"Final Fantasy V" by Chris Kohler (Boss Fight Books)

This is the fifth in a series of reviews covering theBoss Fight Books Humble Bundle. If you missed the bundle, fear not! They’re all available on bossfightbooks.com/, from $4.95 each. 

 
 
 “The following is a contributor post by the Bookwarm Mage.”
Out of all the entries in Square’s long-running series, Final Fantasy V might seem like a bizarre choice to feature in a book-length treatment. Released out of order in the US, only porting after its two iconic successors, FFVI and FFVII on the SNES and Playstation, respectively, FFV remains largely overlooked here, even by fans; in Japan, on the other hand, this was the game which helped make FF a legitimate contender with the massively popular Dragon Quest franchise, setting the stage for those very sequels so dear to us in the west. Recounting this lost chapter, and bringing an elusive masterpiece to a wider audience, Chris Kohler’s Final Fantasy V does readers a tremendous service. It’s a delight to read, whether we’re discovering or re-discovering the game. 
Kohler first takes us back to the halcyon 80’s and 90’s, to his introduction (and the West’s) to the world of Japanese video game culture via mall storefronts, with all their smells, through magazines official and unofficial, and, increasingly, over the internet. The author’s own growing fascination with Japanese media and language culminates in his arrival in Japan to pursue his dream of writing about games for a living. It’s a linking up of different worlds which he skillfully maps onto the setting of Final Fantasy V, providing the book with an important and engaging throughline. 
Another key character, though, emerges in Kohler’s telling, who is at once vibrantly real and thematically resonant: Hironobu Sakaguchi, FF’s lead director and producer. We hear how, early on, he hated school, finding pleasure and profit in the pachinko dives and pulp fantasy stacks, and coming to blend these disparate sources in D&D-like offerings for the new market of home video games (which have since provided solace, or at least distraction, for countless kindred spirits despairing of doing their homework). It’s in the course of this thread of the story, about the slow rise of Square, that we hear about its dominant competitor Enix’s brilliant contests to supply creative new content, and the various ways in which Final Fantasy sought to distinguish itself in the struggle: the flair of Yoshitaka Amano’s art over against Akira Toriyama’s cartoony character design, the dramatic pulse of Nobuo Uematsu’s musical scores, and Yoshinori Kitase and the rest of the team’s endless tinkering with atmosphere, pacing, and customization–all of which would become hallmarks of the series.  
So if you dream of reporting on or developing games, or if you’re curious about the history and culture of which they’re an ever-more crucial part, Kohler’s FFV offers a wealth of encouragement and insight. If you mostly just love to play games and are looking for a good RPG, though, I hope you’re still reading: the bulk of Kohler’s book is really about FFV, as it should be. He knows it like few others, having collaborated on the earliest fansites, having learned his Japanese in the course of playing an original cartridge, and having written the ur-text of the walkthrough (later pirated by BradyGames!). You’ll get an inside look at the game’s programming, and at player’s subsequent unpacking of it for emulators, fan translations, and speedruns; see the first appearance of beloved creatures, such as moogles and tonberries, from the stock monsters of many a tabletop bestiary; and delve into challenges from optional bosses and arbitrary “fiesta” limitations, to Sakaguchi’s penchant for killing off beloved characters in service to the story… not to give too many spoilers.  
9/10 — FF partisans, proud otakus, and casual RPG fans alike will find much to reward their time with this excellent retrospective. I only wish there were more!
 

 
Wesley Schantz (the Bookwarm Mage) coordinates Signum Academy, writes about books and video games, and teaches in Spokane, WA. FFVII Myth & Commentary comes out of his podcast series with Alexander Schmid and Vincent Reese.
 

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