmotif even starts playing when she chows down, intending to showcase her kindherted nature by willingly sacrificing herself to save other beings.
  • Plenty of English-speaking fans ignore the translators' clean-up job on Mr. Klauser's name and continue to call him Butz. The fact that he can be titled Lix's Butz of the Wind makes it even better. Potential references to a certain other Butz can be tossed around too.
• Narm Charm:
  • The player can invoke this with certain job/ability combinations, such as Galuf in a Bard's frock calling on the forest animals like some kind of Disney princess... and there's nothing to prevent you from making him a Dancer in his final battle with Exdeath.
  • Each crystal-bearing kingdom has an aesthetic to match its element. Tycoon's castle reaches high into the winds, Walse is full of fountains, Ronka's interior is covered in ivy. Karnak's representation of its element? Random patches of uncontrolled fire all over the town and castle, even in the library!
  • Exdeath ambushing our heroes by turning into a splinter and hiding in Krile, then regenerating From a Single Cell is a delightfully silly plot point. His fight against Ghido mere moments afterward also counts, because in what other game can you see a Teleport Spam-ridden Big Good vs. Big Bad duel... between a turtle and a tree!?
  • Exdeath himself is this. As noted below, he's an evil tree that also happens to be a bit of a Card-Carrying Villain - but he's also utterly ruthless and sadistic, creates one of the most Nightmare Fuel dungeons in the entire franchise from his victims, is surprisingly competent at being a recurring villain throughout most of the game rather than lazing about, and continuously one-ups himself in how monstrous he can become. He's not just any old tree, he's an Omnicidal Maniac demon tree, and the fans love him for it.
• Never Live It Down:
  • According to some, Exdeath is a laughably stupid and absurd villain just because... he is a tree.
  • Bartz being an "Idiot Hero." He actually gets to be the Only Sane Man several times and isn't any goofier than his companions. Granted, he is The Malaproper (psychotically? really?) and Ghido spends most of his time insulting Bartz's intelligence, but that's because he was already pissed off at him. Fans (and Dissidia) tend to act like he was too doofy to survive years of wandering a monster-filled landscape.
  • Lenna getting poisoned is a running joke for the game's fans, especially because two of the three times were of her own volition to save the Wind Drakes due to her kindherted nature of willingly sacrificing herself to save other beings. (Opera Omnia riffed on this too.)
• One True Threesome: There's a good number of people who choose to avoid the Bartz/Lenna and Bartz/Faris shipping war by deciding to believe that he just hooks up with them both in the end, as he has chemistry with both of them and it's not entirely implausible given how close the team has become by the end of the game. Sometimes Krile gets thrown into the mix as well to make it an OT4.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Lenna is often dismissed as a typical "kind princess" character, especially compared to her brash sister. What is often ignored is that Lenna one of the most adventurous of the party—she is the first one who takes up the quest, the first to jump into warp panels, has numerous contacts in World 1 as a result of her position, displays no hesitation in taking on dangerous tasks (much to everyone else's chagrin)... and is also a kind princess who can't do enough for other people.
• Player Punch:
  • When Exdeath kills Galuf. Fortunately, right after this happens, you assault Castle Exdeath to take him down.
  • The reunion of the Tycoon family; shortly afterwards, King Tycoon dies.
  • The death of Syldra and Hiryu.
  • When Exdeath sucks all the friendly NPCs and character hometowns into the Void. That's harsh.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Despite its longstanding reputation as having a bare-bones plot, the gameplay has always been praised for its versatility and replay value. Especially with the advent of the annual Four Job Fiesta, where participants are forced to play with randomly assigned jobs, no matter how unconventional the combination. Someone even managed to defeat Shinryu with three berserkers and a chemist, which alone is an impressive feat.
• Polished Port: The Advance version on the Game Boy Advance comes with new content (most notably 4 new jobs and a new dungeon), a couple quality-of-life features, and overhauled the shoddy translation present in the PlayStation Anthology version. It's widely considered the definitive version of the game bar some Anti-Frustration Features added on the Pixel Remaster.
• Porting Disaster: The version in the Anthology release on PlayStation suffers from long load times, and random freezes, and a poorly-done translation. The translation was bad enough that the Advance version completely redid the localization. And to top it off, unless you're playing digitally via the PlayStation Network, the port was coded so poorly that a physical copy will do anything from the menu text not rendering to straight up not working because of a nasty Game-Breaking Bug that makes it incompatible with the backwards compatibility of the following systems.
• Quicksand Box: Square were right to fear this game's complexity. Newcomers usually get overwhelmed or put off by having too many choices in games like this. The trick is to try and master everything to cover all of your bases. You need to know a lot about enemy weaknesses, attack patterns and such. Lots of LP'ers enjoy playing around with various job combos or challenges and finding ways to be successful with them. Not everyone gets as much out of niche challenges.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Here.
• Scrappy Weapon: A whole bunch of them, usually tied to whatever job players are warned away from by strategy guides.
  • Axes seem like they could be potentially useful as Powerful, but Inaccurate weapons, but they're too inaccurate and the extra power is applied randomly. Not helping matters is that the Equip Axes ability is tied to Berserker, one of the worst Jobs in the game.
  • There are a whole four harps in the entire game, of which the three first you get deal fixed percental damage - which means that they can never finish off an enemy, and are also useless against bosses - with the exception of the Apollo Harp. Bards are much better off equipping knives for this reason.
  • Likewise, there are only four bells in the entire game. They have very low attack power, are also limited to Geomancers, and three of them are limited to the last third of the game.
  • Bows deal whole damage from the back-row and usually have nice secondary effects - such as added crit rate, a 25% chance for Rapid Fire, Silence or even instant Death. However, they must be used two-handed - which means you can't use a shield - and their damage as a whole is not very impressive, unless used with Rapid Fire - but since getting Rapid Fire requires you to master Ranger/Archer, most people simply switch to other physical jobs with better weapons.
• Self-Fanservice: Lenna and Faris are subjected to a lot of this, especially in Japan where no small number of fan artists give them busts that rival or even surpass the likes of Tifa or Lulu.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • The Four Job Fiesta. This challenge has the players choose four jobs at random and use said jobs alone to beat V. According to the rules of the Normal Run: the Wind Crystal has all the party members use the same job, the Water Crystal has the other two party members have their pick of two jobs, the Fire Crystal has the fourth party member have a pick of three, and the Earth Crystal has the entire party have a full set of four jobs to work with for the rest of the game. The players are allowed to trade jobs between characters so long as they don't upset the dynamic by duplicating a job or selecting a fifth job, and unlocked abilities can be used by other jobs as usual. This all means the job combos you get result in a different playthrough each time.
  • Not as popular as the Four Job Fiesta, but there's also solo/group challenges for the next five jobs: Thief, White Mage, Geomancer, Bard, and Berserker. Since these jobs were all meant to be played as support for more balanced teams, all of them are next to impossible without severe grinding for Elixirs, experience, and the best possible equipment as early as possible. In fact, the Solo Berserker Challenge is quite possibly the only challenge that can't complete the base game. Players will find a variety of bosses to be excruciatingly difficult, depending on the job chosen; Byblos, Soul Cannon and Atomos stand out as quite possibly, some of, if not the hardest, bosses in Final Fantasy history with these restrictions.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Only in terms of acquiring spells, unlike IV, this game goes back to the tradition of buying spells from shops. Also, unlike the NES games (and Final Fantasy VII), you only need to buy a spell once, and then everyone in your party can use it. Thus, there's no reason not to buy spells given the opportunity, unless you're strapped for cash. However, Blue Magic is its own beast altogether that needs to be learned individually the hard way and it's even harder than prior games due to only being able to be learned by getting hit by very specific enemy attacks while using a specific job/ability.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Battle on the Big Bridge, where the party fights Gilgamesh while an awesome track plays.
  • Just about everybody remembers the part where Galuf sacrifices himself, due to being equal parts gut-wrenching and completely badass.
  • The optional superboss battles against Omega and Shinryu, as while there were some tough optional encounters dating back to the original Final Fantasy in Warmech, they're the first true full-blown superbosses in the Final Fantasy series.
• So Bad, It's Good: The PS1 translation can be this at times due to how unintentionally hilarious it can be due to its inaccuracies. After all, in which other RPG do you battle a Kraken named Soccer? (For the record, the name is meant to be translated as Sucker). The Official Advance onwards translation and RPGe fan translation are infinitely better without a shadow of doubt though, having various (intended) hilarious moments and being faithful to the original Japanese with Woolseyism being the cherry on top.
• That One Attack:
  • Garula's Charge. Hits hard and inflicts the Sap status, which rapidly drains small amounts of HP. Since your characters are likely to have around 200 HP when you fight him, it's very deadly, especially if he hits the same character twice in a row or nails multiple party members with Sap.
  • Atomos's Comet is pretty much guaranteed to kill at least one party member whenever he uses it, or possibly two if you're unlucky. Not helping matters is that you probably won't be able to act when the fight starts, leaving you with a downed party member immediately.
  • Shinryu's Tidal Wave, by far the most damaging attack in the game, deals 8000+ damage. Unless you're at a really high level, or possess Coral Rings (which absorb water damage, and are quite expensive even late in the game), you're dead if he uses it, and he opens up the fight with it. In essence, if you can't survive the attack or Berserk Shinryu before he uses it, you'll never defeat Shinryu.
  • Neo-Exdeath has two nasty attacks, Almagest and Grand Cross. The former is essentially a nerfed version of Zeromus's "Big Bang" attack from the previous game, which still inflicts about 1,500-2,000 damage and leaves you with HP drain for a few turns. The latter inflicts a random status ailment on every party member... and while the attack is coded in such a way that it can't directly lead to a Total Party Kill, as at least one character will always be left with a status ailment that still leaves the player in control of the character, if Neo-Exdeath decides to follow up by hitting that character with a Delta Attack (which inflicts not-insignificant damage and petrification), or the character was on low health and he follows up with Almagest or anything else that causes significant damage, it's Game Over.
• That One Level: The Pyramid. You only have three party members, it's incredibly long, full of traps and forced encounters, is required before getting the airship back, and concludes with another That One Boss to get Lenna back.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The iOS and Steam versions of the game are a point of contention among the fans. While most people like that the game is now available on more platforms, many agree that the new sprites don't blend well with the rest of the game and would have preferred that they kept the original sprites (the new monsters sprites and battle backgrounds can be seen as improvements, but the character sprites are very divisive). This article goes over the graphical issues in detail, comparing it unfavorably to the PSP versions of Final Fantasy I, II, and IV. Besides the sprites, the majority of players agree that the main problem is the overly big and invasive user interface (which is the same in both versions, even though it doesn't make sense to keep this kind of user interface for the PC port of the game). This version has ultimately been de-listed from both platforms in favor of Pixel Remaster in 2021.
• Toy Ship: Krile and Mid have only one scene together (outside of Mid and Cid's briefings on the latest piece of brilliant engineering they've done for the party) but it's a very sweet one where they bond over grandfathers. With that, and the fact that Krile has to go back to Bal alone, pairing her up with Mid tends to be popular.
• Values Resonance: The first part of the game involves the main characters trying to convince different world leaders to stop overexploiting the crystals. In Walse, the king acknowledges the problem but refuses to take action for political reasons. In Karnak, Library scholars have been blocked from entering the kingdom with a wall and Cid is locked up for trying to take action himself.^note It's ambiguous when Queen Karnak became fully controlled by Exdeath, but no one in town seems to think this is an extreme reaction. While this plot echoes public awareness of climate crisis in a wake of environmental movements at the time (with the UNFCCC established in the same year with the release of this game), it became even more relevant with the worsening climate crisis (and the politics surrounding it) of The New '10s. Also, many have drawn parallels between Exdeath's backstory, in which he was spawned as a result of the second world's people using the Forest of Moore as a toxic waste dump for evil spirits, and environmentally devastated "sacrifice zones" in the real world with consequences such as deforestation worsening floods. It's telling that The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, released in that time period, follows similar themes and plot beats considering the developers have cited the original The Dark Crystal movie as an influence.
• Vindicated by History: For ages, the standard (Western) review of V has been "great gameplay, dull story." This has lessened over time, as new players pick up the game and find the lighthearted story, irreverent dialogue, and familial bond between the characters to all be points in the game's favor, taking it in the intended spirit of a Breather Episode and Affectionate Parody rather than acting as though the writers somehow forgot to make it a tragedy. This is also helped by the characters' appearance in various tie-ins, starting with the Dissidia subseries, which got players curious about the protagonists of the FFs they hadn't played.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Final Fantasy V is notable for the sheer amount of sprites it uses for the party and the Job system compared to the previous four entries. Every single job has its own costume, and every single party member has their own variations on said costumes (so that you can still tell who's who at a glance), which all have to be replicated for every single battle animation in the game. On top of that, V introduces a lot more sprites to more effectively tell the story in the overworld, including shocked, crouching, sad, flying / sliding and many more, which help make the most of the lighter story.
  • Despite the Game Boy Advance being comparable to the original SNES but with a smaller display area, the artwork in the GBA remake manages to completely outshine the SNES original's when it comes to the environment art. Inversely, the monster sprites were so good on SNES they were barely changed for the GBA port and were used unaltered for the Pixel Remaster.
  • Although the character sprites and backgrounds for the mobile and Steam ports came in for a lot of criticism (as seen above), the monster sprites are a different story. Being freed from size limitations and 16-bit color meant the concept art could be fully illustrated (compare the Enchanted Fan's new sprite with the old ones, for example). Of course, it also made players aware of some Nightmare Fuel that they had been blissfully unaware of thanks to the low level of detail....
• The Woobie: Krile. Unlike the main cast, who are at least eighteen, she's a kid who's been thrust into fighting a world-destroying entity who killed her only living family member right in front of her eyes. Her reaction to having to take Galuf's place is heartbreaking, and the fact that she's The Cutie just makes it worse—in spite of all that, she manages to perfectly embody the element of Earth and Hope.
• Woolseyism:
  • Nobody really complained when the main character's name was quietly switched from Butz to Bartz for the English localization. Not that people mind calling him Butz for some joking fun (see Memetic Mutation).
  • The essence of the wind element is translated differently as Pursuit, Curiosity, and Passion (through fan and official versions). Probably owing to the fact that "spirit of exploration" doesn't have a neatly packaged single word in English.
  • The Game Boy Advance release added a lot of pop culture references and generally gave the dialogue a more satirical slant. Coupled with the game's art style and that the story is more in the vein of "old school" RPG video games compared to how the genre has evolved in the new millennium, and Final Fantasy V became an Affectionate Parody that isn't afraid to have fun with its concepts. This also makes the GBA port much more fun than the PlayStation version, which had a translation that was more accurate to the original Japanese (sometimes, when it didn't get stuff wrong) but far more straightforward and less enjoyable. It's rather telling that the Pixel Remaster version of the game largely reuses the GBA translation despite being otherwise a Truer to the Text version of the game.

---