Final Fantasy V

Players navigate from a top-down perspective; a traversable overworld connects the various towns, dungeons , and other points of interest. The player can traverse the overworld by foot, Chocobo , hydra-guided ship, wind drake, or airship , depending on the situation. Most towns contain scattered inns for resting, shops for purchasing equipment, and people from whom the player can gain information. The player may also embark on several side quests that become available as the story progresses.

Characters grow in strength by gaining experience points from random encounters with monsters on the overworld or in a dungeon. Experience culminates in a "level up", in which character attributes such as hit points and magic power increase. A menu-based management system allows the player to equip, heal, and change each character's selected job outside of battle as well as to save the game's progress. Final Fantasy V is the second Final Fantasy game to use the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, in which time flows continuously for both the player and enemies during combat.

This system was first established in Final Fantasy IV , but in that game, there was no way to visibly anticipate which character's turn would come up next. In Final Fantasy V , the player can see which playable character's turn is next in battle, in the form of a time gauge—or "ATB Bar"—which fills according to a character's speed. When the selected character's turn arrives, the player can execute one of several commands, such as attacking the enemy with an equipped weapon, using a special ability or item, or changing the character's row position. The ATB mechanic with a gauge, as seen in V , would be used in the four following main titles in the series and remains a staple mechanic of the franchise.

Job System Players can freely select jobs (also called "classes") for their characters to master, allowing each character to gain special abilities and potentially master all 22 jobs (26 in the Game Boy Advance version). Each character begins with only the "Freelancer" class; to gain access to new jobs, players must acquire crystal shards. This system is an improved version of the one in Final Fantasy III ; several older jobs were either reused or revamped for V , such as the Black Mage and Thief . The game also introduces several classes to the series, including the Blue Mage , Time Mage , and Mime .

Each of these classes has been featured in numerous Final Fantasy installments since. Once the player gains access to the job system, characters begin to earn a separate form of experience—Ability Points—in conjunction with regular experience points. Characters gain job levels after accumulating AP; as with regular levels, the required amount of experience increases after each job level. AP and job levels do not transfer from class to class.

As job levels increase, new skills become available for the character to use in a new form of customization; characters learn job-specific abilities that may be transferred to a new job. For example, a character with the Knight job who has also earned job levels as a Black Mage may set Black Magic as a secondary command, enabling both Black Mage and Knight abilities in battle. The nature of these abilities varies; while some serve as special commands in battle, others may be innate to the class or activated automatically when conditions are met, such as the Thief's "Caution" skill, which prevents rear attacks from enemies. This system allows for deeper customization of characters.