Final Fantasy III, Part 2
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Alright, we're back.
Ghosts, uh? Cursed town? I wonder what's up with-
A djinn turned the entire population of the town into ghosts. He didn't, like, kill them; he just transformed them into ghosts. Apparently, Kazus is a mithril-mining town as well as home to a great smith, and only a ring made of mithril can seal the djinn, so it cursed the town. The whole town is still there to be talked to, but all their services are unavailable. Luckily, there's someone to help me out:
Cid is here! And he's lending me an airship!
Wait, what?
I'm barely half an hour into the game, how do I get the airship this early? I head out into the patch of desert right next to the town, and…
Goddamn that's a nice design. Very steampunk-y, with a wooden sailship frame fed by brass engines. It's a shame it's only onscreen for a few seconds, then…
Airshiiiip
Nice.
Okay, it turns out that the game is playing a funny trick on me, here. It can afford to give me the airship this early because the airship cannot cross mountain ranges. So this:
Completely seals off the way and means I am confined within this closed off valley. Meaning aside from Ur and Akuz, there are only two places for me to visit, a cave at the north of the valley, and Castle Sasune.
The castle, it turns out, is also cursed.
This djinn is pulling some serious mojo if he can just curse entire towns and castles like this. We already have a much more fearsome antagonist than Garland or, huh, 'Sergeant.'
King Sasune explains to us that the villagers of Kazus once gifted a mithril ring to Princess Sara - another returning name - and the ring can seal the djinn, who is hiding in the cavern to the north, but that Sara is nowhere to be found. It's possible she might have been captured by the djinn, so we offer to check out the cavern to the north. Well, it was the only location left anyway! Interestingly most of the information you need is both in Kazus and Castle Sasune, so one visit to one place is enough to cue you to where to go next.
A guard also has this helpful pointer:
He warns me, however, that the Wightslayer can only be wielded by a red mage. I decide to claim it anyway - the castle has two towers, both of which have monsters in them, and the Wightslayer itself is guarded by a boss:
That griffon hits hard, and my group has some difficulty put it down, mostly because my Black Mage DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAVE MAGIC YET >:C But I make it work, get the sword, and think, 'well, I've been warned the cavern is full of undead, this weapon helps against the undead, and Mimi was a Red Mage ten minutes ago' and put two and two together and respec.
Sealed Cave here I come.
Sealed Cave is populated exclusively (almost exclusively?) by undead monsters. And I get my shit pushed in.
Am I seriously fighting a bunch of haunted pocket change?
Am I seriously being wiped by haunted pocket change?!
Obviously I need to step up my game if I'm going to survive this place. After reloading, I spend some time fighting monsters outside the cave:
I think this is the first instance of roaming, independent hostile humans - FFI only had pirates, and human opponents in FFII worked for the Empire.
Once I feel a little more comfortable, I head back into the cave, and grind on the entrance floor:
Also, just like in FF2, Cure spells deal huge damage to undead opponents. I have also acquired a 'Holy Arrow' from Castle Sasune - in turns out that bows are back in FF3, and the way they work is you equip a bow in one hand, and an arrow in the other; the Holy Arrow deals extra damage to the undead. I give it to Quaver, and between it, Cure, and Wightslayer, I soon feel confident tackling the cave for real (Rushanaq doesn't have magic and is just sadface having to stab everyone with an itty-bitty knife. Isn't it sad, Rushanaq?). First, I need to find a skeleton and interact with it to trigger a hidden wall, and…
The WoLs try to convince her to step out and let them handle it, but Sara won't have it.
That's some really cool new tech. Sara doesn't take part in battles - the party roster is full at 4 characters - but she actually exists on the screen and follows directly after our character, which is the first time the party doesn't 'collapse' completely in movement (something which I found very surprising and bizarre when I was first exposed to it in FFIX, because my first FF game was FFVIII, which is notably the only game in the series not to do this). And you can at any moment turn around and talk to Sara, who has a few dialogue lines, notably warning that the djinn is weak to cold magic.
'NPC follows you and can be talked to' is technology so wild, so advanced, so powerful, that it took FFXIV seven years and the Endwalker expansion to manage it. We're operating at a very high level here.
With my new anti-undead tactics, we easily mow through the opposition and confront our true foe.
Interesting. This is our first glance at the greater force, the looming threat behind the current events, known only as 'the darkness' so far.
The djinn has two moves: a physical attack, which deals enough damage to nearly kill Tsugumi in one blow, and the Flame spell, which deals about 40 damage and is much less dangerous. I found one Antarctic Wind item, which I use to damage the Djinn, and theen it's mostly just attacking while Tsugumi is on Cure duty.
Another one, another one, another one bites the dust…
That is sweet. It's definitely a more meaningful interaction than FFI's Princess Sara, and a little touching. As for the king, he's ready to reward us… if a little oddly.
Okay, sure, why not. This is actually very important because the Sealed Cave is on the other side of a lake, and Sara kind of teleported us with the airship on the other side, so we can't actually get it back without a canoe.
Talking to one of the guards mentions a secret passage to a treasure vault somewhere in the castle, so I decided to do some exploring, and…
Look closely to the left and you'll see my character sprite rendered as transparent and 'inside' the wall. This game has a much bigger emphasis than the previous one on hidden passage; there's a well in Ur with a stash of potions inside, hidden doors in the Sealed Cave, secret ways inside the castle…
These corridors are only visible when inside the secret passage. These lead me to some gil, a Tonfa, and Blizzard, my first ice spell.
Also, some of the castle's tiles are still full of enemies:
Look at how fantastically gross these zombie sprites are. They have blood and spilling guts and everything.
Once we get the airship back and head to Kazus, we bump into Cid, finally free of his ghostly form and revealing himself to look like… I mean look at this amazing guy. FF2 Cid was straight out of an 80s pulp story taking place on Mars, but this guy:
Look at this funky little Tom Bombadil fellow. I love him. And does he just have an engine stashed in his backpack? Aviator goggles? Medals strapped to his chest? Such a fantastic character design.
Cid asks us for some help - you see, he lives in Caanan with his wife, but the huge boulder we saw earlier is blocking the way, and he wonders if we could find a solution for him - and doing so, he joins the party and follows behind us as we explore Caanan free from the curse (I mainly take advantage of this to buy Fire and Blizzard from its store for Rushanaq and Mimi).
Is he… is he planning to ram the boulder???
And the smith agrees to this! Enthusiastically so! He literally just races out of the house and comes right back!
Oh my god.
So of course we head back out, take the airship, and…
OH MY GOD.
I couldn't capture the exact frame where we see it happen but HE BLEW UP THE SHIP. HE RAMMED A GIANT BOULDER WITH A MITHRIL PROW AND THEY BOTH EXPLODED. HOW ARE WE STILL ALIVE.
WELL, NOTHING TO DO BUT PROCEED
Well.
That'll be it for today.
Oh my god it's unreal how much of an improvement this is over FFI and FFII. Not only are we doing things right away, and they're big, cool things like lifting a curse and helping a princess defeat an evil djinn (not rescue her from abduction!), but it's all dripping with character and fun. Cid engaging Ramming Speed and blowing up his airship is such a fantastic bit. The rewards for exploring, the little hidden corridors and secret chests, make the game feel so much friendlier than FF2, it's not punishing you for going off-track. And each character already has a mechanical identity from their job picks, and more to come as the game progresses.
I am having a lot of fun.
Ghosts, uh? Cursed town? I wonder what's up with-
A djinn turned the entire population of the town into ghosts. He didn't, like, kill them; he just transformed them into ghosts. Apparently, Kazus is a mithril-mining town as well as home to a great smith, and only a ring made of mithril can seal the djinn, so it cursed the town. The whole town is still there to be talked to, but all their services are unavailable. Luckily, there's someone to help me out:
Cid is here! And he's lending me an airship!
Wait, what?
I'm barely half an hour into the game, how do I get the airship this early? I head out into the patch of desert right next to the town, and…
Goddamn that's a nice design. Very steampunk-y, with a wooden sailship frame fed by brass engines. It's a shame it's only onscreen for a few seconds, then…
Airshiiiip
Nice.
Okay, it turns out that the game is playing a funny trick on me, here. It can afford to give me the airship this early because the airship cannot cross mountain ranges. So this:
Completely seals off the way and means I am confined within this closed off valley. Meaning aside from Ur and Akuz, there are only two places for me to visit, a cave at the north of the valley, and Castle Sasune.
The castle, it turns out, is also cursed.
This djinn is pulling some serious mojo if he can just curse entire towns and castles like this. We already have a much more fearsome antagonist than Garland or, huh, 'Sergeant.'
King Sasune explains to us that the villagers of Kazus once gifted a mithril ring to Princess Sara - another returning name - and the ring can seal the djinn, who is hiding in the cavern to the north, but that Sara is nowhere to be found. It's possible she might have been captured by the djinn, so we offer to check out the cavern to the north. Well, it was the only location left anyway! Interestingly most of the information you need is both in Kazus and Castle Sasune, so one visit to one place is enough to cue you to where to go next.
A guard also has this helpful pointer:
He warns me, however, that the Wightslayer can only be wielded by a red mage. I decide to claim it anyway - the castle has two towers, both of which have monsters in them, and the Wightslayer itself is guarded by a boss:
That griffon hits hard, and my group has some difficulty put it down, mostly because my Black Mage DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAVE MAGIC YET >:C But I make it work, get the sword, and think, 'well, I've been warned the cavern is full of undead, this weapon helps against the undead, and Mimi was a Red Mage ten minutes ago' and put two and two together and respec.
Sealed Cave here I come.
Sealed Cave is populated exclusively (almost exclusively?) by undead monsters. And I get my shit pushed in.
Am I seriously fighting a bunch of haunted pocket change?
Am I seriously being wiped by haunted pocket change?!
Obviously I need to step up my game if I'm going to survive this place. After reloading, I spend some time fighting monsters outside the cave:
I think this is the first instance of roaming, independent hostile humans - FFI only had pirates, and human opponents in FFII worked for the Empire.
Once I feel a little more comfortable, I head back into the cave, and grind on the entrance floor:
Also, just like in FF2, Cure spells deal huge damage to undead opponents. I have also acquired a 'Holy Arrow' from Castle Sasune - in turns out that bows are back in FF3, and the way they work is you equip a bow in one hand, and an arrow in the other; the Holy Arrow deals extra damage to the undead. I give it to Quaver, and between it, Cure, and Wightslayer, I soon feel confident tackling the cave for real (Rushanaq doesn't have magic and is just sadface having to stab everyone with an itty-bitty knife. Isn't it sad, Rushanaq?). First, I need to find a skeleton and interact with it to trigger a hidden wall, and…
The WoLs try to convince her to step out and let them handle it, but Sara won't have it.
That's some really cool new tech. Sara doesn't take part in battles - the party roster is full at 4 characters - but she actually exists on the screen and follows directly after our character, which is the first time the party doesn't 'collapse' completely in movement (something which I found very surprising and bizarre when I was first exposed to it in FFIX, because my first FF game was FFVIII, which is notably the only game in the series not to do this). And you can at any moment turn around and talk to Sara, who has a few dialogue lines, notably warning that the djinn is weak to cold magic.
'NPC follows you and can be talked to' is technology so wild, so advanced, so powerful, that it took FFXIV seven years and the Endwalker expansion to manage it. We're operating at a very high level here.
With my new anti-undead tactics, we easily mow through the opposition and confront our true foe.
Interesting. This is our first glance at the greater force, the looming threat behind the current events, known only as 'the darkness' so far.
The djinn has two moves: a physical attack, which deals enough damage to nearly kill Tsugumi in one blow, and the Flame spell, which deals about 40 damage and is much less dangerous. I found one Antarctic Wind item, which I use to damage the Djinn, and theen it's mostly just attacking while Tsugumi is on Cure duty.
Another one, another one, another one bites the dust…
That is sweet. It's definitely a more meaningful interaction than FFI's Princess Sara, and a little touching. As for the king, he's ready to reward us… if a little oddly.
Okay, sure, why not. This is actually very important because the Sealed Cave is on the other side of a lake, and Sara kind of teleported us with the airship on the other side, so we can't actually get it back without a canoe.
Talking to one of the guards mentions a secret passage to a treasure vault somewhere in the castle, so I decided to do some exploring, and…
Look closely to the left and you'll see my character sprite rendered as transparent and 'inside' the wall. This game has a much bigger emphasis than the previous one on hidden passage; there's a well in Ur with a stash of potions inside, hidden doors in the Sealed Cave, secret ways inside the castle…
These corridors are only visible when inside the secret passage.
Also, some of the castle's tiles are still full of enemies:
Look at how fantastically gross these zombie sprites are. They have blood and spilling guts and everything.
Once we get the airship back and head to Kazus, we bump into Cid, finally free of his ghostly form and revealing himself to look like… I mean look at this amazing guy. FF2 Cid was straight out of an 80s pulp story taking place on Mars, but this guy:
Look at this funky little Tom Bombadil fellow. I love him. And does he just have an engine stashed in his backpack? Aviator goggles? Medals strapped to his chest? Such a fantastic character design.
Cid asks us for some help - you see, he lives in Caanan with his wife, but the huge boulder we saw earlier is blocking the way, and he wonders if we could find a solution for him - and doing so, he joins the party and follows behind us as we explore Caanan free from the curse (I mainly take advantage of this to buy Fire and Blizzard from its store for Rushanaq and Mimi).
Is he… is he planning to ram the boulder???
And the smith agrees to this! Enthusiastically so! He literally just races out of the house and comes right back!
Oh my god.
So of course we head back out, take the airship, and…
OH MY GOD.
I couldn't capture the exact frame where we see it happen but HE BLEW UP THE SHIP. HE RAMMED A GIANT BOULDER WITH A MITHRIL PROW AND THEY BOTH EXPLODED. HOW ARE WE STILL ALIVE.
WELL, NOTHING TO DO BUT PROCEED
Well.
That'll be it for today.
Oh my god it's unreal how much of an improvement this is over FFI and FFII. Not only are we doing things right away, and they're big, cool things like lifting a curse and helping a princess defeat an evil djinn (not rescue her from abduction!), but it's all dripping with character and fun. Cid engaging Ramming Speed and blowing up his airship is such a fantastic bit. The rewards for exploring, the little hidden corridors and secret chests, make the game feel so much friendlier than FF2, it's not punishing you for going off-track. And each character already has a mechanical identity from their job picks, and more to come as the game progresses.
I am having a lot of fun.
