The pandemic was a lot of things, but one thing I didn’t expect was that it’d make me a crazy fan of The Job System at large.Sometime last year I decided to borrow a PSOne and my friend’s copy of Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s a game well regarded by nearly everyone I know and there was even a time when everyone in my college dorm was playing it except me. I used the quarantine as an excuse to successfully fall in love with it’s rich story, but moreover, the Job System, a mechanic that left me wanting when I tried playing the DS version of Final Fantasy 3 over a decade ago. When Tactics was over, I couldn’t get enough, so I decided to play Final Fantasy V.I had played FFV some years earlier, when I was lent the GBA version. I got a ways into it when the save battery died. I decided it wasn’t to be, as the last time I had tried to play it, at the turn of the millennium, I was turned off by gruesome PSX load times. Nevertheless, if I had wanted to, I could probably replace the save battery, but instead it lay in a drawer with a handful of other games I haven’t touched in years.I fired up my GBA emulator and utilized a hack that added the SNES soundtrack, since I’m a bit of a big music snob. What followed was a delightfully enriching experience, full of grinding, breaking the game, and learning the best ways to make the most out of changing jobs on the fly. After finishing the game, it made me angry that so many people have slept on this game, and that the only song people really know from it is Battle on the Big Bridge when there’s a wealth of great songs waiting for Nobuo fans.After finishing FFV, I still needed more. I wanted to change jobs on the fly and game the system! What I could’ve done was replayed it with a different team, but I thought I’d sink my teeth into another blind spot and bought FFXII for the Switch, but that’s a whole other review.Because I also bought this book.I had known about it for awhile, as an avid listener to the podcast Retronauts, and as such I noted that Chris Kohler was an authority on FFV. But I couldn’t bring myself to read it until I finished FFV. The book is not only chock full of reasons that make the game great (validating my own feelings) but also a wonderful story of growing up as an Otaku and being a pioneer of game translation. It’s a definitive history of the game as far as the United States is concerned, and I learned a lot more than I had bargained for. I love this book because I can relate to it in many ways, having grown up a nerd trying to attain the unattainable. It’s a nostalgic, informative, and fun read, and you can feel the love poured into it.I realize most of my review is me recounting my own FFV experience, but that’s what this book evoked! I couldn’t help it. It was contagious.TLDR, This book is a must for any fan of Final Fantasy, especially, obviously Final Fantasy V. And if you still haven’t played FFV, go do that!!