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In other words, the winning strategy is to mix up the jobs amongst the party. Left entirely up to the player, and given the large number of jobs with their respective abilities, the potential can be daunting, which is a shame, since it's that potential that winds up being the saving grace of Final Fantasy V Advance. With such vast room for character customization, there's a lot of opportunity for experimentation and replay value, especially with more jobs being added as the game progresses.

However, the focus on jobs and character customization also results in one of the game's most frustrating aspects. As characters battle, they gain experience that levels up both their class and the class of their job. The more experience a character has in a job, the more of its respective abilities they learn. Therefore, since the game is so heavily focused on character customization, and since that involves a lot of battling, encounters in dungeons and on the world map frequently occur.

On one hand, this serves to further the character customization aspect greatly. On the other, being forced into an unavoidable battle every few steps can get pretty tedious, made even worse by the fact that there is not a lot of strategy involved in the random encounters. It's that much worse when trying to solve a puzzle or journey in a dungeon, especially if healing supplies are running low.

Another issue is the lack of statistics when buying new equipment. Rather than displaying a numerical comparison of how an item's stats compare to another, V Advance merely uses arrows to indicate if an item is more or less powerful than the one the player is currently equipped with. The end result is a lot of futzing around in the main menu in an effort to determine the optimal equipment and jobs for the current party, a needless hassle that could have easily been avoided.

Between that and the frequent encounters necessitated by the Job System, the sad result is that a lot of the Final Fantasy V experience feels repetitive. But it's still a quality role-playing game and a must buy for fans of the series.

Related Links:

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

Square Enix

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