Steam has the DS remakes of 3 and 4 as well.
The Pixel remasters are a lot less grindy, but they do simplify some of the job changes introduced and lose all the chibi cuteness.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Steam has the DS remakes of 3 and 4 as well.
The Pixel remasters are a lot less grindy, but they do simplify some of the job changes introduced and lose all the chibi cuteness.
Mister Bad Guy
Mr Mercury to friends
- Location
- Bay Area
The implication that sprites based on the original FF3's sprites in some way lack chibi cuteness is the biggest lie I've heard all week. They're a bunch of roly-poly little dudes with big eyes and big heads and stubby arms and weird colorful outfits; what's not chibi cute about that?
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Yay for more people mentioning Revenant Wings.
I also have some memories 3 DS, but they are about not getting to play it. When interest struck it already had disappeared from stores. After some wrangling I got my parents to make it my families first online purchase, but after a month of waiting we just got our order canceled. Really strengthened their opinions about internet purchases being nonsense for a while^^ Eventually I just bought 4 DS instead.
I actually bought the game for tablet like last year. The vindication was sweet, but I only played like 5 minutes until I regret the decision of trying to play a to-mobile port of anything
Final Fantasy III, Part 6: Sponsored by Ryanair
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So, due to an array of circumstances involving missed trains and bus trips and my airplane company warning me while I was midway through my trip to Paris that my flight had been cancelled, then being a pain in the ass to contact (while on the bus! with only my phone to do it!) only for me to manage to get them several hours later to confirm that not only was my flight cancelled but the only next available flight ("you can move your flight for free!" they say, as if the inconvenience didn't come with huge cost and they shouldn't be the ones paying me) was five days later, so that I'm missing an offline meet-up and also have to spend several days in Paris which is extremely inconvenient and also is probably gonna cost me money and -
Anyway I'm not mad.
And bonus points, I have nothing else to be doing, so you get an update out of it! Everyone's happy!
Except me. I am extremely fucking furious o_o
Final Fantasy III: Sponsored By Ryanair
Last time on Final Fantasy, we got a brand new roster of jobs. Time to test it out!
First though, a little bit of exploring - south of the Molten Cave is a chocobo forest, and it had a prompt to use an item. We didn't know what item that would be, but then, as part of the rewards the dwarves give us for returning the horns (which include valuable weapons and armor for Archer, Knight and Scholar, ensuring those jobs don't start up from nothing), we got this:
Now, the hint is fairly obvious but - and stop me if you've heard this one before - I also immediately recognize the name from (take a shot) FFXIV: 'Gysahl Greens' are the snack you use to summon your chocobo pet. So I go back to the chocobo forest, offer the Greens, and…
Lookit him. Lookit his fluffy tum-tums. Isn't he the cutest?
Ahem. The Fat Chocobo serves a curious gameplay function, in that it's… a storage chest? You can put stuff inside the chocobo, and then… later… retrieve it? And I think… you can do this… across multiple fat chocobos acros the world?
Best not think about this too much.
Anyway, nack at the dwarven hollows, everything's going just fine.
I swear, it's every five minutes with this game.
Okay, before heading out to save the day, I'd like to visit one of the last locations I haven't been to yet.
They play a whole animation with this shepherdess chasing after one of her flock, it's cute.
The village of Gysahl is a cozy little place that serves two main gameplay purposes: it's where you find a locksmith who sells Magic Keys that can open certain doors found across the game world, and where you can buy the Gysahl Greens that cause the Fat Chocobo to appear.
I'm more interested in it, though, for the flavor it has. If you'll forgive an ancient classic or nerdery, it's a bit of What Do They Eat? There's been a huge evolution in the depiction of Final Fantasy townships. FF1 didn't really have any space or resources to dedicated to anything plot- or gameplay critical, so you had the minimum number of ambient NPC needed to convey information for one town, and every building was either a shop, a shrine, or plot-critical. FF2 expanded on this a little by having more ambient NPCs, a couple of inns with free dialogue, and a handful of houses for important purposes like Paul's home or the Mysidian Library.
FF3, by contrast, has inns and town halls and independent houses galore, full of NPCs who don't just exist, but are lying in bed, dancing to a piano tune , hanging around having a drink, tending to chocobo stables… The difference in making the world lived-in is massive, and it's compounded by a town like Gysahl, which has: 1) flocks of sheep, 2) chocobo stables, and 3) a vegetable farm. It's a place that very clearly produces staple resources, not just for itself, but presumably for the world that surrounds it. What do they eat? Well, this guy has a farm, and these look like turnips. What do they wear? Well, this girl's raising sheep they talk about half a continent over. How do they go places? Well, this guy raises and presumably sells chocobos.
None of these questions need answering, especially in a game with such condensed aesthetics. But it's nice that we're given visual evidence of how people's lives work. It makes the Floating Continent feel more alive.
Speaking of alive, it's time to rescue some people. We're heading back to Tokkul, where…
This is just a flat improvement over the FF2 capture scene. Now, granted, it doesn't have the panache of the Emperor going "meh" and teleporting away or the Dark Knight showing up; but the use of paralyzing magic (darts?) from an ambush position, and then the vindictive streak of the soldiers clearly taking pleasure in beating up a bunch of ambiguously-aged youths who are just trying to help people, give it a visceral edge and a plausibility that the instant surrender of FF2 didn't have. It benefits from the ambiguous status in which our characters are, at this time, already the Warriors of Light and yet still young kids venturing into the world and not fully on their guard. There's treachery in using such means to get a hand on the Heroic Warriors of Light, but there's also just cruelty in beating up young adventurers who haven't grown endured to the evils of the world.
And when we wake up, it turns out these idiots threw us in the same cell as a bunch of loyalist soldiers and the King himself.
Now, props to Hein and his sbires: we can't break out of here. The walls of the Elder Tree are thick, the gate is iron (and presumably guarded), and there is no Paul to pick our lock. However, there is a small opening in a wall.
Meaning, once again, we escape by casting Mini and sneaking through.
Castle Hein is a fun dungeon to explore, with hidden passage and secret loot, with opponents such as Demons and Pharaohs - spooky opponents stronger than what we've had before, but an excellent testing ground to flex the strength of our new upgraded jobs or our high-level older jobs, and easily bulldozzed through. Its loot includes Holy Arrow, which I take as a cue to equip Quaver with it and indeed find a lot of undead to dispatch, several consummable spell-like items (like the Arctic Wind, which is a more powerful version of the Antarctic Wind, which is the wrong way around if you ask me), and the Royal Sword - which according to some NPC dialogue is the ancient sword of King Argus's bloodline, and now wielded by Mimi to face his usurper, which is a nice bit of ludonarrative synchronicity.
Quaver's Barrage feature is interesting. It targets a random number of enemies, up to three, and fires at each one an arrow that's weaker than his normal attack. The total damage of the shot is slightly higher than his normal attack, but the value calculus is complicated - when you're dealing with, say, a group of weak undead and he has the Holy Arrow, it can wipe them out quickly and easily. Against foes that have more HP and aren't weak to his equipped arrow, it can be a wasted turn. Against individual opponents, however, I think the damage value of each individual arrow are all added, making it a shot more powerful than Quaver's normal attack?
My current party set-up means that everyone is in the backrow except Mimi, so she takes a lot of damage - but she is also the most resilient of the group by far, so it works out. So far she's mostly just a souped up Warrior - but later on her job feature will be game-warping. We'll get to that.
Eventually, we face the man himself.
Now, before we do that, I decide to do some tweaks. Everyone's been telling me to use Scholar to deal with Hein's Barrier Shift, right? Owing to a misunderstanding, I am under the impression that in addition to its ability to discern HP and weakness, Scholar is also able to use magic. Which is why, of all the characters to class-swap for this fight, I choose Tsugumi, my only healer.
We'll see how it goes.
'Dark power,' huh. Definitely feel like there is some kind of unique font of darkness tempting and corrupting people with the lure of power.
So, Hein.
Hein is one of the most mechanically interesting fight in the whole series so far. At first, I had thought his Barrier Shift thing would be easily ignored by just hammering him for as much damage as possible while he wasted turns, but not so. Hein starts the fight with 'no weakness'; he takes some damage from all elements. But he has decent HP, so he survives long enough for a Barrier Shift - at which point, instead of taking some damage from all attacks, he takes increased damage from the one element he is weak to - and absorbs everything he's not weak too, meaning that since Barrier Shift is happening mid-turn, you might very well find yourself casting a free high-level heal on him without recourse. Meanwhile, Hein's spell deal enough damage to threaten the life of any given character, and since I no longer have white magic, I need my character to actually burn through their Hi-Potion supplies.
However, Scholar doesn't just have the Study ability; it also has the Alchemy ability, which replaces its Item command and doubles the effect of its consummables. Which means the fight goes in three phases:
I could have made it massively easier for myself by just leaving Tsugumi as a White Mage and using the Libra spell you can purchase in Gysahl and which has the exact same effect as the Scholar's Study command while leaving her all her defensive potential, though.
Or could have? Scholar's Alchemy played as significant part in ensuring I would only have to deal with Hein's bullshit once, annihilating him in a storm of elemental damage the moment his true weakness was identified.
In past games, I only very occasionally used the consummable damage items, as there rarely was a pressing need for it, FFI gave unlimited spammable spell items, and my own spell power scaled enough not to need them. This has been mostly true in FFIII so far, but less so; they were still clutch against the Land Turtle and in a few fights where I ran out of MP - and in this fight, where they were core to my victory. Given that job levels tend to make their featured Commands scale in effectiveness, I assume the item power would improve over time I think, if damage items drops were more reliable and Scholar didn't have the weakest HP growth in the game, it might actually be a powerful early/mid-game class.
Hein is honestly a fight I wouldn't mind replaying, and I don't say that often about these. The problem is the game can only have one Quicksave; having progressed past this point, even if I reloaded a world save I would have to do the entire Tokkul capture sequence and dungeon just to fight Hein again.
A shame.
Incidentally guess where Hein shows up again? That's right, (Take a shot), Final Fantasy FXIV!
This is Amon, a Crystal Tower boss with a similar 'evil advisor' vibe going, through his actual story role is very different.
Now I'm not going to point out every FFIII boss recycled in FFXIV because I suspect that'd be a lot (unless I am???) but I'm pointing this one out because of an interesting difference in visual design that weirdly enough has no gameplay reflection, and which is even clearer if we compare the FFXIV model to Amano's FFIII concept art:
Hein… is a lich, right?
Like, he's a literal skeleton dude in (frankly awesome, one of the best visual designs for a boss in the game so far) fancy clothes. The clothes, the hat, the pose are all similar between the two characters, and both have a vaguely skull-like face; but Hein is clearly just made of bones while Amon wears harlequin-ish clothes whose black and white stripes merely evoke a skeleton. Which is interesting because Hein, huh… isn't undead. Like, mechanically. Cure heals him, Holy Arrow doesn't need extra damage to him, nothing. And he's never hinted at being undead in the narrative. He is just, inexplicably, a literal living skeleton.
I don't know what to make of that, and I suspect this confusion might be why Amon doesn't share this feature but is instead only 'stylistically' skeleton-like.
Anyway, he's dead now.
The Elder Tree, temporarily still in its twisted castle form, flies us overland in a brief cutscene.
There is something melancholy to the fact that, even though we saved the Elder Tree, and thus the Living Woods and its fairies, the results of Hein's actions means these things will still be lost to the world for a thousand years. Even if the darkness can be fought back, it leaves scars behind.
Now, I have a little more gameplay to show. But we're reaching the image limit on this post, and what happens next is, huh… huge, plot-wise. And I have some stuff to say about the new classes that's better illustrated with some later stuff. So we'll cut off here, and I'll see about writing the next part later today.
But man, this game sure keeps giving me a lot to talk about.
Anyway I'm not mad.
And bonus points, I have nothing else to be doing, so you get an update out of it! Everyone's happy!
Except me. I am extremely fucking furious o_o
Final Fantasy III: Sponsored By Ryanair
Last time on Final Fantasy, we got a brand new roster of jobs. Time to test it out!
First though, a little bit of exploring - south of the Molten Cave is a chocobo forest, and it had a prompt to use an item. We didn't know what item that would be, but then, as part of the rewards the dwarves give us for returning the horns (which include valuable weapons and armor for Archer, Knight and Scholar, ensuring those jobs don't start up from nothing), we got this:
Now, the hint is fairly obvious but - and stop me if you've heard this one before - I also immediately recognize the name from (take a shot) FFXIV: 'Gysahl Greens' are the snack you use to summon your chocobo pet. So I go back to the chocobo forest, offer the Greens, and…
Lookit him. Lookit his fluffy tum-tums. Isn't he the cutest?
Ahem. The Fat Chocobo serves a curious gameplay function, in that it's… a storage chest? You can put stuff inside the chocobo, and then… later… retrieve it? And I think… you can do this… across multiple fat chocobos acros the world?
Best not think about this too much.
Anyway, nack at the dwarven hollows, everything's going just fine.
I swear, it's every five minutes with this game.
Okay, before heading out to save the day, I'd like to visit one of the last locations I haven't been to yet.
They play a whole animation with this shepherdess chasing after one of her flock, it's cute.
The village of Gysahl is a cozy little place that serves two main gameplay purposes: it's where you find a locksmith who sells Magic Keys that can open certain doors found across the game world, and where you can buy the Gysahl Greens that cause the Fat Chocobo to appear.
I'm more interested in it, though, for the flavor it has. If you'll forgive an ancient classic or nerdery, it's a bit of What Do They Eat? There's been a huge evolution in the depiction of Final Fantasy townships. FF1 didn't really have any space or resources to dedicated to anything plot- or gameplay critical, so you had the minimum number of ambient NPC needed to convey information for one town, and every building was either a shop, a shrine, or plot-critical. FF2 expanded on this a little by having more ambient NPCs, a couple of inns with free dialogue, and a handful of houses for important purposes like Paul's home or the Mysidian Library.
FF3, by contrast, has inns and town halls and independent houses galore, full of NPCs who don't just exist, but are lying in bed, dancing to a piano tune , hanging around having a drink, tending to chocobo stables… The difference in making the world lived-in is massive, and it's compounded by a town like Gysahl, which has: 1) flocks of sheep, 2) chocobo stables, and 3) a vegetable farm. It's a place that very clearly produces staple resources, not just for itself, but presumably for the world that surrounds it. What do they eat? Well, this guy has a farm, and these look like turnips. What do they wear? Well, this girl's raising sheep they talk about half a continent over. How do they go places? Well, this guy raises and presumably sells chocobos.
None of these questions need answering, especially in a game with such condensed aesthetics. But it's nice that we're given visual evidence of how people's lives work. It makes the Floating Continent feel more alive.
Speaking of alive, it's time to rescue some people. We're heading back to Tokkul, where…
This is just a flat improvement over the FF2 capture scene. Now, granted, it doesn't have the panache of the Emperor going "meh" and teleporting away or the Dark Knight showing up; but the use of paralyzing magic (darts?) from an ambush position, and then the vindictive streak of the soldiers clearly taking pleasure in beating up a bunch of ambiguously-aged youths who are just trying to help people, give it a visceral edge and a plausibility that the instant surrender of FF2 didn't have. It benefits from the ambiguous status in which our characters are, at this time, already the Warriors of Light and yet still young kids venturing into the world and not fully on their guard. There's treachery in using such means to get a hand on the Heroic Warriors of Light, but there's also just cruelty in beating up young adventurers who haven't grown endured to the evils of the world.
And when we wake up, it turns out these idiots threw us in the same cell as a bunch of loyalist soldiers and the King himself.
Now, props to Hein and his sbires: we can't break out of here. The walls of the Elder Tree are thick, the gate is iron (and presumably guarded), and there is no Paul to pick our lock. However, there is a small opening in a wall.
Meaning, once again, we escape by casting Mini and sneaking through.
Castle Hein is a fun dungeon to explore, with hidden passage and secret loot, with opponents such as Demons and Pharaohs - spooky opponents stronger than what we've had before, but an excellent testing ground to flex the strength of our new upgraded jobs or our high-level older jobs, and easily bulldozzed through. Its loot includes Holy Arrow, which I take as a cue to equip Quaver with it and indeed find a lot of undead to dispatch, several consummable spell-like items (like the Arctic Wind, which is a more powerful version of the Antarctic Wind, which is the wrong way around if you ask me), and the Royal Sword - which according to some NPC dialogue is the ancient sword of King Argus's bloodline, and now wielded by Mimi to face his usurper, which is a nice bit of ludonarrative synchronicity.
Quaver's Barrage feature is interesting. It targets a random number of enemies, up to three, and fires at each one an arrow that's weaker than his normal attack. The total damage of the shot is slightly higher than his normal attack, but the value calculus is complicated - when you're dealing with, say, a group of weak undead and he has the Holy Arrow, it can wipe them out quickly and easily. Against foes that have more HP and aren't weak to his equipped arrow, it can be a wasted turn. Against individual opponents, however, I think the damage value of each individual arrow are all added, making it a shot more powerful than Quaver's normal attack?
My current party set-up means that everyone is in the backrow except Mimi, so she takes a lot of damage - but she is also the most resilient of the group by far, so it works out. So far she's mostly just a souped up Warrior - but later on her job feature will be game-warping. We'll get to that.
Eventually, we face the man himself.
Now, before we do that, I decide to do some tweaks. Everyone's been telling me to use Scholar to deal with Hein's Barrier Shift, right? Owing to a misunderstanding, I am under the impression that in addition to its ability to discern HP and weakness, Scholar is also able to use magic. Which is why, of all the characters to class-swap for this fight, I choose Tsugumi, my only healer.
We'll see how it goes.
'Dark power,' huh. Definitely feel like there is some kind of unique font of darkness tempting and corrupting people with the lure of power.
So, Hein.
Hein is one of the most mechanically interesting fight in the whole series so far. At first, I had thought his Barrier Shift thing would be easily ignored by just hammering him for as much damage as possible while he wasted turns, but not so. Hein starts the fight with 'no weakness'; he takes some damage from all elements. But he has decent HP, so he survives long enough for a Barrier Shift - at which point, instead of taking some damage from all attacks, he takes increased damage from the one element he is weak to - and absorbs everything he's not weak too, meaning that since Barrier Shift is happening mid-turn, you might very well find yourself casting a free high-level heal on him without recourse. Meanwhile, Hein's spell deal enough damage to threaten the life of any given character, and since I no longer have white magic, I need my character to actually burn through their Hi-Potion supplies.
However, Scholar doesn't just have the Study ability; it also has the Alchemy ability, which replaces its Item command and doubles the effect of its consummables. Which means the fight goes in three phases:
- Hein is a dangerous caster with no particular weakness or strength, so I fight normally, using high levels spells and attacks and healing damage with items, with Tsugumi herself dealing significant damage with consummable spell items even without a weakness to exploit.
- Hein pulls a reversal, healing himself for 800 attacks from a Thundera cast from Rushanaq (isn't it sad, Rushanaq), forcing me to pull back into a defensive stance where I need to spend one turn with Tsugumi Studying him, Rushanaq unable to attack, leaving only Mimi and Quaver to hold the fort - Quaver with healing item casting, and Mimi with a Royal Sword attack that doesn't care about any elemental weakness and hits Hein hard past his defenses. He doesn't like this; his retaliation spell hits Mimi for 500 damage, killing her.
- With Hein's Ice-weakness identified, Rushanaq hits him with Blizarra, Tsugumi with a souped-up Arctic Wind for like 1,5000 damage, and Quaver drops a Phoenix Down on Mimi, raising her just under the cut as the double Ice assault engulfs Hein and destroys him utterly.
I could have made it massively easier for myself by just leaving Tsugumi as a White Mage and using the Libra spell you can purchase in Gysahl and which has the exact same effect as the Scholar's Study command while leaving her all her defensive potential, though.
Or could have? Scholar's Alchemy played as significant part in ensuring I would only have to deal with Hein's bullshit once, annihilating him in a storm of elemental damage the moment his true weakness was identified.
In past games, I only very occasionally used the consummable damage items, as there rarely was a pressing need for it, FFI gave unlimited spammable spell items, and my own spell power scaled enough not to need them. This has been mostly true in FFIII so far, but less so; they were still clutch against the Land Turtle and in a few fights where I ran out of MP - and in this fight, where they were core to my victory. Given that job levels tend to make their featured Commands scale in effectiveness, I assume the item power would improve over time I think, if damage items drops were more reliable and Scholar didn't have the weakest HP growth in the game, it might actually be a powerful early/mid-game class.
Hein is honestly a fight I wouldn't mind replaying, and I don't say that often about these. The problem is the game can only have one Quicksave; having progressed past this point, even if I reloaded a world save I would have to do the entire Tokkul capture sequence and dungeon just to fight Hein again.
A shame.
Incidentally guess where Hein shows up again? That's right, (Take a shot), Final Fantasy FXIV!
This is Amon, a Crystal Tower boss with a similar 'evil advisor' vibe going, through his actual story role is very different.
Now I'm not going to point out every FFIII boss recycled in FFXIV because I suspect that'd be a lot (unless I am???) but I'm pointing this one out because of an interesting difference in visual design that weirdly enough has no gameplay reflection, and which is even clearer if we compare the FFXIV model to Amano's FFIII concept art:
Hein… is a lich, right?
Like, he's a literal skeleton dude in (frankly awesome, one of the best visual designs for a boss in the game so far) fancy clothes. The clothes, the hat, the pose are all similar between the two characters, and both have a vaguely skull-like face; but Hein is clearly just made of bones while Amon wears harlequin-ish clothes whose black and white stripes merely evoke a skeleton. Which is interesting because Hein, huh… isn't undead. Like, mechanically. Cure heals him, Holy Arrow doesn't need extra damage to him, nothing. And he's never hinted at being undead in the narrative. He is just, inexplicably, a literal living skeleton.
I don't know what to make of that, and I suspect this confusion might be why Amon doesn't share this feature but is instead only 'stylistically' skeleton-like.
Anyway, he's dead now.
The Elder Tree, temporarily still in its twisted castle form, flies us overland in a brief cutscene.
There is something melancholy to the fact that, even though we saved the Elder Tree, and thus the Living Woods and its fairies, the results of Hein's actions means these things will still be lost to the world for a thousand years. Even if the darkness can be fought back, it leaves scars behind.
Now, I have a little more gameplay to show. But we're reaching the image limit on this post, and what happens next is, huh… huge, plot-wise. And I have some stuff to say about the new classes that's better illustrated with some later stuff. So we'll cut off here, and I'll see about writing the next part later today.
But man, this game sure keeps giving me a lot to talk about.
Chlof
Her Ladyship
- Pronouns
- She/Her
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
I'm sure some people raised concerns about his advisor's nature, but Argus made no bones about it.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I totally forgot to mention that the dude who opens the dwarven treasure vault for you does it using traditional dwarven moonwalk, which is extremely funny if impossible to quite capture in one screenshot.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
He does also appear to be a skeleton man in the DS remake with its 3d models if I remember right.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Having only played non-NES versions of those, I assumed it had been backported into those, given how organically it fits in FFT paradigm and how little it does within the context of any other game in the series. I learn something new every day, I guess.
Having been in the same situation, you have all of my sympathy. I wish you to solve the situation with as little trouble and cost as possible.
Or, maybe you're always summoning the same instance, just in different places? Considering Fat Chocobo is a summoned monster in some future games, it's a reasonable assumption to make, surely.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Prayer-answering fat chocobo god it is.
WanderingEye
smol skeleton
I think he also appears as a dungeon boss in Stormblood
Really remember that mechanic because I experienced and saw people getting pingponged because they don't know the mechanics.
Castrum Abania, Second Boss
And apparently the DS remake of 3 is on a half price sale, as well!
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Your majesty, might I ask a question of you?"
"But of course."
"I don't wish to overstep my bounds, buh...ah, Lord Hein."
"Yes? What of him?"
"I beg your majesty's pardon, but he is a skeleton. Isn't that a bit...ominous?"
"Come now, we should never judge a book by its cover."
"Surely not, your majesty. Yet, the way he cackles evilly..."
"Mm, yes, he does have quite the distinctive chuckle, don't he? Still, hardly a reason to eject the man."
"And the stories of him walking the castle's halls at night, the accusations that he has been caught muttering on how he 'will make fools of you all' and 'your kingdom's doom draws near' and so on."
"Oh posh, he's merely the dramatic sort, isn't he. Never merely a matter of a mislaid quill or an overturned chalice, it's always 'ah, 'tis the end of times! The darkness comes for us all!' You should see his rendition of Hamlet, it's quite stunning."
"But, your majesty-"
"Now now, these little slanders have gone far enough I think. Lord Hein is a very busy man, what with trying to balance the duties of court mage and playwright both. It is only natural he be prone to the occasional outburst."
"Yes, your majesty, yet about the former court mage, is it not strange the man should depart so suddenly and with none to see him off?"
"Oh, are we broadening the horizons of our gossip? Men of magic are prone to such abrupt behavior. You make a fair point, however. I shall speak to Lord Hein and see that he does take a bit of a break. Nothing to be gained when a man of talent works himself to the bone, after all."
"..."
"Dear me, t'would seem the man's own humor is rubbing off."
I recalled them from FFVII (never played FFXIV), so I was curious enough to check the Wiki and "Gysahl Greens" are one of those things that appears recurrently in the FF series in various forms.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Although the name is a bit of an orphaned reference with Gysahl the farming town not similarly recurring
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
That boss is not a reference to Hein.
Number 024
This boss Muddles foes with Overflow, and changes its defense with WallChange. Use physical attacks with weapons that don't have an elemental affiliation. Number 024, otherwise known as No. 024, is a boss in Final Fantasy VI fought before entering the heart of the Magitek Research Facility...
finalfantasy.fandom.com
And apparently the DS remake of 3 is on a half price sale, as well!
Final Fantasy III, Part 7, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is the big one. Lots of pictures here, so split in two.
With the Living Woods sealed forever (attempting to enter the tile causes a funny animation to play where you literally get turned around on your head), we visit Tukkol, where we receive profuse thanks, but where there's not much else for us:
A happy family reunited at last.
No, our obvious destination is Castle Argus. There are only three locations left unexplored on the Floating Continent - two caves which are only accessible from small closed-off valley, and the spooky shadow in the water, also closed off - but Castle Argus was previously empty and so is effectively a new place. And indeed, the castle is full of grateful soldiers, and Argus himself is presiding a meeting with his best knights, and has a reward waiting for us:
The Round Table is an obvious Arthurian reference, but I wonder how far this extends. Was the name 'Argus' specifically chosen because it resembles 'Arthur'? Is there a myth I can't think of Hein is drawing from?
A 'perpetual motion machine,' huh? Just the thing you would need to power an airship that needs no fuel, but can stay flying for effectively indefinite periods of time, surveying the world, LIKE A NUCLEAR-POWERED-
Ahem. No. That was FFII. None of that here. But yes, a mystical wheel that turns forever could power a 'steam'ship by effectively replacing the need for steam, turning the helicopter-like blades that propel Cid's airship. To Caanan, then!
I'm posting this to highlight a really neat feature of the game. Now that Castle Argus is full, the guards have pointed to me the way to a hidden room full of loot. This is a neat reward, with some basic exploration in following his instruction - but note how this sconce is a different color than the others. I am pretty sure, if I had been paying close attention, I could have found the hidden room myself before freeing the guard, securing some early loot for Castle Hein. This is good exploratory design! This is what FFII didn't have!
…he converted the ship into an airship. I no longer just abandon my sailship forever once I get the airship, they're one and the same thing, transitioning between the two modes! This is really cool. There's just, hm, one issue.
He… forgot. How to make a ship. That could land on the ground. Like the ship we had a couple hours of game ago.
He forgot.
While being able to convert a sailship into an airship powered by a perpetual motion machine in with casual ease.
How does this man's brain work.
It's fine.
We're airborne again.
There's a really transformation sequence every time we take off.
The first thing I do is do some quick exploration of places that I haven't looted chests from, which leads me to this nice lady who offers me some valuable elixirs.
However, because the airship can only land in water, it cannot land in the closed-off valley of these caves I haven't explored yet, and because it can only land in sea water and not lake water, it can't land in that place with the shadowy sea creature.
But there's one way I could try to go.
One place I haven't had any means of exploring yet.
Past the edge of the map.
And there…
Hooooly shit.
The world.
An infinite expanse of water, dotted by the tiniest of landmasses - three little rocks, and a floating continent over it all.
(There is some dizzying perspective shift to how small the Floating Continent is compared to this infinity, but I don't think that's supposed to be in-setting true; the Floating Continent has to be this small because that's how tiles work, it probably is meaningfully large even compared to this world.)
Even so.
I just…
Fly over the watery expanse. Looking for something. Anything. Heading for these tiny dots on the map.
There is a… strange kind of loneliness to the time spent just flying over the waves, with no landmark in sight.
An island of stony peaks. Nothing to find there. No entrance to anything. Just rocks sticking out of the endless blue.
The only spot of greenery in this universe. A tiny valley nestled at the top of a mountain, and in this Ararat, one forlorn temple. The last valley. The last woods. The last man-made building. Evidence, still, that the hand of man once laid stone upon stone in this emptiness.
A crystalline growth, impossible to enter.
And then, this.
I meant to do an overview of all landmarks and then go to the temple, but a spooky ship is more immediately intriguing.
Oh yeah baby, spooky ghost ship whooo
So we're talking 'Biblical Flood' proportions here. There was a world, mere days or weeks ago, but then an earthquake somehow caused it to be engulfed in the water - perhaps long buried water surging through the cracks, 2012-style. Which means everybody is dead. The Floating Continent's population, without even knowing it, are the last people alive. Protected by their position in the sky, they might even go on living, oblivious to the world that died below.
Hmm. Two things.
First, since the Floating Continent is, well, floating, the fact that not only was it affected by the earthquake, but that monsters began surging from its depth, suggests some kind of sympathetic event - it wasn't one earthquake with one epicenter affecting contiguous land, it was all earth, everywhere, shaking itself apart, even in the relative safety of the sky. Which itself strongly suggests someone is fucking with the Earth Crystal directly - not merely draining its power and causing the earth to decay without this energy, but actively turning its power against the world.
Second, whoever is doing this is after total life obliteration. I though Medusa's goal in crashing the Floating Continent was to do a colony drop on the world below, but no - that world is already gone. She was merely trying to finish the job. Kill the last surviving people. Leave the world empty.
To what end? The Emperor was trying to conquer the world. Chaos was merely using the ongoing apocalypse as part of a time loop to keep himself immortal. What's the goal of our unknown antagonist, here?
The girl rescued by the old man is too injured and sick to talk, or even ackowledge our presence. But we know the answer to that, don't we?
One Elixir later, our rescue is up and running.
It's fairly subtle, but from these last sprites you can see there is a thing playing where the WoLs are moving backwards as Aria advances, simultaneously trying to keep her from leaping off into action with her injuries and possibly intimidated by her intensity.
Alright, then. Off to the temple. Oh, but first, we're checking some chests in this ship…
Holly molly. I mean, I assume it's not as broken as in FFII, but still… can't wait to test it out.
So.
Much to think about.
If everyone was "petrified" before the flood, then it stands to reason that they may yet be saved. Especially as, quite frankly, I'm smart enough to realize this entire map has three locations you can enter, so something is obviously going to shake up. Are we going to reverse the flood? Depetrify everyone?
What correlation is there between the Water Crystal being sealed away and everyone suddenly turning to stone? I'm guessing the Earth Crystal's energy washing over everything turned everyone to stone? The implications of a single crystal being able to run rampant in such a world-destroying way if not checked by the others are fascinating. It's interesting how this wasn't some generic catastrophe - someone specifically leveraged the Earth Crystal to do Earth Crystal things and cause an Earth Crystal apocalypse… with a water component. I'm guessing some evil monster is currently controlling the Water Crystal and doing their part in this plan.
The exact chronology of events is intriguing.
With the shard in hand, we head out of the temple and towards the cavern behind it, which serves as the actual dungeon.
Note the 'Twin Heads'; FFI/FFII had the 'Dual Heads,' which was a two-headed giant instead of a two-headed… leopard-unicorn thing. I find the reuse of a name/concept with a different design interesting.
The Cave of Tides is largely unremarkable, but the way I made my way through it certainly wasn't. Check this out:
Mimi is a Knight.
Knights have a support skill, Cover. That skill makes it so, if any character's HP is in the red, whenever they face a physical attack, Mimi steps in and takes that attack instead of them - her sprite literally flashes in front of theirs. Because she's a heavily armored Knight with high defense stats, Mimi takes less damage than they would, too. This means that Mimi can help the group through a tough spot, with Tsugumi providing healing either to the injured character while Mimi weathers assaults, or to Mimi herself to keep her shielding everyone.
Or.
I can just equip Mimi with the Bloodsword.
And she heals more health per turn than she loses to enemy attacks, even though she is taking every attack by any enemy at all. At the point where I stop bothering to heal the rest of the party, Mimi is attacked three, four times a turn, heals it back on her next attack, and everyone else is just relentlessly offensive. Using this tactic, my group has essentially become invincible. Using these reckless tactics, we reach the end of the dungeon.
This means that Knight is the first time the Final Fantasy games have what we, today, would conceptualize as 'tanking.' FFI and FFII gave each character varying mixes of damage, survivability, and support efficiency - but survivability couldn't cover for anyone else. Your Knight being strong and tough meant they were better at surviving than the others and could clutch a victory after other characters had died, that's it. The ordering system did help this for some extent - you put your toughest guy up first because enemy preferentially target them. But FF3 and the Knight's Cover is the first time we see a tough character proactively take damage in place of other, more vulnerable characters. It's the shaky start of what would years later become the Trinity.
Then we trip over the invisible cutscene-triggering threshold.
An arrow is fired from the side and Aria pushes us out of the way.
This Xande guy again. Seems he's behind everything. Very well then -
Ah.
Fun fact: the Knight's Cover only 'covers' for physical attacks. Magic still goes through to its intended target.
So anyway, we wipe in the most embarrassing fashion possible.
One reload later…
Kraken's problem is that Mimi is unkillable so attacks against her are wasted, Rushanaq knows Thundara, Tsugumi can use Zeus's Wrath to cast a Thundara of her own on any turn she doesn't need to heal, and Quaver is equipped with the Light Arrow, which deals Lightning Damage. The DPS race is impossibly lopsided. Kraken is helpless to threaten my characters faster than I can tear him down.
You know what's the best mitigation? A dead enemy. You know what's the most efficient healing? A dead enemy. You know what's the most successful tanking? A dead enemy.
Break for pictures.
With the Living Woods sealed forever (attempting to enter the tile causes a funny animation to play where you literally get turned around on your head), we visit Tukkol, where we receive profuse thanks, but where there's not much else for us:
A happy family reunited at last.
No, our obvious destination is Castle Argus. There are only three locations left unexplored on the Floating Continent - two caves which are only accessible from small closed-off valley, and the spooky shadow in the water, also closed off - but Castle Argus was previously empty and so is effectively a new place. And indeed, the castle is full of grateful soldiers, and Argus himself is presiding a meeting with his best knights, and has a reward waiting for us:
The Round Table is an obvious Arthurian reference, but I wonder how far this extends. Was the name 'Argus' specifically chosen because it resembles 'Arthur'? Is there a myth I can't think of Hein is drawing from?
A 'perpetual motion machine,' huh? Just the thing you would need to power an airship that needs no fuel, but can stay flying for effectively indefinite periods of time, surveying the world, LIKE A NUCLEAR-POWERED-
Ahem. No. That was FFII. None of that here. But yes, a mystical wheel that turns forever could power a 'steam'ship by effectively replacing the need for steam, turning the helicopter-like blades that propel Cid's airship. To Caanan, then!
I'm posting this to highlight a really neat feature of the game. Now that Castle Argus is full, the guards have pointed to me the way to a hidden room full of loot. This is a neat reward, with some basic exploration in following his instruction - but note how this sconce is a different color than the others. I am pretty sure, if I had been paying close attention, I could have found the hidden room myself before freeing the guard, securing some early loot for Castle Hein. This is good exploratory design! This is what FFII didn't have!
…he converted the ship into an airship. I no longer just abandon my sailship forever once I get the airship, they're one and the same thing, transitioning between the two modes! This is really cool. There's just, hm, one issue.
He… forgot. How to make a ship. That could land on the ground. Like the ship we had a couple hours of game ago.
He forgot.
While being able to convert a sailship into an airship powered by a perpetual motion machine in with casual ease.
How does this man's brain work.
It's fine.
We're airborne again.
There's a really transformation sequence every time we take off.
However, because the airship can only land in water, it cannot land in the closed-off valley of these caves I haven't explored yet, and because it can only land in sea water and not lake water, it can't land in that place with the shadowy sea creature.
But there's one way I could try to go.
One place I haven't had any means of exploring yet.
Past the edge of the map.
And there…
Hooooly shit.
The world.
An infinite expanse of water, dotted by the tiniest of landmasses - three little rocks, and a floating continent over it all.
(There is some dizzying perspective shift to how small the Floating Continent is compared to this infinity, but I don't think that's supposed to be in-setting true; the Floating Continent has to be this small because that's how tiles work, it probably is meaningfully large even compared to this world.)
Even so.
I just…
Fly over the watery expanse. Looking for something. Anything. Heading for these tiny dots on the map.
There is a… strange kind of loneliness to the time spent just flying over the waves, with no landmark in sight.
An island of stony peaks. Nothing to find there. No entrance to anything. Just rocks sticking out of the endless blue.
The only spot of greenery in this universe. A tiny valley nestled at the top of a mountain, and in this Ararat, one forlorn temple. The last valley. The last woods. The last man-made building. Evidence, still, that the hand of man once laid stone upon stone in this emptiness.
A crystalline growth, impossible to enter.
And then, this.
I meant to do an overview of all landmarks and then go to the temple, but a spooky ship is more immediately intriguing.
Oh yeah baby, spooky ghost ship whooo
So we're talking 'Biblical Flood' proportions here. There was a world, mere days or weeks ago, but then an earthquake somehow caused it to be engulfed in the water - perhaps long buried water surging through the cracks, 2012-style. Which means everybody is dead. The Floating Continent's population, without even knowing it, are the last people alive. Protected by their position in the sky, they might even go on living, oblivious to the world that died below.
Hmm. Two things.
First, since the Floating Continent is, well, floating, the fact that not only was it affected by the earthquake, but that monsters began surging from its depth, suggests some kind of sympathetic event - it wasn't one earthquake with one epicenter affecting contiguous land, it was all earth, everywhere, shaking itself apart, even in the relative safety of the sky. Which itself strongly suggests someone is fucking with the Earth Crystal directly - not merely draining its power and causing the earth to decay without this energy, but actively turning its power against the world.
Second, whoever is doing this is after total life obliteration. I though Medusa's goal in crashing the Floating Continent was to do a colony drop on the world below, but no - that world is already gone. She was merely trying to finish the job. Kill the last surviving people. Leave the world empty.
To what end? The Emperor was trying to conquer the world. Chaos was merely using the ongoing apocalypse as part of a time loop to keep himself immortal. What's the goal of our unknown antagonist, here?
The girl rescued by the old man is too injured and sick to talk, or even ackowledge our presence. But we know the answer to that, don't we?
One Elixir later, our rescue is up and running.
It's fairly subtle, but from these last sprites you can see there is a thing playing where the WoLs are moving backwards as Aria advances, simultaneously trying to keep her from leaping off into action with her injuries and possibly intimidated by her intensity.
Alright, then. Off to the temple. Oh, but first, we're checking some chests in this ship…
Holly molly. I mean, I assume it's not as broken as in FFII, but still… can't wait to test it out.
So.
Much to think about.
If everyone was "petrified" before the flood, then it stands to reason that they may yet be saved. Especially as, quite frankly, I'm smart enough to realize this entire map has three locations you can enter, so something is obviously going to shake up. Are we going to reverse the flood? Depetrify everyone?
What correlation is there between the Water Crystal being sealed away and everyone suddenly turning to stone? I'm guessing the Earth Crystal's energy washing over everything turned everyone to stone? The implications of a single crystal being able to run rampant in such a world-destroying way if not checked by the others are fascinating. It's interesting how this wasn't some generic catastrophe - someone specifically leveraged the Earth Crystal to do Earth Crystal things and cause an Earth Crystal apocalypse… with a water component. I'm guessing some evil monster is currently controlling the Water Crystal and doing their part in this plan.
The exact chronology of events is intriguing.
With the shard in hand, we head out of the temple and towards the cavern behind it, which serves as the actual dungeon.
Note the 'Twin Heads'; FFI/FFII had the 'Dual Heads,' which was a two-headed giant instead of a two-headed… leopard-unicorn thing. I find the reuse of a name/concept with a different design interesting.
The Cave of Tides is largely unremarkable, but the way I made my way through it certainly wasn't. Check this out:
Mimi is a Knight.
Knights have a support skill, Cover. That skill makes it so, if any character's HP is in the red, whenever they face a physical attack, Mimi steps in and takes that attack instead of them - her sprite literally flashes in front of theirs. Because she's a heavily armored Knight with high defense stats, Mimi takes less damage than they would, too. This means that Mimi can help the group through a tough spot, with Tsugumi providing healing either to the injured character while Mimi weathers assaults, or to Mimi herself to keep her shielding everyone.
Or.
I can just equip Mimi with the Bloodsword.
And she heals more health per turn than she loses to enemy attacks, even though she is taking every attack by any enemy at all. At the point where I stop bothering to heal the rest of the party, Mimi is attacked three, four times a turn, heals it back on her next attack, and everyone else is just relentlessly offensive. Using this tactic, my group has essentially become invincible. Using these reckless tactics, we reach the end of the dungeon.
This means that Knight is the first time the Final Fantasy games have what we, today, would conceptualize as 'tanking.' FFI and FFII gave each character varying mixes of damage, survivability, and support efficiency - but survivability couldn't cover for anyone else. Your Knight being strong and tough meant they were better at surviving than the others and could clutch a victory after other characters had died, that's it. The ordering system did help this for some extent - you put your toughest guy up first because enemy preferentially target them. But FF3 and the Knight's Cover is the first time we see a tough character proactively take damage in place of other, more vulnerable characters. It's the shaky start of what would years later become the Trinity.
Then we trip over the invisible cutscene-triggering threshold.
An arrow is fired from the side and Aria pushes us out of the way.
This Xande guy again. Seems he's behind everything. Very well then -
Ah.
Fun fact: the Knight's Cover only 'covers' for physical attacks. Magic still goes through to its intended target.
So anyway, we wipe in the most embarrassing fashion possible.
One reload later…
Kraken's problem is that Mimi is unkillable so attacks against her are wasted, Rushanaq knows Thundara, Tsugumi can use Zeus's Wrath to cast a Thundara of her own on any turn she doesn't need to heal, and Quaver is equipped with the Light Arrow, which deals Lightning Damage. The DPS race is impossibly lopsided. Kraken is helpless to threaten my characters faster than I can tear him down.
You know what's the best mitigation? A dead enemy. You know what's the most efficient healing? A dead enemy. You know what's the most successful tanking? A dead enemy.
Break for pictures.
Final Fantasy III, Part 7, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sadly, this victory does not save Aria.
Okay, I gotta admit, it's a little bit jarring that they actually do the victory pose after receiving all these cool new powers given that Aria just died in a genuinely kinda touching scene, but.
There's much to say about these new jobs, but it'll have to wait until the end of this post. Because this cutscene is not over.
Ooh boy is it not over.
The power of the Water Crystal draws the water back into the earth, and returns the world to its former, pristine state.
The whole world, as we'll see in a moment.
For now, though…
You know, it's often been said that the FF3 protagonists are a step back in characterization from FFII, but I don't think they are. Now, they don't have individuality - they're effectively a blob, with dialogue most of the time being spoken by the front character but interchangeable with anyone - but weirdly, as a collective, they have more personality than any FFII character. They're oddly charming, really - they sincerely care about the people they encounter, they're easily spooked but overcome it with genuine courage anyway, but when it really comes together is in this line, right here: moments after waking up from a three-day coma during which the whole world turned upside down, their first act is to earnestly thank a literal child for her hospitality and watching over them while they were asleep.
The Warriors of Light have enough maturity to brave death and endure loss, but enough innocence to speak to a child on an equal footing and treat her with respect. This line, more than any other, endears me to them.
There's one weird thing about all this, though…
Yeah.
The apocalypse happened so quickly it took everyone by surprise - and after we undid it, nobody even remembers that it happened. But they do remember the prophecy of the Warriors of Light - and we face a surprisingly petty reaction to it:
What a strange development. But an interesting one. We saved the Floating Continent from annihilation, then came down to a world dead in the wake of the great flood, and undid the apocalypse, bringing life back to it… Only to wake up in a village with no idea what had happened to them or what we did, with our ship impounded by some petty local magnate worried we might be after his wealth.
The ship does move if we attempt to sail out of the harbor… But not by much.
Not that he's any slouch according to the villagers:
Not to worry, we have solutions for that.
Alright, I think that's enough. There's much more to be found in Amur, but for now, it's time to briefly exit to the overworld, to take a look at our new map - then to make some job decisions.
First off, a look at the world…
…a planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans.
There we have our true map of the world, with the Floating Continent hovering in the South-West, likely covering most of that stretch of ocean in truth.
A mountainous world, full of high, wide mountain ranges, creating what look like a bunch of tight, maze-like corridors through the land, with what living land remains almost entirely taken over by forests or the one desert - notably, no snow biome like in FFII. I wonder how heavily settled this world is. I wonder about a lot of things, tbh.
God, though. FFII was going for an epic scope, but it had nothing on this. The sheer power of the first map being a decoy map and revealing an entire second map of nothing but water and three small landmarks and then returning the entire world from the apocalypse to reveal the true world map? Absolutely outstanding move.
So, these new jobs.
Let's take a look at our options here.
Geomancer: The Geomancer has access to the 'Terrain' command, which allows them to use a special effect based on their environment. It seems like a very deterministic class - if you're on a Mountain, it will always cast Cave In, if you're in the Desert, it will always cast Quicksand, and all of these have varying degree of power, accuracy, and how many enemies they impact. It's… interesting? But I don't like the lack of control over what you're doing.
Dragoon: The FFII class is back, and this time with the new fluff and mechanical identity that will definite going forward. Wyvern-riding is sadly gone, instead, Dragoons are spear-wielders (exclusively) whose special ability is Jump; they disappear from the screen for one turn, being immune to attacks, then come down for a physical attack with extra damage (flat double damage in NES, scaling with job level in 3D versions, unclear where PR stands).
Viking: Its special command is Draw Attacks, which appears to be a variant on the Knight's Protect - it's not passive, it's the Viking actively making itself the target of all physical attacks. Combined with insanely high vitality, this seems a good recipe to make a real tank build that is basically invincible at the cost of never doing anything. Probably effective, but I'm not excited by it.
Dark Knight: The Dark Knight is also back, and just like Dragoon, its mechanical identity has been reworked/more strongly defined. The Dark Knight has the 'Bladeblitz' ability, which appears to be a move that hits every enemy on the battlefield - I'm not clear if there's reduced damage and how much, but it kinda seems like a melee version of the Ranger? Unfortunately, it's impossible to test, because Dark Knight is currently unplayable. They appear only able to equip a category of weapons known as 'Dark Blades,' none of which is available at present, so all they can do is equip Fists. And unlike FFII, unarmed attacks are not viable except for monks - so DRK deals 1 damage per attack. So, despite my desire to try it, DRK goes into the bin for now.
Evoker: Now we're talking. Another FF first, and this time a huge, mechanics-defining one: summons. The ability, either for specific characters/jobs or for everyone, to summon powerful spirits with devastating effects, is iconic of the Final Fantasy franchise. Evoker looks to be Babby's First Summoner even in the context of its game, with a weird coin toss mechanic, later upgrading into a stronger version of itself? Unfortunately, summons are something you actually have to find and learn, and at this time Evoker is useless.
Bard: The Bard's special ability is 'Sing.' The Bard appears to have access to a variety of songs, which are learned in order based on the Bard's job level - which seems to incentivize going into that class and sticking with it for the long run (or grinding forever). The starter Song is a party-wide heal.
Hmmm.
Okay, how about this: Dragoon is one of my two favorite jobs in the series (the other is Dark Knight, which is currently unavailable), and Mimi spent Final Fantasy XIV's base game and the Heavensward expansion as a Dragoon, so she gets DRG. I can't pass on something as iconic as summons and I want to see in practice how it works, so Rushanaq quits her (quite successful) service as Black Mage and becomes Evoker. I'm intrigued by Bard and while Archer is effective enough, it just spams Arrows at everything, and I first played alongside Quaver as a D&D Bard and his FFXIV iteration went through ARR as Bard, so… Bard Quaver.
Mimi Dragoon. Rushanaq Summoner. Tsugumi (still) White Mage. Quaver Bard. That's our new hypothetical roster.
But the thing is, I only have one spear, and I have no Evocations, and I have no Harps. So most of these jobs are effectively locked to me right now. I could progress directly with the plot by attempting to enter Gordol's manor, but I don't want to carry on with my current party when there are so many new shinies, yeah?
So that means I need to put that on hold and find ways of actually playing the new jobs I'm interested in.
So, next time, we roam around a bit and try to make that party actually function, and then check out what it's like in practice!
Okay, I gotta admit, it's a little bit jarring that they actually do the victory pose after receiving all these cool new powers given that Aria just died in a genuinely kinda touching scene, but.
There's much to say about these new jobs, but it'll have to wait until the end of this post. Because this cutscene is not over.
Ooh boy is it not over.
The power of the Water Crystal draws the water back into the earth, and returns the world to its former, pristine state.
The whole world, as we'll see in a moment.
For now, though…
You know, it's often been said that the FF3 protagonists are a step back in characterization from FFII, but I don't think they are. Now, they don't have individuality - they're effectively a blob, with dialogue most of the time being spoken by the front character but interchangeable with anyone - but weirdly, as a collective, they have more personality than any FFII character. They're oddly charming, really - they sincerely care about the people they encounter, they're easily spooked but overcome it with genuine courage anyway, but when it really comes together is in this line, right here: moments after waking up from a three-day coma during which the whole world turned upside down, their first act is to earnestly thank a literal child for her hospitality and watching over them while they were asleep.
The Warriors of Light have enough maturity to brave death and endure loss, but enough innocence to speak to a child on an equal footing and treat her with respect. This line, more than any other, endears me to them.
There's one weird thing about all this, though…
Yeah.
The apocalypse happened so quickly it took everyone by surprise - and after we undid it, nobody even remembers that it happened. But they do remember the prophecy of the Warriors of Light - and we face a surprisingly petty reaction to it:
What a strange development. But an interesting one. We saved the Floating Continent from annihilation, then came down to a world dead in the wake of the great flood, and undid the apocalypse, bringing life back to it… Only to wake up in a village with no idea what had happened to them or what we did, with our ship impounded by some petty local magnate worried we might be after his wealth.
The ship does move if we attempt to sail out of the harbor… But not by much.
Not that he's any slouch according to the villagers:
Not to worry, we have solutions for that.
Alright, I think that's enough. There's much more to be found in Amur, but for now, it's time to briefly exit to the overworld, to take a look at our new map - then to make some job decisions.
First off, a look at the world…
…a planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans.
There we have our true map of the world, with the Floating Continent hovering in the South-West, likely covering most of that stretch of ocean in truth.
A mountainous world, full of high, wide mountain ranges, creating what look like a bunch of tight, maze-like corridors through the land, with what living land remains almost entirely taken over by forests or the one desert - notably, no snow biome like in FFII. I wonder how heavily settled this world is. I wonder about a lot of things, tbh.
God, though. FFII was going for an epic scope, but it had nothing on this. The sheer power of the first map being a decoy map and revealing an entire second map of nothing but water and three small landmarks and then returning the entire world from the apocalypse to reveal the true world map? Absolutely outstanding move.
So, these new jobs.
Let's take a look at our options here.
Geomancer: The Geomancer has access to the 'Terrain' command, which allows them to use a special effect based on their environment. It seems like a very deterministic class - if you're on a Mountain, it will always cast Cave In, if you're in the Desert, it will always cast Quicksand, and all of these have varying degree of power, accuracy, and how many enemies they impact. It's… interesting? But I don't like the lack of control over what you're doing.
Dragoon: The FFII class is back, and this time with the new fluff and mechanical identity that will definite going forward. Wyvern-riding is sadly gone, instead, Dragoons are spear-wielders (exclusively) whose special ability is Jump; they disappear from the screen for one turn, being immune to attacks, then come down for a physical attack with extra damage (flat double damage in NES, scaling with job level in 3D versions, unclear where PR stands).
Viking: Its special command is Draw Attacks, which appears to be a variant on the Knight's Protect - it's not passive, it's the Viking actively making itself the target of all physical attacks. Combined with insanely high vitality, this seems a good recipe to make a real tank build that is basically invincible at the cost of never doing anything. Probably effective, but I'm not excited by it.
Dark Knight: The Dark Knight is also back, and just like Dragoon, its mechanical identity has been reworked/more strongly defined. The Dark Knight has the 'Bladeblitz' ability, which appears to be a move that hits every enemy on the battlefield - I'm not clear if there's reduced damage and how much, but it kinda seems like a melee version of the Ranger? Unfortunately, it's impossible to test, because Dark Knight is currently unplayable. They appear only able to equip a category of weapons known as 'Dark Blades,' none of which is available at present, so all they can do is equip Fists. And unlike FFII, unarmed attacks are not viable except for monks - so DRK deals 1 damage per attack. So, despite my desire to try it, DRK goes into the bin for now.
Evoker: Now we're talking. Another FF first, and this time a huge, mechanics-defining one: summons. The ability, either for specific characters/jobs or for everyone, to summon powerful spirits with devastating effects, is iconic of the Final Fantasy franchise. Evoker looks to be Babby's First Summoner even in the context of its game, with a weird coin toss mechanic, later upgrading into a stronger version of itself? Unfortunately, summons are something you actually have to find and learn, and at this time Evoker is useless.
Bard: The Bard's special ability is 'Sing.' The Bard appears to have access to a variety of songs, which are learned in order based on the Bard's job level - which seems to incentivize going into that class and sticking with it for the long run (or grinding forever). The starter Song is a party-wide heal.
Hmmm.
Okay, how about this: Dragoon is one of my two favorite jobs in the series (the other is Dark Knight, which is currently unavailable), and Mimi spent Final Fantasy XIV's base game and the Heavensward expansion as a Dragoon, so she gets DRG. I can't pass on something as iconic as summons and I want to see in practice how it works, so Rushanaq quits her (quite successful) service as Black Mage and becomes Evoker. I'm intrigued by Bard and while Archer is effective enough, it just spams Arrows at everything, and I first played alongside Quaver as a D&D Bard and his FFXIV iteration went through ARR as Bard, so… Bard Quaver.
Mimi Dragoon. Rushanaq Summoner. Tsugumi (still) White Mage. Quaver Bard. That's our new hypothetical roster.
But the thing is, I only have one spear, and I have no Evocations, and I have no Harps. So most of these jobs are effectively locked to me right now. I could progress directly with the plot by attempting to enter Gordol's manor, but I don't want to carry on with my current party when there are so many new shinies, yeah?
So that means I need to put that on hold and find ways of actually playing the new jobs I'm interested in.
So, next time, we roam around a bit and try to make that party actually function, and then check out what it's like in practice!
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
The FF3 job system is neat, but does have the problem that there's...no real reason to do much job switching? Mastering jobs does nothing for your other jobs, and every job starting at level 1 means any job you switch to will be massively weaker than the ones you've had since the start, and will also take an age merely to reach parity. DS version makes this worse by giving you a massive debuff after every job switch that last for a number of battles.
As far as I know the most important thing in FF3 is party comp. If they made it easier to try the new jobs you pick up it'd be way more fun to play with.
Given that the only way he could think to get around a boulder with an airship was to ram it we've known his mind is a strange place for a long time.
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It does seem weird that they give you classes that are functionally unplayable, but that's Early Nineties Game Design, baby. What, useful classes that you can get the gear for upon unlocking them? Nah. That sounds like competent mechanical design to me, which is literally heresy.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Maybe, but some of the jobs seem to be straight upgrades over previous ones even accounting for the 'lost' job levels, and others at worst side-grades even with that loss. Knight seems like a flat improvement over Warrior in every way, even 'losing' 25 job levels in the transition, and going Scholar for one boss fights costs you nothing. Rushanaq had over 30 levels of Black Mage and that's great, but she was still 'only' wielding spells of the 3rd level at time of job switch, and I have to switch if I want to use the summoning system at all - and, in turn, I am pretty sure Summoner is a flat upgrade over Evoker once you unlock it.
Beyond that, while Knight is probably equivalent to Dragoon if doing different things, or maybe stronger (Cover is really insane), I'm only 'losing' 9 levels in the switch, which frankly isn't that much in the grand scheme of things. I think it's fine - a bit of a pain in the ass, but mostly fine.
The one I'm most curious with is Tsugumi, who is still a White Mage after this whole time and getting on her 40s (in job levels. I mean job levels.) I wonder if she's going to turn out to be my first case of "character's job level is so high transitioning to a 'better' class is temporarily a downgrade."
Pixel Remaster's total lack of a job-switch penalty does make it much easier to adapt your whole party to a given encounter, though. I really don't think any switch penalty is needed - the job level disparity is its own drawback to a flexible party composition while still leaving it a strong option.
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
I think they're mostly side-grades, but there are some that are effectively upgrades in all realistic senses.
Black-Belt is basically just a better Monk, sure the command abilities are completely different so BB isn't *technically* Monk+, but Retaliate/Counter isn't much use, even if Charge is very situational.
Ah, Dragoon. The class with just, so so much style, and some of the best characters across FF games are Dragoons, even if they tend to be just kind of...fine mechanically. It's always so disappointing.
Oh yeah, the penalty is intensely annoying. Picked up FF3 (and 5, for reasons) because of this thread, going through the 3d version on my Vita and hoo boy it's an unnecessary gimmick.