Eighteen months after unveiling FFIV, and irrevocably changing what Japanese gamers expected from a console RPG, Square was back again with a new chapter in the series. With its seemingly unbeatable track record, some people were beginning to wonder if Square could maintain the same level of quality and imagination in its games. As Final Fantasy V proved, the answer was yes. Probably the darkest of the Final Fantasy games to date, FFV was set in a world where the elemental crystals that protected it from evil were breaking, and all hope seemed lost. The story began with he King of Tycoon, sensing something wrong and travelling to the Shrine of the Wind Crystal. Sadly, when he arrived, the Crystal shattered into a million pieces, and the wind died. That, however, was only the start of his problems. FFV featured one of the most unpleasant villains ever to appear in a Final Fantasy game - both devious and insane - and the result was a very downbeat story, with major characters getting killed throughout the story, the world exploding and more. As the unfortunately named Butz, the hero of the story, it was up to the player to try to sort everything out across no less than three worlds. With FFV, Square upped the ante and filled up a 16Mb SNES cartridge with one of the best Final Fantasy games to date. The links between this and the previous titles were both the Final Fantasy name and many common elements in the gameworld. FFV combined these elements from the systems used in the earier releases, and added a few unique twists of its own. Once more, the player controlled a party of four characters, with their fixed identities tied into the background story and plot. This time, though, instead of each character having an established class, they could be switched around, enabling players to create a customised party. As players moved through the game, they discovered special crystals containing the souls of dead heroes, each of which enabled access to new character classes - over 20 in all. At any time outside of combat, each character could be changed from one class to another, learning more skills and abilities as they went. By mastering different classes, elements from each could be combined to form unique mixes of abilities This clever game system was a major pull for RPG fans, with the inevitable result that Square had another hit on its hands Sadly, though, FFV was never officially translated into English, and no US version was ever released. However, on this website you can download an unofficial patch which will convert the FFV rom from Japanese to English.