Final Fantasy Network - FF5 - Best of the classics?

I don't see much cliches as much as I see things that are just in every Final Fantasy beforehand. (Crystals, the world that needs saving, Princesses, etc.)

Well, yeah, but then again, character development wasn't truly complex until FFVI anyway. The characters are perfectly developed, some people just have a hard time seeing it.

Except Klulu and X-Death/Exodus/what-have-you. White Mage kitty and evil tree don't have much personality...

*SPOILERS*

Anyway, regarding personality again:

Butz lives a relatively normal life traveling after his parents both die or disappear. After traveling like normal, and leaving his hometown, he gets swept up into something greater and has to deal with the truth behind why his father left, and what he has to live up to. His hometown (and the memories and nostalgia of his family and friends with it) is sucked into the Void, and he almost snaps because of it.

Lenna starts out with your run-of-the-mill princess archetype. But later you find out (with the Phoenix sidequest) that her mother suffered from an illness and that she could've saved her my cutting out the Dragon's tongue and killing it, but decides not to. (I have no clue what happens if you choose to cut out the dragon's tongue in the flashback.) She has to go through the pain of her father being manipulated and dying, going through another parent's death, again, when King Tycoon is controlled and sacrifices himself to stabilize the Earth Crystal shards. And then he died for no reason because X-Death was already unleashed.

Faris is probably the most developed of them all. Born as Salsa Tycoon, the sister of Lenna and other princess of Tycoon, she one day was lost at sea (I can't remember exactly what happened, I think they were fishing?), probably an inspiration for Garnet...Found by pirates, she has to pretend to be a man in order to be respected by her peers (even though she eventually becomes the captain and 'loved' by all her crew.) She tries forgetting her life as a princess but is reminded of it by meeting with Lenna again. She doesn't admit to being Lenna's sister at first, but after Lenna's life is in danger, she confesses (although Lenna had already caught on before) to being her sister.

And, y'know, has to see her companion Syldra die, twice.

Galuf is moderately developed. He first starts out on a mission for his home planet, using his shuttle/meteor to land on the first planet, to try and prevent X-Death from freeing himself. Only problem is, he's lost his memory in landing. He only remembers his name and purpose. Joining up with the other three, he tries preventing the Crystals from shattering. He eventually regains his memory, and why they have to stop the Crystals from breaking, to stop X-Death from being unleashed. His daughter Klulu comes just in time to stop the possessed King Tycoon, but X-Death is unleashed anyway. Galuf is discovered to be a king on his home planet, and one of the four original Warriors of Light. All his other companions die by the hands of X-Death's minions or sacrifice themselves, and eventually, he follows by plaing the role of 'FF Martyr' and sacrifices himself by fighting X-Death to save the other three. Klulu takes his place in the party, with his abilities inside of a momento necklace.

Klulu doesn't really have much personality. She can talk to animals for some unknown reason. Her eye is slightly off. But she's a White Mage Kitty, so we can forgive her.

X-Death starts off as a normal, 'omg haxed' villain that posseses people to achieve his goal. While it is first thought that the Crystals shattering would make the world decay into ruin, the fact is that that would really unleash X-Death. The party follows him to Galuf's home world, and after the Crystals of Galuf's world are shattered, he asks them what they think will happen. The party just thinks he's trying to destroy everything, but he says he wants to return the worlds to their 'original state', as one whole planet. Doing this will open up the 'Cleft of Dimension' between worlds and reveal the giant force that is the 'Void', which X-Death try using like the Sorcerer Enuo to enslave the world. But he just gets eaten and you fight Neo-X-Death and save the world, blah, blah. He still doesn't have that much going on.

Oh, and he's an evil tree. Just so you know.

*END OF SPOILERS*

Anyway, the point of all that is that FFV's characters have personalities and back stories and the story is a little more complex than you'd think. Just because it doesn't have sixteen playable characters doesn't mean that it isn't complex or 'deep' enough, it's perfectly fine.

The graphics are a big step up from FFIV, which is what we're looking at. Although character sprites weren't that much better, at least there was variety in all the different Job sprites for each character. The monster sprites were much more detailed however, especially the bosses.

FFV also hosted the first regularly moving battle backgrounds, which also were of higher quality than FFIV (which just had Zeromus' background moving). Especially in the final battle, whoa. Talk about your trippy psychedelic multicolored background.

The world map graphics were nicely improved. Although the normal field map wasn't that much improved, FFV was the first game to truly use the Mode Seven graphics when piloting the airship/submarine. The dungeon graphics were also very nice, sporting moving objects, layers, backgrounds, and what-not. (The first cave, Ronkan Ruins, Dimensional Castle, Void's Crystal area, etc.)

As for the music, well, that's up to the individual. I would agree that overall, the soundtrack isn't perfect, but there are some great tunes in it. ('Battle with Gilgamesh', 'The Land Unknown', 'Dear Friends', etc.)

Anyway, that's all.