Capsulejay's Tales from the Backlog: Four Job Fiesta Wrap-up

My Four Job Fiesta campaign came to a close last week and I can say that the experience has cemented Final Fantasy 5’s position as one of my favorite games of all time. The game is already tough, but playing with the Fiesta rules has pushed me to become not only a better Final Fantasy player but a better RPG strategist as a whole. Here are some developments from the last segment of the game:

Initially, having a white mage based party meant having a team full of cream puffs. That all changed once I acquired the Holy spell. This turned my once docile healers into savage damage dealers, especially Lenna, who had also learned Dual Cast from having been a Red Mage for most of the game. During late game boss fights (including the final boss battle), she became my primarily offensive character, dealing over 8000 damage per turn.
As I had mentioned in a previous post, the importance of using defensive buffs to improve character survivability cannot be understated. As a fairly grinding-averse player, properly leveraging Protect, Shell, and Reflect was often the key to victory. It’s hard to imagine what I’ll do next Fiesta if I don’t end up with access to White Magic.
While I spent most of the game using the Elven Mantle accessory to help my characters avoid physical attacks, switching these out for Hermes Sandals in the late game was the right move. Having everyone in a perpetual state of Hast” allowed me to do more damage while taking fewer enemy hits. It also made it much easier to recover if a boss used a devastating attack that hit the full party.
Partly for nostalgia’s sake, I frequently consulted with my “Final Fantasy Anthology” guide book that I used for my original play-through of Final Fantasy 5 back in 1999. While the dungeon maps were still somewhat useful, the Fiesta rules coupled with the higher-level strategies used by modern players have largely made this book obsolete. In some cases, using it slowed me down because having full dungeon maps made me feel compelled to get every single treasure chest even though most of the items in these chests would end up being gear for classes other than those I was assigned. Thus, I think I will allow this guide book to enjoy a much-deserved retirement on my bookshelf next year.
It took me a while to warm up to it, but I ended up really liking the PC version of Final Fantasy 5. The higher resolution graphics make spotting small objects easier, and the auto-checkpoint system it uses prevented unexpected party wipes from resulting in a significant loss of progress.

I had a great time revisiting Final Fantasy 5 and participating in the Four Job Fiesta. I already find myself thinking about next year’s Fiesta and what challenges a completely different set of classes might bring. I’m also considering trying out a mobile/handheld version of FF5 next time so that I can fit multiple shorter play sessions into my schedule rather than relying on longer sessions on nights and weekends to progress through my campaign. As a result, I’ll probably be reducing the number of Twitch streams I do for future campaigns (I streamed nearly all 42 hours of this year’s campaign) and will instead focus on streaming a handful of major events/battles in the game. Quality over quantity.

Regarding the charitable side of the Fiesta, my campaign raised $50 between myself and Twitch viewers, while the Fiesta overall raised over $18,000 for Child’s Play Charity! Thanks so much to everyone who participated, donated, or tuned into the streams!

See below for the stats of my end-game party: