Final Fantasy Retrospective: Final Fantasy III

 

If there’s something to be said about the lessons both Squaresoft and Enix took from Final Fantasy II and Dragon Quest II, it’s that they should take more time to develop their games. They also learned a few lessons about both dungeon and world design. Squaresoft took everything they learned and realized what worked in their first Final Fantasy and what didn’t work in their second and came up with Final Fantasy III, releasing it in 1990.

Now, technically speaking, if I were to write these in the order that they came out, I should have talked about Dragon Quest IV first, since it came out two and a half months prior.

Final Fantasy III would really show what the NES is capable of, even more so than most games that came before it. The only games really comparable to it would likely be both Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest IV. Final Fantasy III was the last hurrah of the original system that put Nintendo on the map and which, when brought over to North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System, brought video games back from the brink of death. It’s not a bad way for the system to go out.

Unfortunately, this version of the game only came out in Japan, but it’s not all bad, we did get Dragon Quest IV, so there was still a heroic last hurrah for the system on our shores… even if very few people actually played it. But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual.

The problems with Final Fantasy II were many, but story was not one of them, so for Final Fantasy III, the developers got more ambitious and crafted a story about the balance between light and darkness and the dangers of upsetting that balance. If that sounds similar to Star Wars… well, and this is from someone who hasn’t seen The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker yet so I don’t know how the third trilogy handled things, but it feels like the Star Wars idea of a balance in the Force is that light must always prevail, since at the end of The Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine is killed by Darth Vader, who sacrifices his own life to do so. The Sith have always been presented as being few in number, so this would seem to indicate that the Dark Side of the Force has been “balanced” with the Light by there being no one left to practice it.

Final Fantasy approaches the question of how to balance these two opposite forces a bit differently. Darkness is not considered evil at all, neither in this game, nor in the entire series (with a few notable exceptions that will be covered at later dates). It is only a being that is purely of one and not of the other which is considered the true threat to all worlds. A good example of this concept was found in the bonus dungeon of Final Fantasy II, the Soul of Rebirth. While the main party fought against the Dark Emperor, the four martyrs fought a version of the Emperor made of pure Light.

The problem with pure Light is that it banishes all Shadow until none is left, creating a Flood of Light so pure, nothing can exist. For what is Darkness but merely shadow? The Darkness cannot exist without the Light, and Light without Darkness is nothing. The world of Final Fantasy III had been nearly cleansed by a Flood of pure Light many years prior, but the four Warriors of Darkness rose up to challenge this Flood of light and drive it back. Unfortunately, the world was nearly destroyed as a result and only a floating continent was left behind, perched high above the rest of the world, awaiting a day that was prophesied to come…

Despite that I played more modern versions of the first two games in the series, this time I chose to play the NES version of Final Fantasy III. Not only have I been playing the original NES versions of the Dragon Quest games, but I checked the save file on my Nintendo DS cartridge before choosing which version to play. It takes me approximately 50% longer to beat Final Fantasy III on the DS (and thus, by extension, the other 3D versions as well) than it does the original NES version, so my preference is usually the original NES version, for much the same reason as I prefer the GBA versions of the first two games. This doesn’t count all the time that I have to spend recovering from a total party wipe because the game was designed to screw players over, kind of like the troll rooms in Final Fantasy II.

The NES version is also the first game to really modernize the battle system. It was the first game where they figured out how to automatically change a character’s target for attack if their original target were to die before they took their turn. This alone makes Final Fantasy III‘s original version much more playable than the original versions of the prior two games. But that said…

 

We’re Three Games Away From The Phantom Train, But This Sure Feels Like A Railroad Already

One of the biggest annoyances I always encounter in Final Fantasy III is that the game is not balanced around player choice. This is basically Railroad Tycoon: Final Fantasy Edition. It all begins when the Warriors of Light go out into the world to start their task of saving it. Not counting the tutorial dungeon where no job changes are possible, the very first actual dungeon is crawling with undead, which are vulnerable to the Cure spell, and two of them are found in treasure chests. One in the Warriors’ hometown and one in the dungeon with the undead. Not only that, but the Warriors receive a sword that can only be wielded by a Red Mage and which is also pretty effective against undead. It’s also apparently a good weapon to use against the Jinn but at the same time, ice is also super effective. This basically means that the ideal party to take is a Red Mage, a White Mage, a Black Mage and one other. The Red Mage to wield the sword and equip one of the Cure spells, the Black Mage for the Ice spell and the White Mage to put the other Cure spell on, and the fourth party member is there to toss ice elemental items onto Jinn, since those are also found in some of the treasure chests.

It’s a good thing the White Mage has access to the Cure spell to damage undead enemies, because not only does the staff available for White Mages at the beginning of the game add absolutely no extra attack power unless a second one is equipped to dual wield, the White Mage also has a very low accuracy compared to the other jobs available. This is actually a major problem with healers in general in the Final Fantasy series, all the way through to Final Fantasy XIV until that game finally got rid of the garbage Accuracy stat in 2017, but now is not the time for that discussion. I’ll just say, for now, that the meme of healers wanting to only heal because that’s what they’re good at is one that the entire series is developed around. It seems like spells like Dia in the first game and Aero in this one were only added because otherwise healers with no damage to heal would have nothing relevant to do until unlocking Holy, which is usually a late game spell.

After defeating the Jinn, and let me just say that I appreciate being automatically teleported out of the dungeon and into the chamber of Sasoon Castle that contained the enchanted spring where the cursed ring needed to be thrown, the next dungeon for the Warriors is a mountain where a bunch of birds hang out. These birds are very susceptible to Aero spells, but due to how low a level players typically are, only two to four Aero spells can be cast at any particular time. Players would have to go out of the dungeon and back to town to rest in order to grind this dungeon. Here, a White Mage is essential, otherwise the birds are incredibly tough to beat and will wreck the party mercilessly. The first saving grace is that everyone knows having a healer along is essential in these games, so a White Mage or its equivalent is likely going to be used quite heavily from beginning to end with a few exceptions due to puzzle bosses, and the second is that the dungeon is actually rather short and consists of one screen, so it’s likely that by the time the White Mage runs out of level two magic, they’ve reached the end of the dungeon.

Magic in Final Fantasy III works the same way as magic in the first game, there’s a limited pool of casts per level and those casts go up as players progress. Where this game improves upon that formula is that there are a lot more spell casts available per level and the developers didn’t purposely develop more spells than the characters can equip. The game balances this out by making each and every one of these casts essential for getting through a dungeon, plus five more casts that the player doesn’t yet have. Yeah, the majority of the game’s a bit overtuned without even thinking about its nature as a puzzle game (more on that in a moment) and so players have to decide if now is a good time to use a Potion or healing spell or if they can stand to wait one more turn. The problem there is that, in my experience, enemies love to target single party members with several attacks in a row, so someone who only got hit once and for whom a healing spell would feel like a waste on, are suddenly hit by three or four hits in a row and if they don’t die outright, they’re in a tough position and must absolutely be healed in the next turn or else they’ll likely not survive the fifth hit. It can be a bit harrowing to sit there inputting commands into the game and thinking “Okay, will the White Mage be fast enough to cast their Cure spell or should I have my Fighter use up a turn tossing a Potion instead of attacking the enemy? The lower damage output this turn will almost guarantee taking more damage overall, but at least someone won’t die.”

The next pair of dungeons explore the challenges that certain status effects can have on gameplay by making them essential to the solving of the game’s puzzles. The Mini spell makes all of a character’s physical stats 1 no matter what equipment they might be wearing, so the entire sequence where players must navigate two dungeons shrunken down pretty much requires everyone to be mages, since magic power is not affected by the Mini status. This might have been a problem, were it not for the fact that offensive magic is available to purchase during this time, so a party with more than one Black Mage won’t be at a disadvantage. It does no good to change into a Black Mage and have no spells to cast, of course.

These dungeons quite explicitly show the design philosophy of Final Fantasy III. Rather than making the dungeons of the game a mild challenge with specific classes that the player can optionally use if they want to make things easier for themselves, the dungeons are instead rather difficult without those classes, which are required in order to not have to grind for experience. You could grind if you want and then go through these dungeons at a high enough level that your HP gives you the cushion you need to not die. Or you could give in and save hours and hours of time allowing yourself to “solve” the puzzle the developers laid out for you and switch to specific classes to get through each dungeon.

I think the biggest reason that this sticks in most people’s craws is that for most of the series, jobs are tied to player identity. Final Fantasy has players choose jobs at the very beginning and these jobs are permanent and stick with the player to the very end. Final Fantasy V doesn’t penalize players for experimenting with party composition and many players also have preferred jobs that they fall back on when they replay the game. Not only that, but the classic jobs are available right from the start and many players are just a lot more comfortable choosing their favourites and sticking with them for as long as possible. Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV encourage players to choose favourites and take those favourites into content such as end game raids and dungeons. Players use the term “main” to describe their preferred classes. My own main in Final Fantasy XIV is Black Mage, but I’m also equally comfortable playing White Mage, Bard (“Archer” with Bard spells, it’s a remnant of an earlier time in the game) or a tank class such as Paladin.

So for Final Fantasy III to turn the job system into a set of puzzles for players to work their way through, it runs opposite to what a job system should be, and is likely why players prefer later games in the series over this one. Sure, a player could try a party of four White Mages like they could in the first game, but certain bosses like Garuda are going to be real murder to try to defeat because of the way the game is set up. Whether this was to encourage players to play with more than just their core favourites or because this was the only way the developers knew at the time to try to balance the game, it ultimately makes for an experience that feels lacking somehow. Like one is going through the motions when playing the game. “Oh great, here’s the sequence where I need to equip four Dragoons to get through, I’ll switch ahead of time so I’m ready.”

The game tries to put a restriction on switching jobs, requiring a shared pool of Capacity points to spend on switching, but the game also provides more than enough Capacity to make it easy to do at any time. The Capacity pool maxes out at 255 points, but that’s more than enough. By the time I felt like I needed to switch jobs (to “solve” a puzzle or just because I felt like trying one out), I had more than refilled my Capacity from the last time I used some. This renders it pointless since it’s always available in a large enough quantity that it might as well not exist.

But speaking of switching ahead of time, I wonder if the game’s DS remake – the release in which all other remakes of the game are modeled after – was made with veterans of the game in mind, because that version of the game comes with a penalty system for switching jobs. When a player first switches to a new job, the characters’ stats are lowered as if they’re trying to acclimate to this new job they find themselves using. This is an interesting idea, but it just means that it feels like there’s something working against the characters’ survival even more than there should be. This especially feels galling during the aforementioned Dragoon sequence when players find out that they need to switch to that job since Garuda is weak to them. When do new players find out about this battle and the solution that should be employed? Pretty much a couple minutes before the Garuda fight, but after the player’s second airship is cannonballed out of the sky, trapping them within the walls of Salonia where there isn’t a lot of good random encounters to fight and level up with. There should be enough time to swap to Dragoon and try to distribute enough equipment around that everyone’s got enough protection to survive the Garuda fight when players find out about it, but on the DS, everyone is likely fighting Garuda with lowered stats unless they somehow knew ahead of time this was coming and could swap to Dragoon, then fight a few random battles to erase their stat penalties. Over here in the Western world, since the original game was never officially released, there was absolutely no legal way for us to know ahead of time that this was going to happen, other than looking up strategy guides to spoil the game. Was this Square-Enix’s way of subtly rewarding those of us who had pirated the game and kept it in the spotlight for those of us who couldn’t read Japanese and thus knew the Garuda fight was coming, and subtly punishing those who followed the law and refused to steal a copy and therefore would’ve been taken by surprise by this particular boss fight? Probably not, but it’s certainly not a friendly system to players who are new to the game.

If you ask me, the penalty system in the DS version is like telling someone you’ll punch them in the face every time they handle money of any kind, then asking them to buy you a pizza.

 

A Gentle Nudging In The Right Direction

A little bit of railroading isn’t always a bad thing. One of the issues some players have with the Final Fantasy formula is that they often feel like the plot is too linear and they would like to wander off and explore. This can be done well, but it can also be done poorly. Final Fantasy II tried a more open world approach to the game, where you actually could make your way around the world to places like Mysidia right from the start. You’d get beaten into the ground if you tried, but you could’ve theoretically save scummed your way down there in the Game Boy Advance version. The game illustrated well why the first game was built the way it was: if you can go anywhere you want and enemies are scaled to the level you’re expected to be when you reach that point in the story, but you get there twenty hours ahead of schedule, you’re going to have a very bad time.

An open world game is not necessarily bad. It’s possible to make one which encourages exploration and doesn’t overly punish players for going “out of bounds” so to speak. The original Dragon Quest is one such game, where players can cross bridges if they want, but they know ahead of time that across the bridge are tougher enemies. The game doesn’t outright destroy a player if they go across the bridge too soon, and the player is strongly encouraged by that rather scary encounter to turn around and try somewhere else first.

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy II did the open world concept rather poorly, especially given the other systems put in place, the abnormal stat growth system being one of them. It’s a shame that this was one of the babies thrown out with the bathwater, since the stat growth system might’ve worked in other contexts; it was eventually brought back for the SaGa series, but its return to Final Fantasy could’ve been great if it was handled a lot better. It’s sort of like how very few of the ideas used in the DS game Lunar: Dragon Song were bad in and of themselves, but put them all together and the game suffered.

Anyway, Final Fantasy III returns to the method of storytelling that the first Final Fantasy used, where certain geographical features and key items funnel players through a rigidly told narrative about the looming end of the world, where four Warriors of Light must push back the darkness and restore the balance. After the tutorial dungeon, these potential Warriors wander back home, but they live in the mountains and so there’s only one route to take. Then they’re told that they need to go start their journey to save the world, so they wander further out from their home with mountains on either side of them, and there are really only a couple places to go. There’s also a big rock in the way of their forward progress, so they’re required to solve the curse of the Jinn before they can continue.

At one point about five to six hours in, the game is a little coy about what the player is supposed to do. The first thing that the Warriors see once they acquire the Enterprise and can sail around freely without worrying about Nepto preventing their progress is a town where soldiers from Hyne’s Castle have been abducting people and taking them to a floating tree being towed around by demons. The player can’t get onto the tree no matter how hard they try, but there’s a village of ancients nearby that they can visit. The village doesn’t offer anything of value, so the player continues to cruise around, whereupon they find a forest of fairies. The fairies lament that their great tree has been carved into the form of a castle and is being forced to move around in the desert and their forest may die if the tree isn’t restored to its rightful place and form. It looks for all the world like this is the next quest, but try as the player might, there’s absolutely no way to move forward in this quest. The worst of it is that the player also found out that their next airship is likely to come from the king of Hyne’s Castle. The game has pretty much done everything except erect neon signs telling the player that their next task is to rescue the townsfolk and restore the tree.

The reason that there aren’t any neon signs out is because there’s a cave subtly hidden away in another set of mountains. There, a bunch of great sages are waiting for the player to find them. They were subtly hinted at by an NPC, but their whereabouts were not divulged. Their purpose is to bestow the player with the Toad spell, which is the key item needed to unlock the Tower of Owen where they must defeat the Medusa who is going to destroy said Tower and cause the Floating Continent to fall back towards the planet and be destroyed. Once Medusa is defeated, an NPC named Desh will fix the Tower and cause an eddy to disappear, one that’s preventing players from exploring the Continent further.

 

LOLDRG

A lot of the game basically consists of figuring out the puzzle to unlock the next area. Yeah, the world needs saving, but if you just jumped off of Bahamut’s mountain, you need to go through a couple gimmick dungeons that don’t actually add to the narrative of the game at all. One of the strengths of later games like Final Fantasy IX is that it feels like there’s very little padding, that everything in the game happens because of and feeds into the plot. Final Fantasy III doesn’t always give this impression. The original Final Fantasy didn’t always give this impression either, but it was also the first game in the series and didn’t have lofty heights of storytelling to live up to. That said, the game rarely meandered, and everything that happened seemed to still have a purpose and could be tied to the plot with a minimal amount of ass pull.

Final Fantasy III meanders at times. For example, why do there exist several dungeons and a tiny village that you have to navigate as a miniature person? I don’t know, but one of the dungeons fully unlocks the ability to sail around the inner seas of the Floating Continent so it’s not a 100% pointless endeavor to do, it just could’ve been tied to the narrative a bit better.

I know that I didn’t give Dragon Quest III grief for basically doing the same thing, giving players smaller stories that slowly unlock the next portion of the world and eventually grant the party enough strength to go after the main villain, but the difference between the Dragon Quest series and the Final Fantasy series is that, up to this point in the Retrospective, Dragon Quest has not put a lot of focus on delivering a strong narrative from beginning to end. In fact, even in the year 2020, Dragon Quest doesn’t have the same reputation for strong narratives that Final Fantasy has, and games like Dragon Quest IV and Dragon Quest V are seen as some kind of holy grail of gaming. Final Fantasy, meanwhile, not only has a reputation for putting story over gameplay (which is why Final Fantasy XV is so divisive), but they also established this reputation in Final Fantasy II. Final Fantasy III had lofty heights to aspire to, but looking back on it in hindsight like this, it’s easy to see it fell short.

For all its faults, Final Fantasy II is an example of a good, coherent narrative which may have gone off its rails at the very last, but at least it stayed on topic for the majority of the game. Everything the characters did drove the plot forward and it’s because of this strong narrative that expectations can be high when playing Final Fantasy III. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy III definitely does not take the crown for the NES RPG with the best story.

At one point during every playthrough of this game I have ever done except for my first, I find myself grinding for levels in a cave near Salonia. I realize this is avoidance on my part, since Salonia is where the second airship gets destroyed in order to lock players into fighting Garuda, and I know it’s coming and I don’t want to have to swap everyone to Dragoons and locate some Wind Spears and then swap everyone’s equipment out so that I can fight and defeat Garuda and then swap everyone back to their previous jobs since they’re working well for me already just as they are.

The worst part of this is, I likely don’t have to buy eight of them but I do anyway and it uses up nearly all of my gil every time (71876 gil and I this time I had 72724 when I bought them).

Maybe I should only buy four spears, but Garuda drops so quickly when I fight her with eight that I feel it’s worth it. Then I run into the part of the game where players must venture into the Cave of Darkness, which is filled with enemies that will split if you hit them unless they’re attacked with the Mystic Knight’s weapons (Dark Knight in all the official translations).

My first foray into the dungeon this time made it perfectly clear that only the Mystic Knight (and maybe one White Mage in the back row) was going to be accepted. One disastrous enemy encounter saw everyone but the one Mystic Knight I had switched over get absolutely slaughtered by enemies who were able to inflict Defenseless on whoever they hit, upon which the next hit landed for almost two thousand damage, and down went the party member. This is why I do not like the game’s version of puzzle dungeons.

The tragedy of doing a detailed retrospective series on Final Fantasy is that I’m picking apart games I thought I liked and finding ways in which the game design is simply not fun by today’s standards, which causes me to question why I enjoyed the games in the first place. Some of these designs were likely perfectly fine thirty years ago, but today, giving players a job system and killing them if they don’t use the “proper” jobs at the “proper” time is not fun. Yes, the game warns me that I need the Mystic Knight class, but I’m also told I need a Red Mage for something earlier in the game and only one sword is provided, hinting that only one Red Mage is required. I’m also not penalized for only bringing one Red Mage, I’m rewarded for having one along. The Cave of Darkness punishes players for daring to bring a class other than a Mystic Knight, just like the game punishes players for daring to have anyone other than four Dragoons during the Garuda fight. But the Garuda fight sticks out to me so much as to be one of the most memorable things about the game, so I no longer find out the hard way that I’m screwed if I bring anything else along. The Garuda fight also happens to be the turning point for the game’s puzzles, whereupon players are supposed to realize that going forward, the entire party must swap out to new jobs or else things will be exceedingly painful for them.

At least the Mystic Knight, in the original NES version of the game, comes with the first three tiers of White Magic, so if the White Mage is swapped out, the party is still capable of healing up a little bit after a fight. What’s interesting is that in the DS remake, and every subsequent version of the game, the job operates more like it does from the fourth game and onward, where a Darkside ability uses up the character’s HP to deal powerful attacks and White Magic is strictly off limits.

 

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel… Is Always An Oncoming Train

Fortunately, at this point in the game, the end is in sight. After the Cave of Darkness comes the Labyrinth of the Ancients. Players who were wondering where the last Crystal was kept will find it here and receive most of the rest of the game’s jobs, which are upgraded versions of the Black Mage, White Mage and Conjurer. The Summoner makes its first appearance in the series here, and even though they summon the exact same espers as the Conjurer, these espers actually deal damage now, and it’s the Summoner and not the Conjurer that the series will model the job after in future games.

Unfortunately, the Labyrinth has a high wall around it that not even the best airship in the game can fly over, so if players need to rest and buy items, they’ll have to not only escape the towers beyond, but walk back through the Labyrinth. It’s probably the most punishing end game of any in the Final Fantasy series, since there still weren’t save points in dungeons at this point.

Within the Syrcus Tower-

Okay, I understand I’ve been using a combination of official names and fan translated names in this retrospective, but having played a lot of the original game and even more of Final Fantasy XIV, which heavily references this game in much of its side content and even more in the story of Shadowbringers, I have my preferences for the names of each dungeon and location in the game. For example, the Sylx Tower in the fan translation is actually known as Syrcus Tower in both the official version and in the 24-man raid in Final Fantasy XIV.

Within the Syrcus Tower, there is a portal to a forbidden land known as Eureka and although this is an optional dungeon, the final boss is most definitely designed to be fought using whatever players find there. Not only will the party gain several levels while navigating this forbidden land, they’ll also receive the final two jobs which are necessary for defeating the final boss. This version of the Ninja’s claim to fame is that they’re able to equip every single weapon in the game, and they even receive the best weapons possible on their way through the dungeon. The Sage can cast every spell, including summons, and since they also have the most spell charges of any class, they are in essence much better summoners than the actual summon class.

Unlike most of the game, by now players won’t run out of spells by the time they reach the end of a dungeon. Plus, one of the most interesting aspects of Eureka to me is the presence of a spring to restore HP and MP on the very last floor, as if the developers were encouraging players to switch to the Sage class. This is also where players can buy the level eight spells, using up only 360000 gil, which is less than the amount earned from battle on the way there.

Upon leaving Eureka, it’s a good idea to walk out the front door of Syrcus Tower and save, for it’s the last chance players will have to do so. The end of the game is basically a gauntlet through two dungeons, fighting several bosses in order to finish the game. You see, after defeating Zande, the game delivers what can be considered the first true fake-out final boss of the series. Just like Dragon Quest III, there’s another realm to explore, although there isn’t a second world map to navigate here. The World of Darkness consists of one dungeon with four bosses and then a fight against Dark Cloud.

The Cloud of Darkness lives in the World of Darkness and seems to have been created out of Zande’s hate. The characters call her Zande’s folly. True to form with final bosses in the third game in each series, the Cloud is a lot tougher than both Chaos and the Dark Emperor.

I feel like there’s a lot to say about Zande. He’s probably the weakest Final Fantasy villain so far in this Retrospective. I give the Dragon Quest series grief about final bosses just sitting on their thrones and waiting for the heroes to come and defeat them, but that’s basically what Zande does. This is the main reason why most writers are encouraged to show and not tell. We see the world in the state it was left after the Flood of Light, but we don’t actually ever see a comparable Flood of Darkness arriving.

I sympathize with him, too. It’s easy to imagine he had a good reason to flip out and try to end the world. It’s easy to look at the great gifts your fellow students got from your teacher, Noah, then see the “gift” of mortality that you got and think that you’re being given a raw deal. I mean, what could Noah have been thinking? Was Zande that awful of a student that Noah was giving him this gift as a passive-aggressive way of telling him to die in a fire?

And what does he do with this desire to end the world? …not a lot, as far as I can tell. He’s apparently going to destroy everything with a Flood of Darkness, but this is only because a bunch of crystals and a prophecy tell us this is going to happen. Zande doesn’t actually do anything during the game, at least not that anyone can see.

Chaos was much more proactive. The world was already rotting by the time the Warriors of Light came along to set things right. Although the original Final Fantasy also depends on telling the player what’s going on, we can see the effect that the Four Fiends have already had on the world.

The Palamecian Emperor was probably the most proactive villain on the entire NES, outside of maybe Psaro the Manslayer from Dragon Quest IV (I really should’ve played Dragon Quest IV, I guess). The Empire was constantly after you and even managed to destroy much of the world during their war with the rebels. Kefka may get the credit for being the first Final Fantasy villain who wins, but the Palamecian Emperor sure was pretty successful at destroying the world, too. Comparatively, Zande’s just… there. We’re told he’s a threat to the world and so we go and kill him after solving everyone else’s problems first.

I suppose it’s both a mercy and a curse that the party fought and lost against the Cloud of Darkness immediately after fighting Zande, but it’s a scripted fight that we’re supposed to lose and it’s very tempting to have gotten that far in the game and start liberally applying Phoenix Down and Elixir to try to survive and beat the boss rather than to die and lose a bunch of progress without realizing that we’re supposed to die. It almost feels malicious that the game introduced the Cloud like that.

The mercy comes after, for when the Warriors’ allies show up to encourage and revive them, this restores their HP and MP, allowing them to have a much easier time with the boss rush in the World of Darkness, for it turns out there are four Dark Crystals to go with the four Light Crystals, each one requiring players to defeat a boss. Some of them are much easier than others, though.

The two-headed dragon is my least favourite of the four bosses. It would have benefited the player to know ahead of time that this boss can hit for over 6000 damage per hit, since the best way to fight it without having to gain twenty levels is to put all the characters in the back row. Unfortunately, the dragon is also very fast and can sometimes act before the party does, so by the end of the second turn of battle, players will only have two characters in the back row, and several turns will go by before the other two characters can join them. Even then, 4000 damage can be done per turn and even characters with levels in the low to mid 50s and standing in the back row will drop in one hit. Getting to level 60 might be the easiest solution to get past the dragon, but it’s also pretty time consuming, especially when a common enemy to fight is a clone of Scylla and she doesn’t grant much experience. She’s very susceptible to petrification, and at end game, three of the most powerful weapons for Sages can all cause petrification status. All it takes it getting hit with them for a total of three times for her to die, and thus preserve everyone’s magic for those enemies that are immune to the statue status. But that said, I’d rather not end up fighting more than sixty of her, one at a time, in order to level up even once.

Eventually, it comes time to fight the Cloud, and in her original NES form, she only has one attack, but it deals massive AOE damage and requires a lot of healing to overcome. Unfortunately, the party doesn’t have very good AOE healing. One cast of Cure 4 on the entire party only restores about 500-600 HP per party member at this point, and the FlareWave can do about 1500 damage per hit, although it can hit for as much as 1800 damage sometimes.

If players are having trouble fighting the Cloud, even after unlocking the best weapons and jobs, buying all the spells and having a bunch of Elixir as back-up for when the damage is just too great to heal through, the only recourse would be to grind for levels until the damage is more manageable and the healing more significant. The trouble is, I was level 54 when I fought the Cloud, and even with the best magic users available as well as gear designed to increase the stat responsible for healing, Spirit, equipped to the main healer, my total healing per round was something like 1000-1200 HP per character. High damage rolls from the Cloud will easily outstrip efforts to heal it, and I likely should’ve just brought three Cure4 spells with me instead of giving my intended Black Mage all Black Magic spells.

 

End Of The Line

The final word on Final Fantasy III is that its implementation of the job system is lacking in versatility, feeling instead like it was intended to facilitate a type of puzzle game rather than the balanced and nuanced version that Enix came up with for Dragon Quest III. Both versions had their shortcomings, although the only real shortcoming in Dragon Quest III was that the final boss couldn’t easily be defeated without changing jobs at least once. Final Fantasy III looked at that system and said “I can do worse, hold my beer.”

And that’s a shame, since the game itself can be pretty fun, and games with job systems are some of my favourite games in the Final Fantasy series. I’m looking forward to writing about Final Fantasy Tactics, exploring Final Fantasy XIV all over again and exploring Final Fantasy XI for the first time. Final Fantasy V is coming up rather soon, too, and Dragon Quest has some decent games with jobs coming up as well, although admittedly, the best Dragon Quest games are the ones without a job system.

With that, there’s only one game left on the NES to talk about. Dragon Quest IV was released a couple months before Final Fantasy III, and just like how the third Final Fantasy began the modernization of its franchise, Dragon Quest IV sports a design more similar to later games in its series than to its earlier games. In fact, Dragon Quest IV is basically a SNES-era game released on the NES, and for all that I’ve talked it up already in this article, I’m looking forward to talking it up in my next Retrospective.

 

Next: A month-long going away party for Mobius Final Fantasy begins on Wednesday! Expect the Dragon Quest IV Retrospective to be posted July 8, 2020!