Final Fantasy 5 is the earliest Final Fantasy that I put substantial time into prior to the remasters. Part of the reason was that I was a big fan of Final Fantasy Tactics, which is perhaps the final evolution of the job system. I was told Final Fantasy 5 has a similar system so I actively sought out to play it. While I never beat it (got stuck on the final boss) I played through basically the entire thing, but it has been a very long time since then.
Starting the remaster was very familiar but also interesting to see where it slots in the progression of the series have played in linear order. Final Fantasy 5 is basically a further extension of Final Fantasy 3. It is a heroes of light tale, with a job based battle system. However, from here protagonists of the series would always have proper names and be integrated fully in the plot. Final Fantasy 5 continues this going further than Final Fantasy 4 to embellish it's characters. While 4 still has traces of Famicom simplicity, 5 feels like a much more like a modern game in terms of plot detail.
Some of the largest changes that immediately noticeable are that in addition to more complex writing, the scripted sequences are more detailed as well with a larger pallet of sprite poses and effects. A particular and somewhat jarring one is that parts of levels can transform but only tile-by-tile. This is occasionally used for animation, for example an elevator moving, but it has a very ratchet-y style to it. I'm glad the pixel remaster keeps these qualities because it would be really easy to just properly animate with proper object translations. Also each character has unique sprites for every class which is a considerable number and even poses for the same job differ a bit so some real effort was put into it. Graphically it otherwise has not seen many major changes since Final Fantasy 4, at least not to the extent that Final Fantasy 6 would.
The general overworld gameplay also hasn't changed much either, but we can see that they are starting to get less stingy with item prices, save points are now a given going forward in the series and healing at the inn has now been completely consolidated. The battle system is of course an extension of Final Fantasy 3 and includes many of the same jobs. The biggest change is that AP now lets you learn additional skills rather than providing another way to increase stats and so leveling your character and job do different things. The skills you learn can range in usefulness but you can only equip one additional skill so strategic options are still somewhat limited. That, and a lot of skills are kinda pointless. Being able to equip certain items as a different class is not as valuable as something like the ability to cast 2 spells in one turn.
My strategy was to keep two characters as magic-type jobs and 2 as physical attacker jobs and this worked pretty well. Magic does seem a bit more powerful overall though especially when you get dual cast and the mime job which lets you equip more than one ability. Two of the biggest job additions are the blue mage and the beastmaster. The beastmaster works a bit like Pokémon (before Pokémon, probably taken from Dragon Quest Monsters or something), you need to weaken the enemy and then you can capture it, then in a later battle release it. This can be powerful but it's a single attack per capture and you can only have one at a time so it's not really worthwhile. However, a beastmaster ability lets you control an enemy during a battle and this is extremely useful when paired with a blue mage. A blue mage uses certain monster abilities but must have them used on the character first to learn it. Monster attacks with positive effects can only be gained via confusion or control, but also certain enemies have attacks they don't normally use unless controlled. This creates a pretty deep system of trying to learn enemy abilities to fill out your blue magic roster. It's can also be extremely tedious. The first time I played I didn't use blue mages, so this time I was more proactive from the start to learn abilities earlier. Some of these are quite powerful and have unique properties so it can be worthwhile but you really need a guide for it. The other major changes are that a lot of white a black magic got split out into the new time mage which is a fairly awkward job that just has buffs and like 2 damaging spells. There's the spellblade which can imbue their physical attacks with magic that's kinda cool, the samurai which has a powerful money throwing attack (I don't get why that was a samurai skill), and the previously mentioned mime which will repeat the last action without using any resources. Of these the blue mage and the mime seemed to have the most staying power in the franchise.
Progression like previous games goes pretty quick early on and then slows down as more grinding is necessary. Interestingly, the game has a very low level requirement (I think I was around 38 for the final boss). In fact, many enemies and bosses don't give experience at all, just AP. I guess the idea was that you shuffle your abilities around to get stronger. The end of the game especially is weird because while the game suggests that the endgame content is not required, it's hard to see how you would do without it (I'm guessing there's some really broken strategies out there). But more odd is how it's given to you in a mostly linear fashion. You need to find stone tablets to unlock all of the legendary weapons so you'd figure it would be an open-ended series of side-quests but there is a required order because it involves unlocking certain traversal mechanisms. In fact the level requirement at this stage of the game is flat too. This doesn't make it feel very good because you won't be doing much leveling and just tinkering with your lineup which feels exhausting.
One of the more interesting characters is Gilgamesh. He's a sassy mid boss who you meet multiple times. He's never especially hard and his fights are used more for comic relief than a true challenge. He's always enjoyable to encounter although his end sacrifice seemed rather pointless as it's against a boss I had fully under control. But maybe that was intentional? In any case it's easy to see why he became a recurring character in the series. He also appears with his iconic boss theme "Battle on the Big Bridge" which is perhaps one of the most recognizable in the series.
At least one other setting really stood out as well which is the library of the ancients. In here you fight books that cycle through different enemies and have to navigate some puzzles.
I had a lot a issues with the end boss as it requires a very particular strategy. This seems to be a recurring theme with the series. I wish I would have noticed that you could just leave after the long cutscene and go back to the save point earlier as that would have saved a lot of time.
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