u/spnanon

Hello,

Last year I did a writeup for my first-ever Four Job Fiesta in FFV. I really enjoyed the run and was excited to try another this season! It was a Regular Run again, on the SNES version this time, and I finished a few weeks ago. The Jobs were Black Mage, Mystic Knight, Ninja, and Chemist.

If you know anything about V, you should recognize any one of those Jobs as a great roll on their own, so a full team of them was very stacked indeed. Before starting, I was worried if I'd get lucky enough to clear the Exdeath-Shinryu-Omega Triple Crown again, only to have less and less to worry about the further I got. Even the superbosses aren't too hard with Chemist in the mix.

Oh, excuse me, this is SNES, I meant Chemist in the !Combine.

I banned use of the Magic Lamp and rodbreaking for good measure. I didn't need them.

Still, even though this party's access to both cheese and DPS made things easy, I still learned a lot, and I had a number of dumb deaths that were always my fault. Because I rolled White Mage last year, this was my introduction to never having one, and when and where most Fiesta parties need to watch out. This was also my first time not having any Rapid Fire lategame, and that's a crutch in and of itself.

I'm happy I got no repeats from last time (White Mage, Red Mage, Ranger, Samurai), and this team was a great complement to it--high damage, particularly party damage, and powerful effects vs. last run's high sustain and steady physicals. Right down to White Mage vs. Black Mage start, they were like brother-sister runs. These Jobs did feel like they had less overall synergy, but to be fair, they didn't need it. Just four strong Jobs each doing their thing, each with Abilities any class would be happy to have. It was just a matter of which one's the rest wanted most.

MVP: Black Mage

• !Black is the one the rest wanted most. Boy, I was happy to sail through the earlygame after rolling White Mage start last time. If you know what you're doing, then Black Mage encounters next to no resistance all game. Even bosses without a true weakness don't last long against a sustained, rod-boosted assault of whatever your current highest tier is, from -ara to Bio to -aga. And for those who can't equip rods, there's Flare.

• Last run's party was characterized by slapping !White on everyone; I slapped !Black on everyone this time, but I didn't expect it to be the same level of fix-all. Turns out you don't need much healing when most enemy parties can't survive four Firagas before they even get a turn. And it provides the MP and Magic power you need in the same way, too.

• When even your "healer" (the Chemist) has !Black equipped, you really are all-in on DPS, and I shocked myself with how many times I was half-wiped by a bad string of attacks (say, from the triple Blue Dragons in Exdeath's Castle, or Bahamut, or Omega itself in one attempt), and every RPG bone in your body is telling you to hit the brakes and pick up the pieces, and instead I sent it even harder with whomever I had left. And that tended to succeed, because I knew I had a better chance diving for the finish line than trying to recover with item spam.

Gimmick Guy: Mystic Knight

• MKnight is not underwhelming, but it was overshadowed. I didn't need a mediocre physical attacker hitting one enemy at a time when it could just join the chorus nuking the entire formation from the back row. Likewise, I thought surely Spellblade would outdamage raw spells to make up for the turn disadvantage, but no, !Black was the better choice for hitting weaknesses, too. It took a few wet-noodle performances against World 1 bosses for me to wise up there.

• Still, where MKnight excels is cheese, specifically applying guaranteed statuses. Sleep and Mute were good, but the real prize was Break--the class really came into its own at the start of World 2, dropping so many tough enemies with one swing (Kuza Beasts, Reflect Knights, I didn't even learn about Zombie Dragons till later). I was laughing my ass off. MKnight may have only really had one gimmick, but it was a pretty good gimmick. And a team with no other access to elements would appreciate them even more. Also, shields rule.

Other MVP: Ninja

• Ninja I'd say was the one true example of Job synergy: sticking !Black on it gave the additional benefit of boosting the damage of Throwing scrolls. Of course, as good as scrolls are, especially in certain scenarios (high MDef like Skull Eaters and Prototypes, Reflected enemies like Hydra before I learned you could Phoenix Down it, and needing high spread damage like on the Soul Cannon Launchers), spamming !Black was simpler and easier. Dual-wielding with the Twin Lance also provided me with my one avenue for clean use of the Chicken Knife, though once again !Black still proved better in the majority of cases. Lategame I even switched to Sasuke's Katana just for the defense.

• Something like Dual-Wield Spellblade might've been good too, but Ninja was too frail to make the front row all that tantalizing. Fork Tower nearly made me pay for it the one time I tried. Rolling Ninja is also why you don't sell all your old weapons earlygame, and I enjoyed unloading my useless Excaliburs and Masamunes and such come the Rift in a sharpened wave of catharsis.

• Actually, for extra synergy, the increased preemptives meant more fights that consisted of 3-4 Firagas and no retaliation. All on !Black, baby, all on !Black.

Underemployed Genius: Chemist

• This was actually my first time touching Chemist ever. Not because I thought it was bad, but because I could never be bothered to look up !Mix lists and grind ingredients in a game where Rapid Fire existed.

• And in practice...yeah, that's pretty much how it went. !Mix was something of a curse of knowledge: I could buff everyone with Protect/Shell, Haste, Elemental Resistance or extra power, or whatever else...or I could just spam Black Magic and be fine as long as I didn't play into the boss's hands somehow. It didn't seem worth all the Ability- and gear-shifting except in fights that really needed it, like Shield Dragons or the superbosses (see below). In fact, I never used the level-boost Mixes a single time. The Mix that grants Float was great for damage floors, though.

• Chemist's day job wound up being Healing Staff duty, and after spending World 1 chugging Potions for once, even that was hugely helpful. Without even anything else, it always felt like it was pulling its weight doing so. Having !Black equipped also buffed that healing, and in turn its magic equipment set buffed the damage of !Black. So there was synergy there, too. !Revive also wasn't a bad Ability to give the Black Mage, offering partywide resurrections with full MP. Very good turn economy and helped me out of some jams. Funny how the item class saves you on items there. It's also funny how despite there being dedicated !Mix ingredients, many of the best ones don't even use them.

• In the end, even accounting for how it trivialized any and all troublesome battles, Chemist was like the Samurai I had last year: broken enough to carry a team, but I didn't need its full power, so I barely flexed it. Its biggest impact was getting me to rewatch Breaking Bad clips all summer.

Greatest Victory: Shiva

• I tried to fight Shiva at the first opportunity as four White Mages last year and ate dirt. With four Black Mages I was determined to avenge that--but it still wasn't easy. Her soldiers shredded the two members who needed to be in the front row to mitigate her Blizzaras, and that proved overwhelming--until I tried putting them to sleep. One problem down.

• But Blizzara is punishing enough on its own, and Fire was all I had in response. That and furiously throwing Potions, just barely keeping ahead of her to eventually earn enough breathing room to attack back every so often. It ended up taking 72 Potions, and even then I only won because she always seemed to alternate which group she targeted instead of being random. This time revenge was served warm.

Lowest Point: Bahamut

• My first attempt lost a damage race and I died to Mega Flare. For a few minutes, I reconsidered my whole strategy up this point--maybe I wasn't as strong as I thought. Maybe going forward into the Rift, I'd never win another damage race again.

• Then I refought him and went in even harder. Flare, Fuma Shuriken, the works. He died. My mistake was trying to heal at all. It was then I understood my true power. But for a moment, I was lost, and for that I'll commend him.

• Shoutout to Leviathan, who apparently can counter spells with Tidal Wave whenever it wants? I thought I was in a damage race there too, but really I just got lucky.

Funniest Fight: W2 Exdeath

• No boss was more emblematic of each run, and the differences between my two teams, than Exdeath in his castle. Last year it was the "funniest fight," too, because a full party with !White could buff itself with Protect and Shell and undo any and all damage or other status Exdeath tried to apply, leaving him flailing angrily while we slowly whittled him down. This year? Firaga. He died.

Worst Blunder: Nereid, Phobos, & Triton

• See, I wrote this fight off completely, even with the Magic Lamp banned, because I had nothing if not spread damage. So I defaulted to Firaga...then realized one of them absorbs fire. Moreover, their attacking spells are actually a little scary, and I started losing control of the situation after I'd already forfeited it. I didn't die, but I came embarrassingly close, and eventually clawed back by vibing out the single-target damage I needed and switching to Thundaga. One year I'll get a team bad enough that I don't mind cheesing these guys.

Smoothest Operation: Necrophobe

• I finally gave someone else Spellblade for once, and Break Blade cut down all four barriers in one stroke, Ninja finally living up to its namesake. Necrophobe himself is weak to every element. Which meant Firaga.

NED Report:

• I could have used the Kiss of Blessing bug to skip Neo Exdeath entirely, and I did...later, for reasons detailed below. But the first time, I did fight him legit. It was a surgically prepared battle: use the tree form to buff everyone's Elemental Power with !Mix (Eyedrops + Holy Water), MKnight Break Blades the Almagest part, burst down the Grand Cross part with Fumas, etc., do 10000 damage to the back part, then let 'er rip with Scrolls and spread Firagas for the double kill. No Magic Lamp needed. Dragon Power may have been a better Mix to use to boost Flare, as well, but hey. EZ W all the same.

Omega Report:

• I actually fought Omega first, then Shinryu, then NED. With Chemist, you have the luxury of doing so: one Kiss of Blessing (Maiden's Kiss + Holy Water) completely overwrites any target's AI script and gives them Berserk, Blink, and Haste. From there it was just a matter of a) not dying to Omega's physical onslaught (no small task in itself) and b) actually damaging it somehow. In my case that was a) giving everyone Ninja's !Image and keeping them re-upped, and b) Reflecting Thundagas off of myself. That still leaves one person stuck with !Mix, so it was the Mystic Knight since they had shields to help keep damage down, and they could !Mix Protect/Shell onto themselves as well.

• It's pretty cheap--and basically how I dealt with the Gil Turtle, too, with Float Mixed on everyone prior to the battle (Maiden's Kiss + Antidote) to dodge Quake. But Omega is such a bastard that I didn't feel bad about it, especially because I tried fighting it a little more honestly at first. If you Reflect spells off some of your party members but not others, allowing them to take damage, then Omega won't counterattack, and its counters are even worse than its normal moves.

• Two problems: equipping Reflect Rings means you're not equipping Hermes Sandals, and without Hermes Sandals Omega is so fast you'll just die trying to heal off the constant Wave Cannons and self-damage. At least without party healing (I miss White Mage). The longer the fight goes on, the more likely Omega is to just pick something that'll wipe you anyway like Maelstrom, and good luck dodging without Shell (I miss White Mage). The non-reflect member was also liable to die in general--say, from Atomic Ray. I managed to win this way, but only by giving the others Haste with !Mix, and at that point just use Kiss of Blessing. I think it could work with some further chicanery, like turning half the party into zombies--maybe one year that'll prove necessary.

Shinryu Report:

• Kiss of Blessing, !Image on everyone, same old song and dance. Actually, there's probably a more standard Berserk-inflicting Mix I should've used, because Shinryu is already crazy fast before Haste. Only one !Black also meant that piling damage took a while--!Throw, Chicken Knife, Flare Blade, etc. But I'm proud to say Faris went in on the shield blocks.

Extra Insights:

• My hilarious joke made it hard to distinguish Bartz's lines from Faris's. I miss the GBA portraits.

• The graphics glitched out during the credits. The grass turned red and splotchy and Faris's Chocobo looked undead. Is this an emulation thing? I updated snes9x and it didn't happen again. I did see it affect other people on past streams.

• Another credits bug: it softlocked on Chemist's stats screen, unless Bartz was the Chemist. The post image you see above is a cheat I spliced together after many tests and reloads (thanks, Kiss of Blessing bug). Is it emulator/fan translation-related, too? I know people know about it: it was mentioned on a Fiesta stream, as well. But I didn't see the bug actually described in writing anywhere. Really put a damper on an uplifting ending.

Thanks for reading! There's still over two weeks left in the Fiesta if you want to try it yourself. Or just play V in general, which you should.

Next year I think I'll try a Meteor Run, and I'll do another writeup if it proves interesting. Good luck, and thanks again!