LogFAQs > #929415760

1. Galuf Halm Baldesion

This guy. Right here. This guy's the best that Final Fantasy V has to offer. Is it any surprise? There's just something endearing about the old man. I like that he's the token amnesiac here rather than a young girl like so many other Japanese stories. I like that his memory issues are given a nice dose of intrigue almost from the very beginning. I like that it turns out he's the king of another world -- Bartz's world, even! -- but what I like most of all is that Galuf's death is the first time in the Final Fantasy franchise that death is truly felt. It happens every time you sneeze in Final Fantasy IV, and the only time the dying is genuinely terminal, it's for one of the worst characters in the game, but in Final Fantasy V it's appropriately shocking.

Final Fantasy V, you see, is a spirited and adventurous video game about friends banding together to become the "Warriors of Light" and setting to rights a world plagued by a guy whose name is literally Exdeath. But despite his unfortunate name, Exdeath earns my angst every time I watch Galuf go down. Because it hurts. Because Galuf Halm Baldesion isn't just kind cool. Galuf Halm Baldesion is cool.

Y'see, Galuf loves dumb puns and makes fun of his own old age as a proxy for his bad memory. He's the heart of the party the entire time he's around, and for the remainder of the game post-demise he's referenced numerous times to great effect because it's pretty clear things just ain't the same without him. This guy is probably my favorite playable fellow in all of the first five Final Fantasies, so ranking him #1 was a cakewalk.
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~