Final Fantasy V/Recap

The story takes place in your typical Medieval European Fantasy world except that this one is sustained by four elemental crystals. When the wind begins to slow down, the King of the Land of Tycoon, who is in charge of protecting the Wind Crystal, decides to go check out the Wind Crystal’s Shrine, despite his daughter’s (Princess Lenna) protests. When the wind stops completely, she sets out on her own to find him, only to be knocked out by a large meteor that just happened to crash nearby.

She is found and revived by a wanderer named Bartz ; they also find an old man, also knocked out by the impact, who suffers from amnesia as a result; he only remembers that his name is Galuf. The three of them set out for the Wind Shrine, but are captured by pirates. However, the Pirate’s captain, Faris, notices that Lenna is wearing the same pendant as he is, and suddenly decides to join them in their mission instead.

When they reach the Wind Shrine, they find the crystal shattered, and a ghostly vision of the King urges them to save the other ones before the world dies. The spirits of ancient heroes inside the crystal’s shards grant them their powers so they can accomplish this mission.

After many tribulations (during which they discover that Faris is actually a woman) the group reaches Walse, the Kingdom that holds the Water Crystal. There they find out that what is weakening the crystals are machines designed to extract more power from them. Also, a normally-harmless creature attacks the crystal’s tower. The heroes are unable to prevent its destruction, though they do gain more crystal shards.

On Karnak, the Kingdom of the Fire Crystal, the group meets Cid, the inventor of the machines that are damaging the crystals. He only wanted to do good and is very contrite about the results. But before they can save the crystal they are interrupted by the very queen of the land who (later) explains that she had been possessed by an evil being that seeks to free itself from a prison maintained by the crystals.

Only the Earth Crystal remains by now, but no one knows where that one is located. Cid (and his grandson, Mid) help by creating vehicles for the heroes, as well as discovering that the last crystal is hidden in a desert ghost town. There the group finds King Tycoon, but he’s under the evil spirit’s control and attacks them. They are saved however by the arrival of a girl named Krile who turns out to be Galuf’s granddaughter; finally regaining his full memories, Galuf reveals that he is from another planet (the meteors are actually disguised spaceships) and that he and three other warriors came here decades ago to capture and seal the evil sorcerer Exdeath with the crystals.

The last crystal shatters and Exdeath is released. King Tycoon dies saving the others. Exdeath returns to his original world. Galuf and Krile return to fight him there; the other heroes soon decide to follow and aid them, using resources from the other three meteors that landed (their pilots were all killed.)

On Galuf’s world the three heroes are captured by Exdeath’s forces (including the Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Gilgamesh) and Galuf has to rescue them. Eventually they learn Exdeath’s origin: it’s actually a tree that came to (evil) life after the forest it was part of was used to seal evil spirits. What it is after is the ultimate power, a force known as The Void. It’s sealed between Bartz’s and Galuf’s worlds- which are actually the same planet, split in two in order to seal the Void in between them. By destroying the crystals on both worlds, Exdeath can get access to it.

The heroes not only fail to save this world’s crystals too, but Galuf dies saving the others. Krile takes his place in the team, inheriting his powers. In fact all of the surviving, original Dawn Warriors die in the process of fighting Exdeath. (Bartz’s father turns out to have been one of them.) When the last crystals are shattered, the two worlds merge into one and a portal to the Interdimensional Rift, a dimension that is used as a prison, opens; The Void is there.

The New Dawn Warriors go there to try to stop Exdeath but, surprise, they fail again. Gilgamesh even sacrifices himself to save the heroes. Exdeath gets the power of The Void only to be possessed by it. Still, with the help of the souls of King Tycoon and the dead Dawn Warriors, the New ones finally destroy Exdeath. The two worlds then join back together and go back to normal and the void is sealed away again.

In the end, everyone goes back to his or her life as they were before.

Note: the Game Boy Advance version of the game has an extra dungeon with a special Boss, Enuo, the first being to try to harness the power of the Void (and thus indirectly responsible for all that happened in the game) but this is only available after the game ends (and is only an optional Sidequest) so it may not count as part of the story.