Final Fantasy 5 for Nintendo's Gameboy Advance.
This particular game seems to be pretty overlooked, probably because it was never released to us westerners initially. We had to wait for a remake. When the remake came, it was terrible!
This situation was eventually rectified with the release of the Gameboy Advance version, which is one of my favourite games for the GBA. The job system is in tact and the battles were sped up significantly. There's also some added extras to boot. Much further down the line saw the Android & IOS remakes, which I've only played a small amount of, but they look and sound great with reworked music and graphics. Most recently I purchased Final Fantasy V for the PC, via Steam. I'm unsure if there are other PC remakes of 2D Final Fantasy games available, I suppose I should look. Anyway, back to FFV...
Final Fantasy V features one of the best job systems in any JRPG I've ever played, it is a tad different from the usual, you can change your job at any time and there's 22 jobs to choose from, (by the end of the game anyway), and each job has a unique set of abilities to learn by levelling up. However, when you master any particular job, the abilities you've learned stay with you and you can choose one, two or three, (depending on the job), to assign to your new character. For example, I had a Summoner who was also a Blue Mage and a fully trained Monk, and a Black Mage who could dual-wield Katanas for mega attack damage when she'd run out of MP. As a result of this, you can find yourself grinding your job levels without thinking about your actual levels, and end up with a level 75 character before you'd even noticed.
The story in this game is nice too. It's the usual 'Light vs. Dark' saga, and is the last title in the main cannon which is focussed around the Crystals. Basically, nasty creatures want to destroy the world and it's up to you to stop them, (by pressing the [A] button a lot), kinda basic, but the game is home to some of the wittiest and charming characters you'll ever meet. There's a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, plot twists, love interests, deaths and an antagonist that'll make you want to lobotomise yourself with a power tool! All the ingredients of a great story.
The music is lovely. Admittedly it is much better on the Android/IOS/PC versions, and even on the PS1, in fact, it's better on the SNES too, but the GBA doesn't have the dedicated sound chip that the other consoles do, so it can be forgiven. The tunes are catchy and some of the dungeon music is just downright creepy, so adds a very nice atmosphere to proceedings.
The difficulty curve is a bit of a let-down. This is one of the easier games in the series, with clues to your next destination basically handed to you on a plate. Boss fights are plenty, and if you use your head and choose your jobs wisely, you shouldn't really have any issues. The final boss was a bit more of a challenge, a challenge that I would've liked to see earlier in the game, but it was still enough to give my level 65+ characters a run for their money. As for side-quests, (a thing I love), there's a good few. Some easy, some marginally more difficult, but all are talked about in really obvious ways by NPCs so will be easy to find.
All-in-all, this game is fantastic. Lovely chatacters and great story, coupled with decent graphics, high-quality music and nicely paced gameplay make for 24+ hours spent very well indeed. Not my favourite in the Final Fantasy Series, but sits very nicely in the series and bids a fond farewell to the "Final Fantasy Crystals".
Update: I've recently started playing this again on my PC and it's ok. The remake is quite sluggish and slightly buggy, but the remastered music is lovely. I still reckon that the GBA version is the definitive version of this game, even with the slightly lacklustre music.
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