Final Fantasy V: Thoughts on Jobs
Posted by Mike Blitz on July 18th, 2008
After grinding for about 20 minutes, we have enough money to buy all the new spells available in Karnak. With these spells in our hands, this makes a perfect time to take a look at our party setup and post some impressions on the Final Fantasy V jobs. Overall, I’m really starting to like this system. A few years ago, I had a chance to play Final Fantasy Tactics (in English) for a couple of hours, and in many ways this system reminds me of the job system in that game.
At this point in the game (just arrived in Karnak), my party looked like this:
Bartz: Level 14
Job: Level 4 Knight
Lenna: Level 14
Job: Level 5 White Mage
Galuf: Level 14
Job: Level 3 Summoner (also knows Black Mage to Level 3)
Faris: Level 14
Job: Level 5 Thief
I’m very happy with Bartz as a Knight. He hits with a lot of power, and in many ways our party relied on him to get us to Karnak. Lenna, our White Mage, is also doing nice work as a healer. Galuf, as a summoner, is weak at the moment (we don’t know many spells yet), but his ability to use black magic as well makes him a potent member of our party. Faris, however, is another story. For the most part, she’s baggage. She hits with little damage, and doesn’t really bring much to the party in terms of special abilities.
I want to experiment a bit with jobs, so I’m doing two things. First, I’m going to switch Faris to a monk, just to see if that helps up her damage at all. Second, I like the looks of some of the spells in the Time Mage line, so I’m going to switch Lenna to that job. She can still use her White Magic at the same time, so we don’t really lose anything in terms of healing power at the moment.
To test this, we head out of town and seek out a few random battles. First impressions are good. Faris does a ton more damage as a Level 0 Monk than she did as a Level 5 Thief, so this is good. Lenna doesn’t really add much to our party as a Time Mage, but I want to let her level up a bit more before drawing any conclusions. For the time being, I’m going to stick with this setup and see how it goes.
And now, with our party beefed up with weapons, armor, spells, and new jobs, it’s time to get this story moving along. We’ll seek out Cid tomorrow and see if we can advance the story some.
Status: Dressed for Destruction
Photo Credit: Christopher Chan
July 18th, 2008 at 11:41 am
My Bartz was mostly a combo of Knight and Berserker (I will mention some jobs you propably don’t have yet, so don’t worry.) so he had plenty of attacking power. Lenna was sort of a mage, with experience from all of the magic-using classes. Galuf was a very good combo of Time Mage and Summoner and lastly, Faris was firstly a thief, then gained the asian jobs: monk, ninja, samurai. By the way, when you get one job to maximum, consider changing to a different job. That way you can experience all the different play styles and gain a hefty dose of abilities, which you can use with the other jobs.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Don’t be too dismissive of the Thief class. I can think of one imminent situation in which it is very useful to have a certain Thief skill.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
The job system in Final Fantasy V reminded me of Final Fantasy Tactics as well (I played Tactics first). By the way, you should really try out the Blue Mage job. It allows you to harness the powers of the monsters you’ve fought and learn their spells yourself. It goes good with Black Magic as a sub skill, but it takes a while to build up a decent set of Blue Magic.
July 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I’m a bit lost on the whole blue mage job. I read the manual, but it didn’t make too much sense to me. I should play around with it a bit.
I also read a bit in the manual about the thief’s “steal” ability, and then I looked at the monster almanac. It looks like you can steal some pretty nifty stuff from the bosses.
Also, I’m wondering, could anyone explain the difference between abilities with an upside down exclamation point in front of them, and the ones that don’t have that?
July 18th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
The abilities with an exclamation mark can be used as commands. If it doesn’t have that, it’s a passive ability.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
The reason V feels a lot like Tactics is because the director of Tactics liked V’s system so much he “borrowed” it. =P
Also Mike, Blue Magic works like so: you get into a battle against goblins with a blue mage. The goblins use “Goblin Punch” on your Blue Mage. Now your Blue Magic list will include “Goblin Punch”. That’s all there is to it.
July 19th, 2008 at 12:03 am
SuperMateo,
So the passive abilities are available no matter what job I’ve got currently selected? In other words, if I’ve got a geomancer who knows some passive skills as a thief, he’ll still have those skills?
SuperMegaman,
Aha! That makes a lot of sense. I played Tactics for a few hours a long long time ago, so things are a bit vague, but this game sure reminded me of that.
And thanks for the explanation of the Blue Mage. I take it that once you learn whatever it is someone uses against you, you’ve always got that spell/power?
July 19th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Yes, Blue Magic is permanent.
I’m not sure if you should use Summoner over Black Mage yet. The summon monsters in this game are somewhat hidden around the world, you don’t just get them in shops. You didn’t say it, so I don’t know if you got Shiva from the water-themed castle next to Carwen.
Exploration really pays off in this game.
July 19th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Any ability (be it a passive ability or a command) is available for use as long as you equip it in the ability selection screen. For example, a Knight can steal if you equip the Steal! command, and a Black Mage can deal unarmed damage as a Monk if you equip the Barefist command.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Abilities can be used only by its job untill they’re mastered. Once mastered, you can select it regardless of job.
As for Blue Mage, it’s even better: once your blue mage learns an enemy ability, YOUR WHOLE PARTY knows it. For example, a goblin uses “Goblin Punch” on your Blue Mage Galuf. Later on, you make Galuf a Thief and tuen Lenna into a Blue Mage. Ta-da, Lenna automagically knows Goblin Punch as well. AFAIK this is the only game in the series where this is true.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:18 am
An example of being creative with abilities:
You’d think the Monk job is only suited to your physical powerhouses. But if you train your mages as Monks until you master “Barefist”, later when you’re in an area where you don’t want to waste magic, you can slap “Barefist” on your mage, REMOVE HIS/HER WEAPONS, and, presto, you have a mage who punches as hard as your monk (except for equipment stat bonuses, of course). Beats poking enemies with your staves and rods.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Final Fantasy V is one of my favorite games in the series from a gameplay perspective, in large part due to the innovative job system. One important thing to remember, however, is that jobs affect your character’s stats. If a character masters “Black!” and then you make them into a Knight and give them the “Black!” ability, they will be able to cast Black Magic, but the influence of the Knight job will give them lower MP and their magic will be less powerful than if they were a Black Mage or other Magic-using job.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This is very helpful information, everyone. Thanks. I didn’t realize you could do some much with the different jobs.
That blue mage looks like fun, too. I might have to give that one a try with someone. And making magic wielders monks for a while feels like it would play into my generally conservative use of magic. Very nice idea.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:35 am
Here’s another way in which the job system can be helpful. Unlike Final Fantasy III where you need to spend job points in order to switch jobs, in this game you are able to switch jobs freely. In a pinch and need to heal? Temporarily change one of your non-magic using characters into a White Mage. Poof! Problem solved.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Tactics’ battle system wasn’t borrowed from V’s, it was an almost direct copy of Battle Ogre’s, also made by the same guy (his name escapes me at the moment).
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:20 am
Matsuno was his second name, I can’t remember his first name…Yasumi I think it is
Is that the guy you’re thinking of, Drake?
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
I believe so. I’ll have to check the Final Fantasy Wiki for the name when I have some time.