Final Fantasy Retrospective: Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta, Part 1

 

 

At long last, I’m taking it upon myself to attempt the ultimate Final Fantasy V challenge: completing the game with randomly assigned jobs, taking away from me a lot of control over how I play it.

In case our readers need to be reminded, the Four Job Fiesta is an annual challenge that is also a fundraiser for charity. Our own Drew doesn’t have Twitter, and the way the event functions is mainly through Twitter, but there are websites that can also randomly assign jobs. Just for fun, I went to one and had it assign me some jobs. I don’t intend to run this party right now, but maybe I’ll use them for a future run during the Four Job Fiesta off season.

It assigned me Black Mage, Time Mage, Geomancer and Samurai. If I’m being honest, this sounds like a pretty good assortment. I found Time Mage essential for a few of the boss fights during my Retrospective run, and Geomancer was hit and miss but pulled its weight at randomly surprising times, being more hits than misses for me. Samurai can be pretty strong and also has Gil Toss if I need it, and of course, Black Mage is my main class for damage dealing in Final Fantasy XIV and is pretty powerful in other Final Fantasy games, so I have a bit of a bias there.

Anyway, I finally took the plunge, Tweeted at the official Four Job Fiesta account and was assigned my first job. But before I reveal what I need to play the next couple hours as, I have to get through the beginning of the game.

The start of the game is always the same. There’s a four minute opening scene with enough interesting elements to grab your attention, as my Retrospective has already covered. Then, Butz, Lenna and Galuf meet and go on a quest to investigate the skewed balance of the world’s elements and recruit Faris into their group.

Something which I’m pretty sure I missed commenting on in the Retrospective is that the developers seemed to have a good idea of what each character’s initial specialty should be, or at least what they should do when receiving their first jobs at the Wind Shrine. Like in Final Fantasy II, the fifth game in the series pre-assigns weapons to the party. Butz is the Fighter, wielding a big ol’ sword. Lenna is given a knife, perhaps because she’s weaker as a girl, and this is supposed to get us to assign her as the White Mage? Galuf fights with his fists, and it’s clear we’re supposed to be tempted to make him a Monk. Once Faris is in our party, she’s wielding a Dagger, traditionally a Thief’s item.

Yeah, I’m not going through the whole “I’m calling her a guy on purpose until the game reveals otherwise” thing a second time. It was hard enough calling her a guy for several paragraphs the first time.

Daggers can also be equipped by Black Mages, and this will no doubt help with the damage output, especially since MP isn’t too terribly high at this point in the game. The official Four Job Fiesta account gave me Black Mage, so despite the obvious strengths of the other characters, a full Black Mage party emerged from the Wind Shrine. At level four, the party had an average of 30 MP, and each of the starter spells cost 4 MP. Earned experience being how it was this early in the game, levels could be gained relatively quickly, but good weapons definitely help when fighting a lot of enemies.

It’s just too bad there weren’t any Daggers available to buy in Tule.

I found the Torna Canal a bit difficult as level four Black Mages since every enemy kept on attacking Faris, so I gained a level in order to get through, and the Karlabos was a breeze to beat. It probably helped that the enemy formations I got randomly were a lot better after I leveled up. The Torna Canal as level four Black Mages felt sort of like playing a roguelike, where you’re just randomly screwed no matter what you do. This is probably one of the reasons (not the main reason, if you’re familiar with the Goblin Punch strategy against Siren) why the speed run strategy is to just run from random battles here.

The Skeletons in the Ship Graveyard drop Daggers, which definitely helps the damage output of Black Mages. This helps with early game MP management. It also helps that most enemies in this area are weak to specific elements (Skeletons are weak to Fire, for example, and the Carcurser to Thunder).

There’s also free healing in the Ship Graveyard, which makes for a very good grinding spot, and I got the feeling I’d be doing a lot during my very first Four Job Fiesta run, since I wasn’t used to playing with such a handicap.

On the plus side, if players grind enough in the Ship Graveyard, it’s possible for Elixir to drop. This is, as far as I can tell, the earliest that Elixir can be earned in a Final Fantasy game, other than finding them in clocks in Final Fantasy VI, about one hour into the game.

Earlier, I observed that characters seemed to have starting jobs pre-determined, and seeing everyone as the same job really drove this point home. I took a screen shot at level 9, showing that Galuf had the most HP and least MP, which seemed consistent with making him a Monk. Butz had the second highest HP and second lowest MP, which seemed consistent with making him a Fighter of some sort. Faris had the second lowest HP and second highest MP, and since Daggers were meant for Thieves and Black Mages, she’d be good in either role. Finally, Lenna had the lowest HP and highest MP, which seemed perfect for White Mage. Lenna also had the highest Magic Power, which was another way of suggesting that she should be a mage.

The fact that this was basically my starting line-up whenever I played the game normally meant the developers did their jobs very well.

I attempted to grind a bit in order to grab a bunch of Elixir, but after hitting the two hour point in the game and only having three Elixir, I decided that I wasn’t Primalliquid and didn’t feel like seeing how many Elixir I could get this early, and fought Siren as level 11 Black Mages, making super short work of her once she turned undead.

I could probably still grind a bunch for Elixir in a future run. I know where I can get them, and some job builds are a lot better than others for farming.

The next boss was the dual boss of Magisa and Forza. Putting everyone in the back row pretty much right away if you forgot to do it ahead of time would prevent any mishaps here, and given that I was at level fourteen and I had the Ice Rod equipped to my most magically inclined character (Lenna), the boost to her ice spells helped make short work of the pair without needing to use any Potion or Elixir.

Some players use the speed run strat here, where you break the Ice Rod before Forza gets summoned and it kills Magisa with a Blizzaga spell, skipping all of the fight’s mechanics. Level fourteen Black Mages can just defeat these two with their raw magical talent. I feel sorry for anyone who tries the fight as four White Mages, because low attack power is not a good trade off for being able to heal in fights like that.

Incidentally, the party are still assholes for laughing at Butz’s fear of heights, no matter what kind of run you do.

The magic shop in Worus only had time and summon magic, and I waited until the Water Crystal shattered before I received my next job, but it occurred to me that if I wanted to plan ahead, I could just Tweet at the Four Job Fiesta account upon reaching Worus to see if I needed to stock up on magic or equipment or both. With my characters all as Black Mages, there weren’t any weapon or armour upgrades for them there.

There was a weapon upgrade for Black Mages in the Worus Tower in the form of Fire Rods dropped by one of the enemies encountered within. This helped in the next boss fight since it increased the fire damage of whoever equipped it. Otherwise, Galura was not vulnerable to any of the three classic Black Mage elements and hit like a truck. Galura also switched between different patterns of counter attack, so as a party of level 12 Black Mages, I had to take a break to swallow a bunch of Potions partway through the fight. Presumably if I’d taken a break to do a bit of grinding, I could’ve done it without items.

With the breaking of the water crystal, I anticipated my new job with baited breath… but the narrative I’d started where I’d randomly get the same jobs from the official bot as I did an unofficial one was destroyed just two crystals in when I received the Mystic Knight instead of the Time Mage. Well, this was definitely going to close a few strategies off, like slowing down certain tough bosses, but at least I had a class that could wield swords and wear better armour.

I made one character a Mystic Knight, given that I had to, and then made my way out of the tower before it sank.

The next big obstacle in the way was the Steamship during the Karnak phase of the story. The Poltergeist in the Steamship got healed by the Ice element and was immune to fire and lightning, so physical attacks were the only thing that worked against it. Meanwhile, the Crew Dust only took damage from the Ice element and was immune to fire and lightning, so battles where both were present really, really sucked.

Fun fact: I forgot about the Crew Dust and its penchant for using Flash to blind everyone, so I had to leave the Steamship, buy a bunch of Eyedrops and Potions (since I used up a bunch during my first attempt, only to have to turn around again) and make a second attempt. Leaving was a pain in the ass too, since I didn’t want to run away from battle, but seeing my Mystic Knight Galuf constantly miss the Poltergeist turn after turn after turn was incredibly frustrating.

This was one of the main frustrations that slowed me down in my desire to play through my Four Job Fiesta run so soon after my Retrospective run. Perhaps I should’ve moved on to Final Fantasy VI and then come back later.

The LiquiFlame was not that bad at level 17. I didn’t even grind for it specifically. Outside Karnak, enemies granted about twice as much as they did outside Worus and I just felt like gaining several levels since it was quick and easy.

The biggest issue was with navigating the three phases of the battle. Ice 2 worked on two forms of the boss, but not the third, which could only be damaged by a physical attack that had not been augmented by Magic Sword. So the winning move for this fight, with a Mystic Knight/Black Mage set-up was to not put Ice 2 on your sword, because by the time the Mystic Knight took his second turn, LiquiFlame couldn’t be hurt by it.

The best thing about the fight was that LiquiFlame’s hand had a low-damage paralysis move, so this was the perfect phase to heal everyone up with Potion, since everyone was hurting from his party-wide fire elemental counter attack. Otherwise, this could be a pretty tough battle in a run without a White Mage.

My favourite thing about the escape from Karnak Castle afterwards was that since I didn’t have a Thief, I could just kill everything right away without trying to steal everyone’s awesome loot, and I was able to escape with two minutes left on the clock. Even better, since the boss fight at the end of the escape could be avoided by killing the Sergeant first, and since Black Mage was one of my jobs for the run, the fight could be made super trivial by having three Black Mages equipped with elemental rods.

Remember: before entering the Steamship, make sure to buy any relevant magic at Karnak first, since several new spells are available there. This only really applies to Black Mages, White Mages, Red Mages, Time Mages and Mystic Knights, so if your first two jobs are neither of those, you’re going to save a nice bit of gil not having to buy any magic at all.

For my third job, I received Geomancer. I was okay with that. I knew the limits of the job, and I’m still not sure yet if it’s going to help or hinder me in the final boss fight, but this job got me through some pretty tough spots in my Retrospective playthrough, so I felt like I was going to be able to get through them in this playthrough, too.

Ifrit was the first boss I fought with my new set-up and one round of Ice magic was enough to defeat him, although Geomancer lost out on a bit of Ice damage due to the inability to equip an Ice Rod.

I really hated the Ancient Library because of the books with random numbers of pages. It legitimately felt like the game decided how long I had to fight and how much of my resources I needed to deplete. Enemies came one at a time and sometimes I was fighting the same enemy multiple times in one battle, so it didn’t matter if I’d burned a Page 128, I was just as likely to have to burn it again as I was to have to burn a Page 64.

I think, when looking back at the Final Fantasy series, there were parts of each game that I disliked a lot. It was not that the possessed books were hard, it’s that there was a perception that some of them never ended, and fighting them turned into a chore. It reminded me of the sudden spike in difficulty early in Final Fantasy III when everyone had to shrink down with Mini status in order to get through a dungeon, or having to remove metal equipment in Final Fantasy IV, and figure out what all counted as metal. It was worse in Final Fantasy IV, because this happened during Tellah’s time in the party when he had all his spells but only ever had a maximum of 90 MP, so he was having to constantly refill it, even if he was only using second tier damage and healing spells instead of the most powerful ones. This wasn’t a legitimate increase in difficulty, it was nothing more than a chore that made me want to stop playing entirely.

It’s funny that I can’t pinpoint very many instances in the Dragon Quest series where playing any of them turned into a chore. Each game remained consistent throughout, even Dragon Quest V, which had playable characters coming and going all the time. Maybe when the main character was a slave, it can sometimes be hard to find where to go next in order to keep the plot moving along, but other than that, the game was a solid one.

The possessed books in the Ancient Library also gave very little experience, so I rushed to the boss as quickly as I could. Despite turning Lenna into a frog, charming Butz to his side and making Faris perform extremely slowly, Byblos was very quick to be defeated with Fire magic. A lot of the early bosses were very vulnerable to Black Mages, which only encouraged me to keep using them in all my runs over the years.

“Don’t use magic on the Sandworm”, Cid advised me, but I knew from my first time through that magic didn’t cause anything bad to happen to me. I did need to use up four Elixir in order to counter the constant Quicksand being used.

When the Ruined City turned into an airship, and my party had to destroy the cannons, it was a good thing they were able to leave after every fight and heal up, or else it would’ve been a very terrible time indeed.

Within the Ruined City was another great place to grind a few levels. A couple enemy configurations offered a bounty of nearly 500 experience points and only two enemies were able to absorb the Geomancer’s wind ability they commonly used in the city, so it made for easy experience farming.

This was another good place to pick up some Elixir, so using some up to survive boss fights didn’t hurt me.

This is actually a pretty good argument against item hoarding. In many games, items can be acquired without a lot of trouble, and you should be able to tell before long whether you’ll need to save your items or not by what drops from enemies. “But I’ll need them for later!” stops being relevant when you realize that you’ve got a theoretically never-ending supply if you know where to go.

The ArchaeAvis was the first boss to truly wreck me. During its last form, its attacks got worse, from one that added charm status to a party member, to one that took characters down to single digit HP, this was tough without a healer’s help. What’s worse was that Hi-Potion wasn’t available in shops in Butz’s world and won’t be available until the party goes to Galuf’s. Farming Elixir, while possible, didn’t feel practical because they didn’t drop often enough to render Hi-Potion pre-emptively obsolete. At the very least, if you did farm Elixir, you’d be pretty powerful by the time you had a good enough supply of them.

It turned out, though, that the second form died after not a lot of physical damage – it’s immune to magic – so a second attempt was successful. I also gained one more level just in case before fighting it again.

When the Earth Crystal shattered, on the last official day of the Four Job Fiesta, I made my last Tweet to the bot and received the Samurai job. If not for getting Mystic Knight instead of Time Mage, the bot basically gave me the exact same jobs that the third party website did. It felt at this point that the Black Mage/Time Mage/Geomancer/Samurai playthrough would need a lot of the same strategy as this run, except for struggling a bit on the ArchaeAvis due to having a lot less physical strength for it. The addition of Haste and Slow magic would really help, though.

I didn’t really get the chance to enjoy my permanent setup yet, since Galuf went back to his world and I had several bosses to fight before I could join him, so I was missing one job for a few minutes. I think I’m also going to miss having two Black Mages bringing the high damage, but that’s okay. Samurai can bring high damage, maybe not as high as a Black Mage at first, but I’m looking forward to Samurai getting stronger in Galuf’s world.

You’re probably expecting the boss rush to be a very exciting, nail-biting experience. You probably think that being down one party member and trying to adjust to a new job at the same time made for a harrowing end to the party’s journey through Butz’s world. A great way to cap off “disc one” of the game, if you will. And that was true during my Retrospective run.

However, all you really needed to do during the fight against the six bombs was wear them down until they had no MP to cast Exploder and Life2 with, and just like in my Retrospective run, my Geomancer dropped a Stalactite on the Titan, causing him a lot of damage at once. My Geomancer dropped two Stalactites against the chimera boss this time, and the party needed to use one Hi-Potion each, won from previous boss fights, in order to beat this one, but beat it I did. The best thing was that all that grinding earlier gave the party enough HP to survive everything. Everyone who says the Geomancer sucks hasn’t dropped Stalactites on bosses.

The proper way to fight the bombs is to kill them all at once so that Life2 doesn’t land on anyone when they all drop to zero HP at the same time, but it doesn’t take a lot of Life2 casts before they’re fully drained and can then be basically picked off one by one. Healing is also usually essential during the boss rush, since the steady party-wide damage in the latter two boss fights are like a healing check, but enough grinding for levels typically renders healing checks moot.

Anyway, with the boss rush over, the party said goodbye to Butz’s world, perhaps forever, in order to help Galuf save his. They were truly selfless in that they were giving up literally everything and may live and die in the other world without ever seeing their family, friends, or anything familiar ever again.

And this is where I am right now. At this point, the official Four Job Fiesta event is over, but I am determined to finish my run, so a second part to this post is coming. It won’t be official, since the website already has a placeholder notice for the 2022 event, but it’ll be official to me, including the appropriate screen shots where necessary.

With a Black Mage, Mystic Knight, Geomancer and Samurai to take me through to the end of the game, wish me luck!

 

Next time: