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What is this?

FF5r is the product of five years or so of a ROM hacker named ff5aki's (TL note: "FF5nonymous". Yes, with those implications.) spare time. It features overtuned stats, constant puzzle bosses, a roughly 820% chance of instant death in each dungeon, and a star-studded cast of the best Squaresoft monsters of the '90s, all in one 24-megabit package that lives up to the expectations English-speakers would have of its Japanese title Kaizo Final Fantasy V. In addition, it also incorporates a page-long list of bugfixes to make sure these won't be pushovers defeatable by a solo level 1 poisoned frog Krile like, say, a Goblin or vanilla Neo Exdeath.
I'm playing version 1.40, which is his final version and seems to be the most popular. There is a 1.50 further modified by someone else, but it's hidden behind shifty Baidu links honestly kind of rude not as extensively-documented for when I get stuck not what I'm used to.

How do you play it?

FF5r is designed solely for use with the SFC version of FF5. It might, key word MIGHT, kind of work if applied after the old RPGe translation, but most definitely will not work if applied before, and of course all other versions are right out. Screenshots for this thread with English names and dialog are entirely my own takes photoshopped together.

Why now? Why you?

It's the 30th year of FF, and I'd like to go back and replay one, but I always get bored of Fiestas once I hit my comp's power spike. FF5r, on the other hand, is packed full of puzzles that require constant adjustment, only some of which I remember from its days as Nico/Youtube Let's Play bait among the Japanese fanbase. And because it's a gently-caress-you romhack of a game that far more witty people than I have already LPed, the focus can be less on my rewarmed snarky takes about a game old enough to rent a car, and more on some of the smarter tricks and dumber glitches that allow FF5 to really be broken open.

Why run it as a Let's Play?

The simplest reason is that I'd like to share it; I found it enjoyable to watch but none of the LPs out there are at all accessible to English-speakers. Beyond that, though, the puzzles are something we all can participate in if left as cliffhangers.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 - Beginning through Torne Canal

When first starting FF5r, there's absolutely no clue you're touching a rom hack; the title screen and credits are untouched. The first tutorial battle is identical, and in fact our first indication that this isn't plain FF5 is, rather than the murderous greeting of Asshole Super Mario World, a quality of life improvement:

Butz comes prenamed.

The second indication is in the hidden chest near the meteor:


Oh god-who-I-chainsawed-to-death it's playing Battle on the Big Bridge what do I do what do I do

Oh, never mind, it's just you.

Eggman, originally from Square's overlooked Half-Boiled Hero series of strategy RPGs, is not exactly a new face to FF5. Some of you may even have tried to use the Magic Lamp during a playthrough of your own, and noticed that with each rubbing it ticked down a tier of summons. After 13 tries, the mystical free win that spat out Bahamut for a Mega Flare is reduced to coughing up Chocobo Kicks, but that's where it ends, right?
Nope. After another twenty, the lamp is so starved of mana that all it can manage is Eggman, offscreen, for an Egg Chop which always misses.
And when the GBA version came out, what was our noble hero's reward for nearly 15 years of loyal service?
A sprite for Eggman was finally added! He appeared in the monster data! ... Except he was chopped so early in development that he's completely unencounterable and even his sprite only exists in the Japanese version. The one glorious moment of terror is FF5aki's salute to him.

Moving on, we reach the pirate's den, and meet two new friends.


Boulder is on vacation from Final Fantasy III, where he infested the Dwarf cave as a palette swap of the more famous Carbuncle.

We can definitely see who got the good genes now that they've grown up. Yeesh.
(As an aside, since FF5r is ultimately an exercise in nostalgia, where I have to decide WHICH name to use for a callback like this I'm going to go straight to the '90s source, or trying to mimic its style. The monster's name literally translates as Stalactite, in a case of FF3's dev staff confusing which is floor and which is ceiling, and both the old NES fan translation and the English DS release papered over it by changing its name in different ways.)
Anyway, while Boulders were a threat in FF3 with a 1/3 or so chance to drop Stare and paralyze a party member, here, they're only notable as a source of Stealable Gold Needles to maximize gold gained per battle if you end up wanting to do some shopping but don't want to overlevel.


Next, we have the RollBug, which got its start in Romancing SaGa. RollBugs infested much of Square's SNES output, really, but aside from Live-a-Live they were always the weakest of the week, so unremarkable I can't even find its English name without digging through my closet for my copy of Minstrel Song, and that doesn't change here.

Once we're through the cave, it's time for a free ride to the Wind Shrine, where we walk in, grab the first chest, and


what


ouch


WHAT


OUCH


WINGRAPTOR
HP: 500
Attacks: Physical ~30, Breath Wing, White Wind (once per defensive form phase), Claw (counter when attacked in defensive form)

Now, let's break off and talk mechanics for a moment.
WingRaptor has a very simple AI script - attack or Breath Wing twice, form change, White Wind, form change, attack or Breath Wing three times, form change, repeat from White Wind. And its speed is approximately the same as ours at this point in the game, without the potential for status magic.
Since White Wind heals it for its current HP, and it uses it once for every 3 turns it's outside its defensive form, your party needs to be able to take it below half within those three turns. Additionally. since it typically uses Breath Wing twice each cycle you'll need to use at least one full-party round of potions to avoid a wipe during its 4th vulnerable turn, a second to avoid a wipe during its seventh, and so on. Yet with even the finest weapons we've found only doing 30 damage a turn, and Lenna stuck with an implement better suited for spreading butter, how do we avoid a ruinously expensive battle of attrition that will burn through a thousand gil of potions alone?
We grind. Not mindlessly, but to a very specific point.
While FF5 uses ATB, like 4 before it, it's still very grounded in the rounds-of-combat concept of the first three turn-based games. Butz may look like he's swinging his sword once per attack and just plain hitting harder, but in reality, FF5's Fight command still hides the old "xx hits" from FF1.
How can this be when characters don't have a Hit % stat anymore?
(Most) weapons deal 2 hits, plus 1 extra hit for each time 128 divides into the wielder's strength times their level. Magic-based weapons deal 2-4 hits plus 1 extra per 256 magic power times level. Knives, whips, bows, and bells were intended to be agility-based. However, due to a bug, the agility scaling only takes into account the first bonus hit, and this appears to have been solved by applying strength scaling as well. Interestingly, this base of 2 hits means that it's nearly impossible to deal a prime number of attack damage beyond the early game. Now, since all our characters have 24-28 in each stat... It means that at level 5, Butz, Galuf, and Faris will each gain a third sword hit and start dealing 150% damage. (Actually, Faris should stick with or switch back to her Dagger, which because of the quick-fix solution gets a bonus hit from both strength and agility for 4x14 rather than 3x15.)
So by slotting in just a couple extra battles to hit level 5, which we basically would anyway farming the gil to buy 20 potions, WingRaptor goes from a four-cycle nightmare to a two-cycle annoyance.

So to Tule it is.


We open the chests we should...





Don't open the chests we shouldn't...
(The Czar Dragon was an enemy dummied out from Final Fantasy 6 so late in development that it's still fightable, complete with in-battle English dialog though missing its AI script, by application of a Game Genie code. It was later brought back as the Kaiser Dragon in the GBA and mobile versions as the game's optional megaboss, and FF5r uses the GBA sprite with added wings.)


And drool through the windows. (This will be important later.)

That much done, and boasting a third hit I'll regret later, I head back to the Wind Shrine.


The Chimera, as seen before, was originally intended for inclusion in FF5 but ended up being dummied out. FF5r gives it a role as a dangerous attacker in the Wind Shrine, able to whittle down the party with repeated Breath Wings or one-shot level 3 characters with Aero. It does, however, carry Spears to be stolen, for cash or as a powerful weapon that forces you to use Freelancer for now.


The Magical Bunny is a Carbuncle recolor that's entirely too magical for its own good; it can Confuse characters at will, especially dangerous when any of your members can two-shot each other, and it also does decent damage on its own with Fire or Thunder.
Do not under any circumstance feed the bunnies, as the only thing preventing it from busting out Flare or Death is a lack of MP.


A quick shortcut I'd forgotten about, and...


WingRaptor goes down smoothly and I've got my first six jobs.


First order of business is to march out of the Wind Shrine on foot and pick up my first two Blue Magic spells. Goblin Punch is a must-have that does 8x attack damage to enemies with the same level, which can always be forced given enough time magic and chemistry; it also ignores weapons' special damage calculations, which lets you ignore resistances and turn the Excalipoor into a goddamned tactical nuke. Aero is the only source of Wind-element damage available for a long time, which will be vital for a certain boss's resistances.


And then it's off to the pirate's cave again for Vampire, which is fixed and no longer allows insta-healing but is still cheaper than Cure.


On our way, though, we make our way slightly to the east, to a narrow isthmus that's utterly unremarkable in FF5.


Honestly, there's no reason to play FF5r if you want to ascend to demigodhood, then rubber-band the A button for automatic murder. The appeal of the hack is applying all the craziness the job system makes possible while staying at a reasonable level, and for exactly that reason its dev has supplied us with our own early game Magic Pot standins: this place is home to nothing but wild chocobos, harmless creatures who only run away at 1 ABP each (or three for the fat ones).


Unless you make them mad. Don't make them mad.

With our Blue Magic sorted, and absolutely everyone taught Learning and !Steal because seriously this is FF5 you should already know this, it's time to head off to Torna Canal and move on with the plot.


The only new monster in this minidungeon is Tentacles, who's essentially identical to the Octoraken he replaces, right down to the AI that will only attack female characters because ADTRW was already a well-established meme in 1992. So why go out of your way to change the name of one random monster on your way to Karl Boss sorry I can't Karlabos?

Because you're not getting Karlabos. You're getting Kraken. And it's going to be roughly as regrettable as chugging a handle of the stuff.

KRAKEN
HP: 1600
Level: 4
Fixed attack script: 8 Legs (100-150 damage + Paralyze), Mini-Blaze (50-75 damage to all), 8 Legs, Tidal Wave (750-1000 damage to all)


Kraken here is, surprisingly, not one of the Four Fiends. Instead, his sprite owes more to the Kraken of FF3, and his abilities are all new.


Instead of randomly cycling between attacks like most bosses, Kraken is a straight-up DPS race and the game will tell you so at the beginning of the fight. You have four turns to inflict 1,600 damage by any means possible, unless you intend to grind up to level 40 or so on goblins. (And even if you wanted to take the brute-force approach, your damage would outscale the 100/member/turn target long before you hit enough HP to survive.)
Just to see what we're getting into, let's try with the kind of balanced party an FF fan would make when given base jobs and a strong/smart/beefy/quick party lineup:







Ouch. We barely got 600 damage off, although we did learn that Kraken has nothing worthwhile to steal. (This is technically a lie, one of FF5r's tweaks is that monsters can have up to three stealables - but no, he has nothing but the leather gear we're already kitted out with, so we don't need to waste valuable time here.)

So, here we are our first cliffhanger. In between us and the next update that I'm already halfway through but I'll try your input anyway: One supremely ornery octopus. How shall we cut him down to size without gaining or losing goddamit I knew I should have toughed through WingRaptor to stay at 4 and Goblin Punch him to death levels? What insanity awaits us in the dungeon which lies beyond? Why am I saving my "seafood soup" jokes? Why aren't I just subbing someone else's LP? Find out the answers to some of these questions next time!