Should clarify I'm basing this off of polls published online over the years, hearsay from a couple of friends who live in Japan, and the fact that Square releases remakes and spiritual sequels to basically every game in the series except 6 (until very recently). I would assume it has a fanbase there, but they are apparently not large enough to influence Square-Enix, whereas there's clearly a demand for FF1-4, 7 and 10 stuff. In some respects, it makes sense. The atmosphere of the game is pretty different from the games that preceded it, which might have bugged longtime fans, and it didn't have the advantage of 'brand new' FMV technology and such that 7 did.
I guess that's true. My housemate nailed it when he said that Final Fantasy VI is all about regret.
When I think about what I like about FFV, the job system probably ranks a strong second place. First place goes to the innovative boss battles. For a Final Fantasy game, especially compared to its SNES brethren, FFV had very interesting bosses that required specific, often gimmicky strategies.
Did we ever get ports of FFTactics sequels, or anything to that extent?
If you have a PSP or a Vita, or any way to play PSP software, you owe it to yourself to play the Tactics Ogre remake. Tactics Ogre was made by the same people that made Final Fantasy Tactics. It's got all the really tactical battles (like FFTactics and unlike, say, Disgaea) and other things that made FFTactics great, but with most of the annoyances and downsides removed. It's…really good. I'm trying to recall some of my favorite things about it without spoiling too much.
• It's got a fantastic plot with lots of political intrigue, like FFT. In addition, the plot branches.
• Instead of getting experience and job points based on each action a unit takes, experience is just divided up evenly among all your troops after a battle. No more hitting then healing an enemy (or ally) a bunch of times in order to make sure one of your units isn't falling behind in XP. You can just concentrate on ACTUALLY WINNING THE BATTLE. Which is awesome, because the battles are
tough.
• In fact, characters don't even have levels. Instead, your jobs just level up for the whole party. This means that if you want to hire a new archer, you don't have to slog him/her up from Level 1. The new archer will just be the same level as all your other archers. That may sound lame because it seems like all your characters are interchangeable, but that's because I haven't told you that…
• It's got an incredible skill system. Although it's your Jobs that get the XP, all characters in a battle get Skill Points that they can use to buy cool skills, both passive and active. If memory serves, you can assign, like, 10 of these to a character at a time.
• There is a crafting system. The one issue with it is that crafting can fail, but not really because you can just save right before attempting it and try until it works. That's probably my biggest gripe about the game. But the things you actually can craft are cool. Each piece of equipment can be upgraded once, usually to a new item that's called "ItemName +1". Not very creative naming, but the neat thing is that in addition to giving a stat boost, the upgrade will usually also bestow a specific, interesting property to the item, like a spear that lowers your targets' defense.
• There are a
ton of cool items, ranging from run-of-the-mill healing potions, to crafting materials, to stat-boosting and stat-reducing items. My favorite example is:
there is an item that makes it rain. Are you at the bottom of a hill with a bunch of archers at the top? If you've played FFT, you know how deadly that can be. Make it rain! Good luck hitting my army through pouring rain, archers!
It's just a phenomenal game. In fact, I think I have to go play it again now. I haven't yet finished it, but that's more a reflection on me than on the game itself. Also, there are some side quests in the final chapter that take a sudden jump in level.
