Final Fantasy: A Look Back: 1992

December 6, 1992 - Final Fantasy V for the SNES is released in Japan. It is the last title in which the series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi takes on the role of Director. Even though other regions never saw it until 1999, it was still very well known and praised, most notably for its expansion of the flexible class system that III introduced.

In this class system, each character starts off with a basic freelancer type and they gainn jobs as they progress through the world, finding Crystal locations. A separate experience bar for Ability Points (ABP) kept track of job progress. New abilities would be gained and some could be carried over in a sort of mutli-job setup. So, a Black Mage could use some of the abilities of the Knight, while having full use of Black Magic. The Blue Mage, Time Mage and Mime made their debut in this game.

Other features include timed events, where the clock is ticking down in and out of battle. There was also an improvement to the Active Time Battle system, which was first seen in IV. In V, there would be a gauge to tell when a character is ready to make a move.

In this game, Bartz, a wanderer, is investigating a meteorite, where he encounters a number of characters that warn him of the danger facing the four Elemental Crystals. They not only control the world's elements, but they keep a seal on an evil sorcerer who threatened the world at one time, Enuo. Later known as ExDeath, it returns as a tree born from the Great Forest of Moore. Bartz and his four friends (Faris, Galuf, Krile and Lenna) must prevent ExDeath from being freed. They eventually encounter ExDeath and his sidekick Gilgamesh and ExDeath attempts to consume the whole world into a dark power called "The Void".