GuestLog in

I always don't like how in old FF games you are forced to use an equip slot or similar just to have an overworld sprint (especially the SNES ones) - the default speed makes the game feel a lot more dated (graphics aside like FFIV) than it should and it takes up an otherwise precious slot in your equipment and could potentially be lethal in the most unwanted situations. It wasn't until FFVII where holding B (X on PS, or just using the analog stick) would make you sprint regardless. It's already standard in other later RPGs, so why not touch it up a little to make it less slow than it was? Combined with the FFV GBA Script Port +bugfixes and only using the hold to sprint...this is close to playing FFV almost like it's an official release, but a bit faster to handle.

This is a must have. It fixes the two most annoying flaws of FFV, making the game truly perfect.

As a suggestion, the hack could be slightly improved by having the FindPasssages and FindPits passive abilities disabled until you actually obtain them from their corresponding job. It's nice to not have to waste an ability slot on passive abilities, but it kinda feels like cheating if you can see hidden passages and pits before even obtaining the ability for it. It would be better if the game activated some flag permanently once you learn the ability, making you earn it as intended, but still not forcing you to actually equip it.

The sprint and learning abilities are fine as is, there's nothing wrong with having them from the start.

In my opinion Final Fantasy V is one of the few JRPGs that has truly mastered the job class system and it makes the replayability value of this game go through the roof (just check how many challenge runs there are for FFV!), but it suffers from a major design flaw - the motivation behind learning new jobs and jobs systems is severely diminished due to the fact that most of your job slots are already occupied by abilities that you feel bad by not taking up. Namely, one of your slots is always occupied by Dash, which does nothing in battle but makes travelling outside the battle super slow and annoying if it is not on, and another one is occupied by Find Passages, which again does nothing in battle but is crucial for your first playthrough (assuming you play without a guide like a man) if you don't want to miss out on rare equipment or hug every wall all the time. For your third slot, usually you slap in Learning for blue magic, which usually does nothing and does not grant you new spells but is equipped "just in case" you get attacked by a super powerful ability (or you don't bother learning Blue Magic at all not to waste your pretty much only open slot and go for something like Doublehand or Double Weapons, in which case the whole Blue Mage job becomes close to useless). And for your last slot, usually you get Brawler on your White Mage because otherwise you pretty much tickle in battles all the way until lategame/World 3.

As you can see, this is a terrible game design decision because there is no motivation behind making such a delicate and deep job system if almost always all your four ability slots are taken up anyway, save for expected boss battles for which you can prepare in advance. PS1 and GBA ports have tried to amend this issue by making Dash global and turning Thief's Dash into Super Dash which made the game somewhat playable without Dash always on your team, but still, you'd end up picking it up almost always anyway. This is why I was delighted to learn that some ROM hacker has taken up this decision to his hands and made two separate patches where you get Learning and Dash applied automatically no matter what, and holy crap does it revive the game in my opinion. Now you can once again do crazy builds like Archer White Mages, Stealing Black Mages, Dancing Monks, Singing Knights, Pharmacologist Mimes and so forth, and you no longer feel bad about missing out on crucial Blue Magic or walking like a snail the entire game! Obviously though you still have to slap Find passages on somebody, otherwise that would be too OP and imbalanced.

I have to say though that if I were to make this patch, I'd make it like so that Dash and Learning are not AUTOMATICALLY applied, but are turned into PASSIVE abilities which get applied unconditionally once you learn them, no matter what your class is. This would preserve the very early game value of 1 thief - two monks - 1 white mage into 2 monks - 2 blue mages into 2 blue mages - whatever rush, which in my opinion is the most fun part of early game and truly adds the initial sense of progression, but since I don't know how to program SNES patches I can't make something like this myself :) :) Maybe one day I'll make something like this though!

Anyways check out this ROM hack, this + RPGe translation is truly the best way to experience the immortal classic Final Fantasy V in its best form. I feel like this is on par with FFT:WotL Slowdown and Unstretch fix patch level of essential for the true enjoyment of the game.

Two really great fixes, and all three patches work great over both the RPGe and GBA translation patched roms. Just make sure no headers appeared on the RPGe one ;)

Thank you Tzepish!

Thank you!

It does exactly what it says and it's wonderful. No longer you have to waste a slot for running and a slot for learning blue magic. No longer you have to hope that the character that has the learning ability to be targeted.