Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy V was the last of the core series to be Japan only for its initial release. (Joining FFII and FFIII.) Square didn't think the US gamer could handle the complexities of the job system in FFV and sent us Mystic Quest instead (which has certainly never been accused of complexity). It took seven years for the game to eventually get an English port when it was released in a Playstation bundle along with FFVI. The first time I played the game was on an emulator using a translation mod for the original game. The first (and only) time I've beat the game is in Japanese on my Super Famicom. Using the internet to direct my every move, of course, since I don't speak Japanese. I remember making little notes of what the symbols meant for commonly used things like !White and Yes.

The game is pretty universally reviewed as having an awesome combat/leveling system and subpar plot/character development. Which actually made it sort of ideal for playing in a foreign language. When I was considering how to play the game for this marathon I had to decide if I wanted to do that again. The only copy of FFV I own is the Japanese one, see, and I'd need to quickly find another way to play if I didn't want to muddle through it again. Ultimately I decided not to muddle around and instead went out and got a PSP. It turns out you can actually download and play a ludicrous number of PSOne games on the PSP and has the huge advantage of being portable so I can spend my almost 2 hours of transit time per day playing FFV. And as an added bonus I'd need a PSP for some of the later games (Dissidia in particular) anyway.

So now I have a copy of the game. The next question is what is my plan going to be? I could just play it through normally since I haven't actually done that in English. I could try for a low level game. I could try for a no job game. That last one seems terrible since the job system is the shining jewel of FFV. I started a level 2 game once upon a time but someone ended up saving over top of it. Level 2 with 50+ hours played... Down the drain... That can't happen this time since no one else can play my copy of the game! It can also get a little boring waiting for Galuda to run away but if I'm doing it in small chunks on the bus that doesn't seem so bad. Also apparently there are better ways to level your jobs than just that...

I haven't done anything truly crazy in a while. I think it may just be crazy time...