FFV Jobs Recommendations

[kainemaxwell]

Any recommendations on starting with the Jobs system in FFV?

[bb_hood]

You might wanna just check out a Job FAQ somewhere if you wanna do planning, the better abilities come at higher levels.
Generally speaking the beginning of the game is fairly easy and doesnt require much level grinding, so I would suggest to wait till later to level up the jobs. All the good jobs you get later, but the Thief is really good and I think the berserker is useful early on. You also might wanna level up the ninja skill on a few characters earlier because they have low defense but the 2-sword ability may be useful later on.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Right off the bat, have everyone set to Monks until they learn Bearhanded, then switch to other classes and have them use barehanded. White Mages might be able to do 19 damage per turn with a rod, but Barehanded they can be doing 200 damage per turn.

As soon as you can get it, have all your characters switched to the Red Mage. The Red Mage can cast white, black and gray magic to level 3, making them useless in later levels. However, the last thing they learn that takes 999 EXP is DualCast, allowing you to cast two spells per turn.

[kainemaxwell]

Sounds good. Now to see if I have the patience to ability grind like i did when I was younger. lol hell may just break out codes depending how I feel.

[Tanooki]

I agree with Satoshi but I'd never waste time with the red mage, takes are too long to bother getting that much stored up t get that skill. The thing is with FF5 you can get away with using most of the jobs for a lot of the game, the problem comes in the third world. My experience wiht it back in the late 90s as I was on the original translation test team was that you hit this ugly wall, a sad mirror of what was to come with FF titles. You end up having to specifically have certain jobs and sub-skills attached to characters or the bosses just rip the shit out of you horribly. It was like the original 'lets make the game like this so we can sell guides' type games for the series. So feel free to do whatever for much of the game, but realize late enough into it, you'll get stuck using certain stuff or get pounded.

[kainemaxwell]

I agree with Satoshi but I'd never waste time with the red mage, takes are too long to bother getting that much stored up t get that skill. The thing is with FF5 you can get away with using most of the jobs for a lot of the game, the problem comes in the third world. My experience wiht it back in the late 90s as I was on the original translation test team was that you hit this ugly wall, a sad mirror of what was to come with FF titles. You end up having to specifically have certain jobs and sub-skills attached to characters or the bosses just rip the shit out of you horribly. It was like the original 'lets make the game like this so we can sell guides' type games for the series. So feel free to do whatever for much of the game, but realize late enough into it, you'll get stuck using certain stuff or get pounded.

Well that's disappointing but kinda neat at the same time. So IMO, or any others, you think V was the origin of a "you need certain level/abilities/gear or you will die no matter what", let's call it play-style?

[Tanooki]

I base that argument about it, and don't get me wrong, FF5 is a great game still, around the fact I've played out all 6 of the n-era titles, and much of 7, 9, 10 and 13 too. 10 was the first one where I had hit the wall since 5 where they started to have these asinine boss battles where you must play it like a sadists version of Simon Says. 10 very late, you have this open field, beyond is a cave and before it is this towering Golem boss. TO be honest that's as far as I ever played the game, after repeatedly being murdered despite being well leveled if not lightly over for the area I got pissed off and broke my then rule of check a faq. I found that this boss and the rest through the end had specific moves you had to do in the battle and it could be at particular times too (queues from the boss, status changes, attacks they do, etc) and if you didn't, they'd whip out a real life buster attack. I gave up on it, didn't want to use a faq or buy a guide. Another FF that has done it since I next played was 13, less extreme earlier, but later when you're offworld it's quite there, so I stopped again. FF4 remake on the DS (not 3 nicely enough) had this problem too and took it further into actual random enemy encounters within the Tower of BabIl and beyond where a random monster oculd just roast an entire party in a hit, and they'd put multiple of them in a monster party so it was a 1 turn kill...and I sold that one over it too.

Needless to say, you see the pattern, I quit playing RPGs when strategy and options are removed and it's reduced to buy a $20 guide, use a faq, watch a video online each boss fight, or cheat another way and Square has oddly been leaning on this junk for years now which is why I kind of buy other peoples games instead since like the Tales of... titles.

[FoxNtd]

The fold-out manual that came in the box has a chart that shows the majority of abilities for the jobs. Takes care of figuring out the direction of development rather well.

[Tanooki]

Damn that would have been handy if I had that back in the 90s. I don't recall that being in the PS1 re-release or the GBA title too. Now I do have the GBa game, but as I have not come anywhere near finishing FF6 I haven't unsealed it yet.


I have to admit FF5 is very hard for me to get into for long anymore after the original run I did for testing as I had to do it all and max all the stats which was so slow, painful and just droned on. I'd never do that again. I doubt I'd ever finish it again either as it's a lot of work but I do love the story and the way things and the worlds bend reality.

[kainemaxwell]

Yeah it seems FF5 is quite long due to slow leveling and building all the jobs.

[JSoup]

There aren't really any crazy optimal leveling spots, so leveling ends up taking a while.

[Alpha2099]

There aren't really any crazy optimal leveling spots, so leveling ends up taking a while.

My method, as I progress through the game, is to use the "rule of 10". In other words, I look at how much ABP I'm earning on average in a particular area and compare it to whatever jobs my characters are working on. If I can get them to level up their job in no more than 10 battles, then I'll stick around and do it.