Final Fantasy a Casual Retrospective Part III

Even though Final Fantasy II was a critical and commercial success, the feedback Square received from players made it clear that it wasn’t the right direction to take with the series. So, for the third Final Fantasy they decided to go back to basics. Instead of reinventing the wheel like they did with the sophomore entry, Final Fantasy III would instead return to and expand on the concepts and ideas of the very first game.

And expand they did. Final Fantasy III was an ambitious game. I guess since this was going to be the final game on the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was on the way by that point, and the team having built up confidence after two big successes they wanted to end their 8-bit run with a bang. The entire team from the previous games returned. Although it would be Kenji Terada and Nasir Gebelli’s last hurrah with the series.

The one major name who didn’t return was Akitoshi Kawazu. He was off working on his own series called Saga. Which, as I went over last time, took a lot of the ideas Kawazu invented for Final Fantasy II and tried to make them good. Kawazu would still be involved in the series as a producer role on a few spin-offs, but it wouldn’t be until Final Fantasy XII that he would return to the mainline series.

The development of Final Fantasy III was tough. The team’s ambitions would soon run into that all too common issue of hardware limitations. The game was massive. With a file size of 512Kb it was one of the largest games on the console. So big that data management was an issue for the team during development.

Despite the issues, the game would still release only two years after the last game in April of 1990. Like the previous games it got very good reviews from Japanese publications, and commercially it would go on to be the biggest success in the series yet. In its first week it sold 500,000 units, and it would go on to sell 1.4 million units by the end.

From what I can gather, Final Fantasy III is considered the best 8-bit Final Fantasy. In a 2006 reader poll for Famitsu, Final Fantasy III was voted 8^th on the top 100 games of all time. For reference the only Final Fantasy’s above it were IV, VII and X. I don’t know how it stacked up in later polls, but people seem to love Final Fantasy III. In Japan. Because the west wouldn’t see this game until 2006.

What the hell took them so long? I don’t think I need to explain why the original 8-bit version never made it over. 1990 was the year the first game made its way to America, and if Final Fantasy II was too late for a localisation, III was right out. Like the second entry it was skipped in favour of the first 16-bit entry in the series.

As for why there were no other ports brought over, that’s because there weren’t any. Final Fantasy III never got a port to any other system for years. It was going to get a Wonderswan Colour remake, the original deal Square made with Bandai was that all three of the original Final Fantasy’s would see remakes on their handheld.

But while I and II made it over no problem, III was cancelled midway into development because they couldn’t do it. The game was so big they couldn’t fit it on the cartridge, and with no Wonderswan remake, that meant no PS1 or GBA version. I guess Square could have made a new remake of III for GBA at least, but they just never had the time. They were incredibly prolific during this period.

It wasn’t until the DS that the west finally got a version they could play. Officially anyway, there were plenty of fan translations floating around by then. But here’s the thing, that DS version was a fully 3D remake that greatly changed the game. It was not the exact same experience as the original. Even Wikipedia has two separate articles for both the original and the DS version.

Because of that, the first time we Gaijin got to play this in its original form was the Pixel Remaster. Which first came out in 2021. So, if my math is correct, that means it took 31 years for this game to properly release outside of Japan in an official capacity. Mother 3 fans, you no longer have a leg to stand on. At least not for another 11 years.

Despite it having finally come out worldwide, there still remains a certain mystique around Final Fantasy III. Because the game has been re-released so little over the years, in fact I think it’s the least re-released classic era Final Fantasy game, not many people have played it. The legacy of Final Fantasy III is that of the forgotten Final Fantasy. The one game we never got to play. That’s how I remember the DS version being marketed, as the lost Final Fantasy.

So going into Final Fantasy III was interesting. The contemporary reviews today are still mostly positive but do acknowledge the games flaws. With the big criticism being the game’s final dungeon. This is the only other Final Fantasy I’ve beaten besides the first game. I remember liking the game quite a bit, but I was also abusing the quality-of-life features of the Pixel Remaster. Going back to it, I was curious how I would feel about it without those.

Turns out, I still really enjoyed it. I can certainly see some of the criticisms people have for it, and the game definitely has moments that piss me off, but I found this game to be a fun time. It took everything I liked about the first game and expanded upon them while also introducing ideas of its own that are some of my favourite aspects of the series. Even if they aren’t quite as good as they would later become.

Our story begins with a prophecy from the Gulgans, a race of blind psychics, predicting that a great earthquake will bring about catastrophe. The earth will split apart, monsters will rise up, and the four crystals of the elements that govern the light of the world will fall into the earth. Said events being the portents for an even greater disaster. But hope remains, as four souls blessed by the crystals light will venture forth and save the land.

Right off the bat you can tell this is a return to form. We’re done with war stories and darker plots, for now anyway, and we’re back to a simpler tale of four heroes trying to rescue the world. Although unlike the first game where we start as four nameless adventurers, here we start as four nameless kids

We’re not warriors or magic users at the start. We’re four dough eyed, baby-faced kids who fall down a hole while playing in a cave. Our only given role is an Onion Knight. I assume because they have layers to them, which is the case from a gameplay perspective as you’ll soon see. From a character perspective, yeah not so much. We’ve also backpedalled to the characters being blank slates with no backstory or personality.

The only information we have on them is that they’re orphans from the quiet town of Ur. And no, we never find out why they’re orphans. They’re just parentless because it’s the easiest way to give them no background while still pretending they have one. I’d say this is a big step down from II which did give the characters actual backstories and characterisation, but it’s not like II did that good of a job at that. So this isn’t so much as a step back as it is a step sideways.

At least the characters talk in this game. Their dialogue is pretty bland and nondescript, but at least they react to what is going on. It gives them the illusion of having a personality if nothing else. I’m not that bothered by this. Like the first game the characters are meant to be avatars for the player. You give them a name, and they have no personality so you can roleplay as them and create their personalities yourself. Like any good RPG you have to use your imagination.

I should mention the 3D remake does try to give the characters more established personalities. They all have default names, different backstories and even different goals. Since I didn’t play that I can’t comment on how successful it is at this, but it is something I felt I should mention.

But our plucky baby-faced adventurers end up lost in a nearby cave that opened up after the great earthquake. Fortunately, they come equipped with knives, which seems very dangerous for kids their age, and they’re able to fight their way out. But doing so brings them into contact with the Wind Crystal. Which tells our heroes that they are it’s chosen Warriors of Light that will go forth and bring balance to the world.

Now there’s two ways of reading this. The intended way is that our young adventurers were destined to find this place and were chosen by fate in order to save the world. The other way of looking at it is that the Wind Crystal literally just saw the first four random people that came across it, said “eh, they’ll do”, and sent them off to save the day. Which is how I choose to head canon it because it’s just too funny.

But how are these little guys going to save the world. They’re just a bunch of kids armed with knives, not great warriors. The adventurers in the first game weren’t exactly seasoned, but at least they had actual skill sets. These kids are total newbs. I don’t think sending them out to save the world is going to end well.

But the Crystal isn’t sending them out as is. Because by choosing them it also gifts them with a portion of its power. Bestowing upon them the big new gameplay addition, and stand out feature of Final Fantasy III, the Job System. Remember in Final Fantasy I where you could pick from a selection of six jobs at the beginning of the game. Well III has decided to take that concept and instead of locking characters to a single job, it lets players swap between jobs as they like.

Want to turn the White Mage into a Warrior or a Thief into a Monk? Do it, there’s nothing stopping you. You’re free to make the party whatever you want and then change it to something completely different at any time. It gives you a lot more freedom in how you play the game. You’re still stuck to one job at a time, but being able to swap jobs on the fly makes it a lot less rigid than the first game.

Now, there are problems with how Final Fantasy III implements this system, but I will get to those at the most relevant time. You also don’t start with every job available to you. The Wind Crystal gives you the Warrior, Monk, Red, Black and White Mages with the rest being unlocked as the game progresses. I’ll cover the new jobs as we get to them, but the jobs you get at the start should sound familiar.

You, they’re all jobs from the first game, and they all pretty much play the same. The Warrior is a tank that wields weapons and armour, the Monk punches everything, the Black and White Mages cast different types of Magic, and the Red Mage is the jack of all trades but master of none. For the starting line-up I went with Warrior, Red Mage, White Mage and Monk. That covered all the bases I needed.

After picking your opening team and getting out of the cave it’s time to begin the journey. And like most RPG’s it begins with, you guessed it, buying the shit you need. The weapons, the armour and the magic.

Since the game has now gone back to having more defined roles, there’s a little less customisation in terms of equipment. Each Job has their own set of equipment they can wield. You can’t freely equip anyone like you could in the second entry. This is fine though. The ability to change Jobs is already more than enough customisation.

As for the magic, it’s thankfully handled a lot better. Before going over this though, let’s quickly go over the battle system. There isn’t much to say on it. It’s the same system as the last two games, and it keeps most of the changes introduced in Final Fantasy II like having rows in combat. It doesn’t massively overhaul the system, but there are some tweaks and additions to the formula.

For one the enemy counts have been reduced. While you can still have up to nine enemies in one battle, this is rare and only really happens in cases involving duplicating enemies. Which may not happen if you actually know how to handle them. On average the most enemies you’ll fight is around six. A far more manageable number.

Damage values have also been increased. We’re now into the quadruple digits meaning we can finally get that 9999 damaging hit high. Trust me there is a special satisfaction in getting that. It won’t happen often, but when it does you will feel like a god. Granted this also makes it harder to keep track of enemy health and how likely you are to survive a hit, but it’s not too hard to get general estimates for those.

Now let’s actually get to the magic. It still retains the changes made to it in II like being able to multicast spells, but thankfully the base power of these spells is much stronger since you no longer need to deal with levelling them up. Add on new spells that affect entire groups, and it is much better for crowd control. It still isn’t quite as good as it was in the first game, but it is far more helpful than it was last time. There’s one major downside though. The game has sadly gone back to using spell charges.

This is a change I don’t like. I didn’t mind the spell charges in the first game because spells were far more powerful. One high level black magic spell could win an entire battle on their own. You didn’t need to use that much of it. Here they’re not as potent. You’ll need to use more of them to get the same kind of effectiveness. III does make up for that by giving you far more spell charges, but that just makes me wonder, why bother with them to begin with.

The whole point of spell charges in the first place was to give a harder limit on how many spells could be cast. It was meant to encourage more strategic use of spells; you had to conserve spells for when you needed them. Here you don’t really need to do that. The higher-level spells are more restrictive with their spell charges, but low and mid-level spells give you plenty to work with. Even with the lack of Ethers, you shouldn’t have an issue with running out of magic. At least for most of the game. The end game is, well we will get to that in time.

There’s also been some balance changes to certain spells. Buffing magic is no longer permanent and can’t be multicast. I think is a good change. That was a little too busted and it was too easy to buff physical attackers and have them dominate every fight. There’s also actually no way of boosting physical attacks since Berserk isn’t here and Haste now affects speed and not number of hits. So the old strategy of buffing the physical attackers and wailing on bosses doesn’t work here.

This should mean bosses have more variety, except most of them do the same strategy of spamming party wide attacks. So most bosses wind up being you spamming multicast healing moves to keep the party alive while trying to stay on the offensive. It’s nothing too difficult. I’d say the balance is generally better than the previous two games. There’s not as many broken strategies and it manages to be challenging but fair with a few difficulty spikes.

But the battle system is still the same as before for the most part. I can’t complain about that though; it works well so there’s no reason to fix it. Although that wouldn’t stop them from doing that in the next game, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

The big improvement in Final Fantasy III is in the level up system. We’re done with the nonsense of levelling up stats with usage and gone back to experience points. It’s simple, it’s easy to understand, and it’s not easy to break beyond belief. This is how it should be. There is some stat maxing based on what jobs you use, but it’s not something you need to pay much attention too. I didn’t and I got through the game just fine.

One change to Final Fantasy III’s growth system is the Job Levels. The jobs will level up separately from the characters. The higher the Job Level, the better jobs get at what they do. As the Warrior levels up they do more damage, and the more the mages level up the more powerful their spells become, just to give some examples.

This gives you a bit more of an incentive to stick to a given job, but you gain Job Levels fairly quickly and honestly after a certain point the improvements become negligible. The whole Job Level system does feel a little undercooked honestly. I like the idea of Jobs getting stronger, but aside from one or two specific jobs it doesn’t really do much. You could remove it and not miss much.

I’m just glad we’re back to basics. I don’t have to worry about spamming the same spell a hundred times just to make it do slightly more damage. I just battle, gain experience points, and get stronger. That’s all I need. Final Fantasy III just plays a lot better than last time. Some things like reverting to spell charges aren’t welcome, but for the most part it feels like a step in the right direction. Keeping the good additions II brought while removing all the ones that didn’t.

After you’ve decided on a team make up and bought your equipment, it’s time to head off on the adventure. And the game definitely is an adventure. We’ve gone back to the structure of the first game. You won’t need to backtrack to home base, it’s one continuous journey.

The world also isn’t as open. It’s more guided like the first game was. Gatekeeping areas until you find a method to reach them. No need to worry about running into enemies you’re not ready for yet anymore. The overall game is very linear, but the game does open up more and more as the game goes on.

It doesn’t take long until the party find the first town, Kazin. Only to find it a ghost town. Literally, It’s a town inhabited by ghosts. Asking around you find out that no one is actually dead, they were cursed by a Djinn that was released by the earthquake and the only way to stop it is via a Mythril Ring. But the only Mythril Ring anywhere is held by Princess Sara in Castle Saronia. Hey I remember that name.

Another familiar name that happens to be in town is Cid. Who in this game looks like one of the seven dwarves. He wants to go back to his hometown of Canaan but can’t because, well he’s a frigging ghost for starters, and also because there’s a big ass boulder in the way. But one problem at a time, first they got to deal with the Djinn. In exchange for agreeing to help Cid back home he decides to lend the party his airship.

Jesus that was fast. It took us the whole game to get the airship last time; here we’re flying around in the first twenty minutes. Now that they have aerial transportation, our heroes head to Castle Saronia. However, the Princess is not around since she decided to head to the cave herself to deal with the Djinn. Well at least this Sara is more proactive than the last one.

 Heading to the cave the party finds they can’t go that far in. But if you asked around the castle, which you should be doing since that’s how you play these games, you find out there’s a switch that will open up a secret entrance. There’s a lot of secrets like this in final Fantasy III. Some are required but others are completely optional and lead to treasure.

Final Fantasy III has a lot more optional content. There are some extra dungeons and boss fights that you can completely skip but are rewarded if you decide to do them. It makes exploration far more enjoyable since there’s a lot more to find. The level design is also far better than the last game.

The levels are still windy with some dead ends, but they’re nowhere near as bad as before. At least you no longer have to deal with those bullshit trap rooms. There are more secrets to find in them as we went over, and while they aren’t as interesting as dungeons in later titles I still think they’re a massive improvement over the previous games. With one glaring exception, but oh we will get to that.

Finding a way deeper into the cave, the party find Sara who hasn’t made much progress since she isn’t much of a fighter. I appreciate the drive princess, but you really didn’t think this through. She tags along since she’s the only one with the means of actually dealing with the Djinn and becomes the first guest party member. There are a few characters like this that will briefly join the party. They don’t actually do anything, unless you’re playing the remake, but you can talk to them to get some more information on what to do next.

It doesn’t take long until you reach the Djinn and kick his ass. Sara then traps him in her ring, get it genie in a ring, and returning to the castle she’s able to return everyone back to normal. She also hints that she has a thing for one of the party members. What would that mean if they were a woman? Would that make her the first openly gay character in this series? Probably not. I’m fairly certain the party is meant to be all male, but nothing stopping you from head cannoning it.

Now that the curse is lifted the party go back to get Cid and now that the Kazin blacksmith is back in action he attaches a mithril ram to the airship to deal with that boulder. Which you do, by ramming the ship into it. Destroying the boulder and the airship. You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly Final Fantasy III, bravo.

Fortunately, the party is able to survive crashing headfirst into a massive hunk of rock, and Canaan is just round the corner. They drop Cid off at his home but find out his wife is sick and needs an Elixir. You can’t buy these though you can find one hidden in town, and curing Mrs Cid will open up Cid’s workshop where you can get some extra treasure. Told you the game rewarded you for the exploration.

By this point you’re leads have dried up and you’ll need to ask around town to find out where to go next. A lot of the game is like this. You talking to NPCs to get information on where to go next. This does mean there can be some running around trying to figure out where to go next, but it never gets as convoluted as the first game got.

Anyway, asking around town you find out about a gnome village south of Canaan, but the only way to get to it is by using the Mini spell to make the party, well, mini. Except that spell is not available anywhere, and there’s no other path forward besides the Gnome Village. The only lead you get is from a girl named Selina. She fell in love with a man named Desch, but he’s been missing ever since he went to climb Dragons Peak.

With no other leads to follow, the party climbs the mountain after him. Where they are abducted by Bahamut and dropped into her nest of dragon babies. Oh dear, that ain’t good. On a more positive note, they do find Desch and find out that he wandered up here because he has amnesia and wanted to see if he could find out more about his past. He also gives you the Mini spell so, hey, progress.

They manage to escape from Bahamut, who you can actually defeat if you grind like a lunatic but you’re best-off running away. Now it’s off to the Gnome Forest where you can then access a tunnel to take you to the next area. And it’s here where we run into a problem with the games Job System.

See, after you enter the tunnel, you can’t just make yourself big again right away. You need to stay in mini form until you get out. This means that any physical attackers you have become automatically useless since the Mini stat reduces strength to basically nothing. This means the game forces you to play magic users for this section if you want to get through it comfortably.

Which also means you need to buy some more spells for the party. Fortunately, spells aren’t too expensive, and it is possible to unlearn, relearn and exchange spells amongst the party, at least in the Pixel Remaster. I don’t know how it was in the original Famicom game. Maybe it was harder there, but that’s not the point. The point is that the Job System was created to allow the player freedom in how they play the game, but there are multiple instances where your forced to use certain Jobs to progress.

Again, it’s not hard to adjust the party to be what you need it to be, but it’s the fact you need to do this that’s the issue. Right when you get comfortable with whatever team you have, the game makes you change it. This was even worse in the original since Jobs had a Job Adjustment Phase that would make them weaker for a few battles. Thankfully the remake and Pixel Remaster removed this, but it doesn’t fix the issue of needing certain party makeups for some segments.

The tunnel is thankfully not too long, and the party find themselves in a cave of Vikings. You know Vikings, those guys who sail the seas, raid ships, wear eyepatches, known for wooden legs, hooks and talking parrots. Oh those Vikings and their privateering ways. But these “Vikings” aren’t doing much Viking stuff recently since there ships keep getting attacked by a massive water dragon.

Said dragon being their guardian spirit the Nepto Dragon, who has been going haywire after the earthquake. They agree that if the party deals with it they’ll give you a ship. You can try fighting it but that’s a good way of getting yourself killed. The only way of dealing with it is by heading to the Nepto Temple and see what is causing it to go berserk.

Heading there you find out the reason for the Nepto Dragon going ape shit is because the statue representing it in the temple has an eye missing. So you shrink down again, and you see what I mean. It hasn’t been five minutes and you’re already forced to change the party again. You go into the statue and get the eye back from the giant rat that stole it. Although in context it’s not a giant rat, it’s a regular sized rat and your just tiny, but now I’m just nit picking.

This calms the dragon down, and the Vikings give you a ship, the Enterprise. Now that we can boldly go where no warrior of light has gone before, the game opens up a little bit. There are a few towns you can visit. The first one I visited was Torkul, which is currently under attack from a giant floating tree bearing the banner of the Kingdom of Argus.

Now you can’t actually get to the tree since it’s flying in the air, and visiting Argus reveals there’s no one home. So, there’s not much you can actually do here. But speaking to the townsfolk does reveal another village to the east that’s home to a group called the Ancients. And this is where the game gives you a pretty big twist. The whole time you’ve been on a floating continent.

Yeah, the whole continent is floating in the air like Angel Island. Isn’t that cool. This is the kind of fantastical wonder that was missing in the last game. Visiting the Town of the Ancients also gives you a bit more backstory, and by a bit I mean a massive fucking lore dump.

Many centuries ago, the Ancients had an advanced civilisation that used the power of the crystals. But they eventually took it too far and the crystals went haywire. Flooding the world with light and plunging it into chaos. But there is another world parallel to this one, a world of darkness with its own elemental crystals, and four warriors from that world would use those crystals to reset the balance. What is happening now is history repeating itself.

This is a really interesting idea. The darkness in this isn’t purely evil, it’s a fundamental part of the universe that’s simply out of whack and needs light restored to balance it out. You can read a lot into the idea, the balance of good and evil, order and chaos. It’s less about conquering a dark force and more about finding balance.

This idea of light and darkness being counterbalances that are neither good or evil is a trope in a lot of Japanese media. It was even used as the plot for Super Smash Bros Ultimate’s World of Light mode. I find this to be a more engaging concept than making darkness the stereotypical evil force you need to destroy.

The next place to go is the Gulgan Cave, where you get a better run down of the balance of light and darkness, but more importantly you get told to visit the Tower of Owen. Something is about to happen there and that’s bad since the tower is what is keeping the continent afloat. If something happens to that then… yeah it’s best to deal with that.

You could visit the tower earlier, but you couldn’t get that far into it. You need the Toad spell to enter the tower proper. Which you get from a Gulgan in the cave. So with that in tow, it’s time to climb that tower. And no, you don’t need to stay a Toad you can turn back as soon as you’re in the tower. Thank goodness.

Climbing the tower, the heroes find a Medusa is trying to sabotage it under the orders of a man named Xande. We don’t find out who Xande is yet, but my real question is how the hell did the Medusa get up here. Can the Medusa turn into a frog? I don’t think she can turn into a frog. So how did she get in? By all accounts it doesn’t make sense.

You beat the Medusa but it’s too late. They’ve already done damage to towers, engine? I guess. It’s some kind of furnace at least. This is when Desch finally gets his memory back. Turns out he’s an Ancient himself. He and his dad Owen built the tower and helped stabilise the floating continent after it rose up many years ago.

Desch was then put into some kind of stasis, set to reawaken if the tower were in danger. But he was woken early by the earthquake and the long sleep he was under caused his memories to degenerate, explaining the amnesia. Now that he’s reclaimed his memories, he can fulfil his destiny and repair the tower, by jumping headfirst into the furnace. Oh, ok! So, he’s dead now I guess. Moving on.

Repairing the tower also removes a maelstrom that was blocking the wider ocean. Giving us access to the rest of the continent. At this point you’re supposed to head to the Dwarven Hollow, but if you head east you can visit the quiet town of Gyshahl. There isn’t much here other than a bunch of adorable sheep, but this is the first place to find Gyshahl Greens.

What do these do? Well by this point you’ve probably run into a few Chocobo forests. Yup, these guys are back but they’re far more plentiful this time. So you get to ride them more, but not that much more. There aren’t many areas where you need to travel far on foot. Plus, as you get stronger, weaker enemies show up less, so you don’t get jumped by worthless enemies nearly as often. So the random encounter rate isn’t so bad that you need the Chocobo.

Finding a Chocobo isn’t the only reason to visit these forests though. Using Gyshahl Greens in the forest can summon a Fat Chocobo. And when I say fat, I mean FAT. The dude is so big I’m pretty sure he caused the earthquake at the beginning of the game just from trying to move around. His sprite looks weird too. I can’t tell if he’s sleeping or if he’s struggling to breathe. I’d believe either explanation.

You can use the Fat Chocobo to store items you don’t need. I understand how he would store them; the real question is how you can get them out. Probably best not to think about that one. Unfortunately, the Fat Chocobo is rendered useless in the Pixel Remaster. See in the original version of Final Fantasy III you could only hold thirty-two items, which included key items since they didn’t have a separate inventory. It was much stricter, so the Fat Chocobo had a purpose.

But in the Pixel Remaster the item storage has been massively expanded. Besides only being able to hold ninety-nine of each item, there’s no limit in what you can carry. The Fat Chocobo doesn’t serve a purpose anymore. It’s only here because it was in the original. This is an issue with these Pixel Remasters; a lot of the quality-of-life improvements make certain parts of the design pointless.

I like the quality-of-life improvements, I’m not saying get rid of them, but making changes to a game can have a domino effect. Games are like a finely crafted puzzle where each piece fits together into a perfect whole. If you change one of those pieces, without considering how it connects to other pieces, then the picture isn’t as pretty.

This isn’t a huge issue or anything. While I personally prefer games with stricter item management, I have to admit that in games like Final Fantasy it’s better to just have unlimited item space. I’ll take this change, but it would have been nice if the Pixel Remaster changed what the Fat Chocobo did so he actually served a purpose. At least add a minigame or something.

While we’re on the subject of Pixel Remasters and Chocobo’s, let’s talk about the presentation. Now music wise I still kept to the original 8-bit music, but I remember using the arranged orchestral soundtrack in my original playthrough a few years back, and listening to it after playing this, it’s fantastic. The arrangements are absolutely beautiful, but a good reason it sounds so good is because the original compositions are incredibly strong. Final Fantasy III easily has the best soundtrack so far. It’s certainly the most ambitious with how many unique songs it has.

Visually speaking, this is the Pixel Remaster that got the biggest visual upgrade. The remasters for I and II took some influences from the original 8-bit games but also took some cues from the remakes. Since III doesn’t have a remake outside of the 3D one, most of the sprite and enemy designs skew closer to the original Famicom release. This is what the cancelled Wonderswan Colour remake would have looked like.

The battle scenes are certainly a lot livelier. I mean if you only play the Pixel Remasters then it’s just going to look like the first two games but comparing it to the original Famicom game it’s a big step up. They actually have backgrounds now instead of black voids with some backdrop at the top of the screen.

The enemy design is once again great, and while some of the returning jobs kept the same design as the first game, they did receive some added details to make them look nicer. Although some jobs did receive a redesign that are hit and miss. Not a fan of the Thief and it’s weird moustache. There’s also a lot of baby faces in this. It makes sense in some instances, like the Onion Knights are supposed to be kids so that makes sense, but a lot of the time it just makes them look like kids playing dress up.

I don’t think the idea was to make them look like kids though. I think they wanted to make them look gender ambiguous so you could make some of the characters female. Hell, the White Mage is often associated with women in this series and that could be due to its design in this game. While it is shown in artwork that the Warriors of Light are all male, there’s nothing stopping you from making them girls. Might be awkward if they’re one of the physical classes with facial hair, but I’m sure you can find a way around that.

But about the artwork, and this is where the Chocobo comes into this, I’ve mentioned before the games don’t follow the designs of lead artist Yoshitaka Amano. Despite how iconic his art is to the series, very little of his art outside of monster design actually makes it into the games. Final Fantasy III is the best and worst example of this. Because while some of his character concepts are reflected in the game, a lot of it isn’t. I still don’t know who the white-haired guy in the logo is. And then there’s his original Chocobo design.

Now, I actually dig this design. It resembles something from a Moebius comic. It’s weird but it’s French weird, so it’s cool. But that ain’t a Chocobo. Call it anything else but don’t call it a Chocobo. Chocobo are cute yellow chicken ostriches, this thing looks like a monster from an issue of Heavy Metal. If that was the Chocobo design I don’t think it would have gotten a spin-off series.

But the presentation is once again good. One aspect I’ve noticed is that there’s an increasing amount of sprite pantomime in the cutscenes. In I the characters barely animated, if they did at all, in II there was a little more animation and even a dance cutscene, in III we have scenes with a lot more action which makes the story presentation a lot more dynamic. This is something that is only going to further improve as the series progresses.

But let’s get back to the adventure since, we have a lot more to cover. Now that the ocean has opened up the party can finally start looking for the next crystal. Which is held in Molten Cave. Can you guess what the next crystal is yet. But the cave is blocked by a pillar of fire. Nearby though is the Dwarven Hollow where you find out the reason for the fire pillar is that one of the Dwarves Ice Horns has gone missing by a thief named Gutsco.

They give chase in a nearby lake, which is a stupid escape route since there’s no way out, and take the horn back by beating him up. After which a weird line starts following behind you on the overworld. Well I’m sure that’s not suspicious at all. They bring the horn back and, syke, Gutsco isn’t dead. He turned into a shadow to, well, shadow them and steal the other horn. Why didn’t he just steal it before if he wanted both? They’re right next to each other he could have easily grabbed it.

With both horns he runs into Molten Cave, and our heroes give chase. And it’s a dungeon with lava floors that hurt you. Of course it is. After playing a game of the floor is lava the group catches up with Gutsco at the Fire Crystal. Turns out he’s also working for Xande and was sent to corrupt the crystal, and he uses its power to turn into a salamander with crazy eyes.

This fight is obnoxious. All he does is spam Fire Wave to nuke the whole party for massive damage. Even if you have a decently powerful White Mage and the Cura spell, you will take so much damage from this guy that it’s borderline impossible to keep the party healthy. The only way to win is to pray he uses his physical attack since it only hits one guy, and you can easily heal that up. This guy was so annoying I had to leave the dungeon to stock up on items and level up a bit just to deal with him. Thank God the game gives you Teleport early.

Even when I beat the guy I never felt like I actually won. I just got lucky that he didn’t spam Fire Wave as much. Sadly, a lot of the bosses are like this. They just spam party afflicting attacks over and over again. This is not only repetitive it’s also annoying as hell to fight against. This is not good boss design. Honestly though, this is the only one that really pissed me off. Later fights can suck, but by that point you have better jobs and healing options so they’re easier to deal with. This is still fairly early in the game and it’s a massive difficulty spike.

But speaking of getting new jobs, it’s finally time to get some. After reaching the Fire Crystal, we’re finally gifted new jobs. Great, except it’s at this point that multiple issues with the Job System crop up at once. But let’s go through the jobs and cover the problems as we go.

The first is the Thief. Once again returning from the first game although much improved. They still aren’t the best in combat. They’re fast and hit decently well but don’t have much in the way of equipment and there are jobs that are faster and hit harder. But they can steal in combat now and have the ability to unlock doors in the overworld without using a Magic Key. Granted there isn’t much worth stealing in this so they still aren’t that great, but they are definitely getting better.

The next job is the Geomancer. These are special mages that use the command Terrain to cast a spell based on the environment you’re in. The spell is random, you might get an AOE spell or a single target one, but they’re decently powerful and Geomancers don’t have spell charges so you can spam these as often as you want. Once I got this it became my main magic user for a great chunk of the game.

Or at least I did when I actually got some equipment for it, which isn’t available for another few hours. That’s the first problem. Sometimes you’ll get a job and you won’t be able to make use of it until later. Makes it feel like a tease.

Next is the Knight. Which actually brings me to the second issue with the Job system. A lot of the jobs you get as the game progresses are just better versions of, or just outright superior to jobs you get earlier. Like the Knight. This is another returning job from the first game where it worked as an upgrade for the Warrior. It’s the same here.

The Knight is just a better Warrior. It can equip the same stuff but has more options, it has better stats, it has a passive ability where it will defend critically injured party members, and it actually has a unique command in Guard which greatly boosts its defence. Ok so it basically just replaces the Defend command, but it’s still more than the Warrior got. Which was nothing.

Because, if you hadn’t gathered by now, one aspect of the Job System is that every job has a unique command only they can use. Except the Warrior and the Monk. They don’t get anything unless you play the 3D remake. Which did change jobs to make things a bit more balanced. But in the original, the Warrior and the Monk are made obsolete by later jobs and they are not alone.

A lot of jobs are made obsolete by ones you get later on. Whenever you get new jobs, they feel more like upgrades rather than a new option to play around with. It actually makes the job system feel more limiting since early game jobs wind up being unusable after a certain point. Even jobs like the White and Black Mages who have magic that can still make them useful well into the late game, end up falling so behind in terms of equipment and stats that it feels like a detriment to keep using them.

The game clearly wants you to keep switching jobs. Which is fine, but it encourages it in the worst way possible. changing jobs should be encouraged by giving the player a lot of options to experiment with, but this game forces it by either having sections that require specific jobs or by making jobs obsolete. I’ll give it this, it did make me try out jobs I wouldn’t normally, but it didn’t stop it from feeling forced.

The next job is the Ranger which specializes in bows and arrows, and also the new throwing weapons but you won’t get those until way later, and their special ability Barrage lets them hit multiple enemies at once. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t offer much that other jobs can’t do but better.

Which brings me to the third issue. I’ll freely admit that this next problem is only one in hindsight due to later games, and it feels a bit unfair getting on the game for this, but it is still a big drawback I feel so here we go. You can only equip one job at a time.

I know that doesn’t sound bad but hear me out. Obviously later games with the Job System like V, Tactics and the Bravely Default series allow you to use two jobs at once. This is better since it gives you far more options with the number of combinations you can create, but there’s more to it than just having more options.

Truthfully, in the Final Fantasy Job System there are only a handful of jobs that are great on their own. A lot of them are just ok on their own and only become great when supplemented by other jobs. The opposite is true too. Some jobs don’t work well on their own, but work as supplements to other jobs.

Since III only gives you the ability to have one job at a time, that means a lot of the jobs need to stand on their own. Some can do that just fine, but others cannot. The Ranger is a good example of this. If I could combine it with another job like Thief it would be very useful. On its own though, it’s too one note and not nearly effective enough.

I should mention that the Ranger is actually different in the Pixel Remaster. In the original Famicom version the Ranger’s command was being able to cast low level White Magic. In the 3D remake this was altered to Barrage, which was kept in the Pixel Remaster. With the added change of it no longer costing an arrow to use. So the Ranger in this is like a combination of the original and remake versions.

Then there’s the Scholar which just flat-out sucks. The Scholar’s main gimmick is that they can scan enemies to detect their weaknesses and items they use are stronger. That’s it. Scanning and slightly better potions. Pretty damn lame, but it wouldn’t be a bad job if you combined it with a White or Black Mage. Again, it would be great as a supplementary job, but III doesn’t let you do that.

So not the best selection of jobs, and this is where the cracks start to show in how it was implemented. Suffice to say it’s easy to tell this was their first stab at the Job System. Well, second if you count the first game but I don’t. III feels like the proper starting point to me.

Anyway, beating Gutsco doesn’t just give us the Fire Crystal, you also get a Fang of Water that will be important later. For now it’s time to head back to the dwarves and give them their horns back. Doing so makes them open their treasury as a reward, but more importantly, a villager from Tokkul arrives and informs us the village is under attack again.

Heading there, our heroes are promptly jumped and captured by Argus’ forces. Except it’s not actually Argus behind this. Waking up the group find themselves locked up with King Argus who tells them his kingdom was taken over by his evil adviser Hein. Because of course it’s an evil adviser. Hein is a powerful wizard who manipulated the king and used his magic to turn the Elder Tree from the Living Forest into his own personal flying fortress. You can actually visit the Living Forest earlier in the game and get the run down on a lot of this. It’s pointless otherwise but I like that you can find it, it helps add to the worldbuilding.

Looking around you find the only way out is a tiny hole. If only we could make ourselves tiny, hey wait a minute. You break the Mini Spell out one more time, though thankfully you don’t need to stay small thank God, and you bust out of there. You then confront Hein who is actually a skeleton dressed like the Red Death. And I thought Jafar was too obviously evil. How did the king not see this coming.

But the party battles Hein and it’s actually an interesting fight since he keeps changing his weakness. This is the only time the Scholar is actually useful. But they beat Hein, and this frees the Elder Tree from his control. But the damage he’s gone through is so great it will take a millennium for him to heal, and he needs to shut off the Living Forest to do so. Hope you visited it while you could. After freeing Argus and his men, you return to his castle where you’re given the Wheel of Time as thanks.

No it’s not a book series that was turned into a shitty Amazon Prime show, it’s a device used in Airship manufacturing. Taking it back to Cid will let him turn your regular normal ship into a transforming airship. Awesome! Sure, it can only land on water, but we got an airship again. With this you can finally leave the floating continent and explore the rest of the world.

Or at least we could if it wasn’t completely flooded. Or in the remake under a swirling nexus of darkness. I’m not sure which is worse. There’re only two places you can go. A temple we can’t do much in and a shipwreck. We head there and meet a sick woman named Aria.

After curing her with a potion she informs us that the flood is due to the Water Crystal being corrupted by Xande which has not only caused the world to be flooded but also turned the people to stone. Which is better than everyone drowning at least. Aria is somehow connected to the Water Crystal and can restore it, so she becomes the next guest party member.

After picking up a crystal shard in the temple, you can now enter the Cave of Tides behind it and head to the Water Crystal. After reaching it Aria uses the shard to restore it, only to be assassinated by the entity that corrupted it, Kraken. Oh god not again. It’s worth noting at this point that Hironobu Sakaguchi had tragically lost his mother in an accident around this time. This is why there’s a number of deaths in this game despite it being a more light-hearted adventure. He was going through some stuff at the time. Remember this event though because it’s going to have way more impact on this series in the future.

After defeating Kraken the party mourns Aria. Which is done in the most overly dramatic way possible. I mean it’s sad but we’ve only known her for like five minutes. I’m sorry but seeing the characters shout her name in pain and anger falls a little flat when you’re barely even associates. I’m just saying.

Anyway, they get the blessing of the Water Crystal, the world is restored back to normal, and we get the next set of jobs. The first is the Bard who can buff the party with a variety of songs and even heal the whole party at once. Making them a decent support job. The one downside is that you need to level them up to get all their spells. So unless you plan on sticking with them, they aren’t really worth it.

Then there’s the Viking. And yes, it’s an actual Viking and not a pirate mistakenly named one. They have the horn helmets and the beards and everything. Their command is Draw Attack which makes all the enemies attack them. This is another addition of the Pixel Remaster. In the original the Viking didn’t get anything; the remake gave it the command. This really is a combination of both versions isn’t it.

The Viking is a decent tank, but it’s also slow. Slow to go in combat and slow to develop. They also don’t do as much damage due to them having lower accuracy. In the old games accuracy was just as important as strength in dealing damage since dealing more hits is more important than one big singular hit. So having less accuracy means your overall damage is lower. That’s why the best damage dealers have high accuracy as well as strength.

If you want a physical fighter that can actually dole out the damage, then go for the Dragoon. These were introduced in II, but III is where they gained their more recognisable traits. The Dragoon can wield a decent array of armour and weapons, but their main specialties are spears and jumping. Their command, Jump, launches them into the air and they crash down on the next turn for massive damage. That’s all they do really. It’s a one note class, but it’s a cool note at least.

You could also try the Dark Knight. These guys have decent attack and defence, and their unique command move, Sword Blitz, hits every enemy at once. This is a cool job, but there’s one critical flaw. The Dark Knight can only equip specific weapons and armour that you won’t have access to for quite a while. So you can’t use the Dark Knight at all until way after you get it. I told you this game could be a tease.

A Job with a similar issue is the Conjurer. They’re a magic user but you won’t have the magic they use until later. Granted it’s not that long until you get it, but it still would be nice to use it right away. But what magic do these guys use? Summon Magic. They call out powerful god beings to nuke the enemy.

Summons would go on to become a massive staple of the series. Even in games where there isn’t a dedicated summoning class, summons do still appear in some way, shape or form. They can even have a big part in the story. In fact, a lot of the series most iconic summons debuted in this game. The ice queen Shiva, the thunderous Ramuh, the fire demon Ifrit, the earth-shattering Titan, and Chocobo. Probably shouldn’t have ended it with that last one; it was a bit anticlimactic.

These guys would all go on to appear in pretty much every game after this. There are more summons, like Leviathan, Odin and Bahamut. These are just as iconic, but I mention them separate because while you can get the others from magic shops, you get these guys from optional boss fights. The fights aren’t too challenging, except Bahamut who is a bitch and a half, but they’re the most powerful summons in the game (except Odin who only works when he feels like it) so it makes sense.

The Conjurer isn’t the only summon job in the game. There is another one you get later which is just called the Summoner. This is the job that would reappear in later games. The Conjurer is weaker and its summons do one of two random attacks. The Summoner has summons with one ultra powerful attack, which are the iconic one’s people associate with them.

I can see why they would only focus on the one summon job. It doesn’t make much sense to have two. Regardless of which one you pick though, these are more jobs that suffer from not being able to be combined with other jobs. There’s a reason future games would have Summoners double as the White Mage. It just gives them more versatility.

But of all the jobs you get here, the best, by far, is the Black Belt. This is basically a better Monk. Like the Master in the first game, only with the original name of the Monk. Which is a bit weird, but the name does fit a lot better in this context. The Black Belt is awesome. They don’t have the best defence, but they hit like a nuke and they have two commands. Boost which makes they’re next attack stronger, and Kick where they dragon kick every monster on screen.

This is one of the best offensive jobs in the game. They can decimate pretty much everything, and Kick is great for crowd control. I love this thing. If it wasn’t for another job you get at the very end, I would never have taken it off my team.

Ok, so this next part of the game confuses me. After the sea subsides and the land returns to normal, the party wakes up in the town of Amur. Having passed out for three days and being taking to Amur by someone who found them. This is never actually shown to us. We just cut to the party waking up in Amur’s inn. I have so many questions with this. How did we pass out? How did we get found? How the hell did our ship go from being parked outside the temple to being parked near Amur in the cutscene where the land comes back? You can’t just not explain this shit.

Honestly, the reason for this is to simply justify the next series of events. Because when the team wakes up, they finds out their ship was chained up by some asshole named Goldor. Who is either a man obsessed with gold or a Power Rangers villain based on that name. He’s hold up in his mansion, and he has the Earth Crystal.

We need to get to him to get the key, but to get to the mansion you have to cross impassable swamp. To do that you need to get Levigras Shoes from Delilah, a crazy old woman who lives in the sewer.  This is where things get weird. There are these four old guys who run around convinced they’re the real legendary heroes. They try getting the shoes themselves, only to be subdued by monsters.

After saving them they realise four balding middle-aged men are probably not legendary heroes and they leave. But not before they lend a hand with Delilah. She’s cuckoo and tries to kill the party with an exploding shoe, but the old guys tell her that our heroes are cool, and Delilah gives us the shoes we need to get over the swamp.

I get this is supposed to be a more comedic scene, but it’s a bit of a stark tonal shift. We went from a woman dying and the entire planet rising from the sea to getting shoes from a cantankerous old coot in a sewer with help from four old guys all to fight a dude with a name from a Tokusatsu show, but that’s Final Fantasy for you.

You get the shoes and head to Goldor’s mansion, which is also solid gold. I wonder if he also has a rocket car. The mansion has a ton of locked rooms, so you either need to bring a Thief or a shit load of Magic Keys. You face off against Goldor who goes down incredibly easy, seriously it’s sad how pathetic he is, but he’s a spiteful bitch and destroys the Earth Crystal just so we can’t have it.

Spoilers, it’s not the real Earth Crystal. I mean we just got the Water Crystal; the game wouldn’t give us the last one so soon after that. Even the characters don’t react to it the way you’d think. But while this was a dead end, you do at least get the key to free the ship and can now actually explore the surface world.

Now it was at this point that I got a little lost. I knew where to go. Speaking around Amur gives you information on the town Saronia making it obvious that’s where the game wants you to go, but I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to land on it. It’s a landlocked city with a giant wall around it and the Enterprise can only land in water. I had no idea what to do at this point.

So I did what everyone does in these situations and wandered around until I found something. I think this is what you’re supposed to do though. Since you’ll be able to find towns that sell equipment and magic for the new jobs you just got. Hey, I can finally make use of some of these. Except you Dark Knight you have to wait.

I eventually discovered that you’re supposed to just fly near the Saronia castle to get shot down. I swear to God the game loves teasing me with these airships. The first one I could only fly around a small space then it crashes into a rock and breaks, and the second one I only have for five minutes before it was chained up, got it back for another five minutes and now it’s gone. I just want to fly around the world in an improbable ship-based contraption. Is that so much to ask.

Now that the party is actually in Saronia, they find out the reason they were shot down is due to the city being involved in a big civil war. The king has recently decided to have his forces split in two and have them fight to the death to see who will serve in the army. They dropped in at the worst possible moment didn’t they.

With no entry into the castle, the only thing you can do is explore the city, and I do mean city and not town because this place is huge. It’s an area comprised of four separate districts that act as individual town areas. Despite it clearly being this way to get around the Famicom’s memory limitations it’s still a really cool effect. This was the stepping stone to go from the smaller town areas of old RPGs to the massively detailed cities of modern RPGs.

Looking around town, you find the shops have all been shut due to the war, but you do find a bar where you find the prince of Saronia being harassed by a bunch of thugs. After helping him out he introduces himself as Alus and says he was banished by his father for speaking out against him. He agrees to go with you to try and convince the king to stop since there’s clearly something wrong with him.

Before you do that though, it is imperative that you go to the southeastern district and climb the Dragon Spire. See Saronia reveres Dragoons and this tower has a bunch of Dragoon equipment you can use. You can even get more weapons for them by talking to some old men scattered around town or from the one shop that still remains open. You need this stuff because you’re going to want to have four dragoons in your party for what’s coming up.

After returning to the castle the team is given a room to rest in, and while everyone is asleep, he tries to assassinate his own son. But he isn’t doing it of his own volition, he’s being brainwashed by his adviser. Ok seriously, is every adviser in fantasy evil? Is that a requirement for the job. Does it ask on the job form “Are you planning to betray anyone in the near future?”

The king manages to resist long enough to turn the knife on himself, dying to spare his son. The adviser then turns out to be a monster named Garuda, and this is why you need the Dragoons. The whole fight Garuda will spam thunder magic that wrecks the entire party. The only way to get through this fight is to have everyone be Dragoons and spam the Jump command until you win. That way you’ll be able to avoid enough of the thunder magic to take him down.

This fight sucks, but I don’t think it’s as bad as the Salamander fight. At least with this there’s an easy way to cheese it, and the game does tell you to use Dragoons before this. Multiple NPCs tell you only Dragoons can beat Garuda, and you can find out the adviser is Garuda before the reveal. It’s not hard to put the pieces together. It’s still an annoying fight where you need to get lucky to win, but it didn’t piss me off nearly as much.

After he’s dealt with, Alus is then named the new king of Saronia. Not bad for a little kid like him. As a reward the party is given a new airship that was recently unearthed called the Nautilus. Oh, well that didn’t take long. This thing is fast too. You can get anywhere at blistering speed with this thing. Which you’re going to need to get to the next area.

South of Saronia is the Dalg Continent, which is inaccessible due to the strong winds. But with this new ship we’ll have no issues getting through it. The party then finds a mansion owned by a powerful sorcerer named Doga. Entering it you’re confronted with Doga’s own personal bodyguards. A race of fluffy white bat bear things called Moogles.

This is the first appearance of the Moogles, and they would go on to become one of Final Fantasy’s most recognisable mascots. Although they were originally conceived for Final Fantasy II but never made it in. The Moogle is just as iconic as the Chocobo. Often being paired with them in multiple games. They aren’t as ubiquitous as the Chocobo, they don’t appear in as many games, but they’re also something you couldn’t imagine the series without.

The Moogles let us through after Doga realises that we are the Warriors of Light chosen by the crystals, and he finally tells us what in the hell is going on with this Xande guy. Many, many years previously, Doga, Xande and a witch named Unei were disciples of a great wizard named Noah.

When Noah died he bequeathed three gifts upon his students. Doga got Noah’s extensive magical power, Unei got power over the world of dreams, and Xande got mortality. Wait what?! Yeah, he gave two students phenomenal cosmic power, and one the ability to die. The reason Xande is doing all this is because he’s angry about it and afraid of dying.

That’s why the world was flooded, why the people were turned to stone. Xande corrupted the Earth and Water Crystals to stop the flow of time, which also caused the floating continent to split from the mainland. So, all of this, this pain death and misery, is because one guy was a shitty gift giver. What kind of gift is mortality?

Maybe the idea was to give Xande a gift to make him appreciate the value of life. To show him that the reason life is so precious is because it’s finite, but I doubt Xande would see it that way. All he’s going to be thinking is “oh shit, I’m going to fucking die! I don’t want to die.” Noah, what the fuck were you thinking with this. This whole plot only happened because you were an idiot. Wise sage my ass.

Doga also reveals that the Earth Crystal that Goldor shattered was indeed a fake. The real crystal is still hidden away somewhere. Doga agrees to help us stop Xande, but they’re also going to need help from Unei.

Unfortunately, she’s fast asleep and stuck in the dream world. Fortunately, there is a way to wake her up by playing Noah’s Lute. Unfortunately, it’s held in a cave that’s underwater. Fortunately, Doga can turn the Nautilus into a submarine. Unfortunately, in order to do this, you need to go through the Cave of the Circle, which has you shrinking down. We’re back to this shit again.

But you get the submarine and can now you can actually explore the bottom of the ocean. There isn’t much down there, but you can find a few optional dungeons, and you can get Odin at this point back in Saronia. It’s still cool that the game has an entire underwater overworld you can freely explore. I’m beginning to see why the Wonderswan couldn’t handle this. For how much is in this, I’m surprised the Famicom could handle it.

After you get the Lute, you wake up Unei who gives you the Fang of Fire, telling you these fangs you’ve been picking up are needed to get past four statues guarding Xande’s base. We have three but there’s still one left, and if we want to get it we need more powerful transportation. Which we can find in nearby ruins with Unei’s help.

You go to the ruins and Unei uses her magic to clear some rocks out of the way, and you make your way through the ruins to find the Invincible. An absolute behemoth of an airship that can fly over mountains. Well not fly over so much as it goes slightly higher and hovers over them. It’s more like a jump than anything else.

Mind you that’s only one of its functions. The Invincible isn’t just an airship, it’s a fully fitted flying base. It’s got a bed where you can heal up for free, you can summon a Fat Chocobo, and it has vending machines where you can buy weapons, armour, magic and items. Which includes equipment the Dark Knight can use. Finally, you can start using that. The Invincible will even fire it’s cannons to deal damage at the start of any random encounter.

Oh I forgot to mention that. Unlike the last two games, airships are not immune to random encounters. Which sucks, but the encounter rate isn’t too bad so it’s not a big deal. The one advantage airships have in this is you can’t be back attacked. Which is something introduced in III.

The previous games had ambushes where enemies went first, and back attacks are those, but they come from behind. Which reverses your row setup. So those squishy mages you put in the back are now in the front with nothing to protect them from the wrecking to come. I guess this makes the Row command have a use, but I just ran from these. It was just much easier.

Unei decides to head back to Doga. He stayed behind to look for something called the Eureka Key and Unei goes to help out. Meanwhile we can go look for the final fang, but with the Invincible you can go pretty much everywhere. You can find even more optional areas, including getting the last two summons, although I wouldn’t recommend getting Bahamut until you get the final crystal.

But we need to finish this, so the next stop is the Cave of Shadows. This is where you want to break out the Dark Knight, there’s even a town near the cave where you can buy Dark Knight equipment and train it up a bit. The reason you need it is because the Cave of Shadows is filled with enemies that will multiply if they’re hit with anything other than a Dark Knight weapon. This part can either be very frustrating, or a great way to farm EXP depending on how you view it.

But you go through the cave, and you get the Fang of Earth. With all four fangs you can get past the statues and enter the Ancient Labyrinth. Where you find the Earth Crystal, and its guardian, Titan. Wait isn’t he a summon? You defeat him, and you get the blessings of the Earth Crystal and the next three jobs. The Magus which is a better Black Mage, the Devout which is a better White Mage, and the Summoner which I already went over earlier.

Afterward you get a mental call from Doga to come back since they’ve found the key. You head back to Doga’s Manor, realise you need the Nautilus to get past the winds, go get that and, yeah this part is a lot of running back and forth. It’s obnoxious but it’s still not as bad as II got.

Entering Doga’s Manor again your immediately teleported to a new dungeon. Going through that you find Doga and Unei who inform you that in order to power the key they need to sacrifice their souls. Meaning you got to kill them. The party is reluctant, so the two sages transform into monsters to force their hands. With their deaths you get the Eureka Key and can now enter the Crystal Tower.

And thus begins the infamous endgame. The moment that for some players completely ruins the experience. Ok, first off, in order to get to the Crystal Tower, you need to go through the Ancient Labyrinth, properly this time. Now this isn’t so bad, but you have to do a dungeon right before the final dungeon. And there’s no town or rest stop between to heal. Let that be an omen for what you’re in for.

When you reach the Crystal Tower you can start climbing right away. BUT, before you even think about doing so, it is highly recommended that you go through the Eureka dungeon. This is technically an optional dungeon, and I say technically because, even though it’s optional, it’s also basically required.

Because Eureka not only has all the best weapons and armour in the game but also gives you the final two jobs. The Sage and The Ninja, which are by far the best classes in the game. The Sage is like a Red Mage on steroids. They can cast every spell in the game and can use all magic based weapons, including Staffs which can be used as items to cast free magic spells. I made a lot of use out of those to save on spell charges.

Then there’s the Ninja who is the best melee class. They can wield all weapons and armour, and they have access to the throw command which throws shuriken for an absolutely absurd amount of damage. Seriously, these shuriken do more damage than the strongest magic spells, including the summons. You mean to tell me that a god dragon with nuclear breath hurts less than a dinky metal star. Weren’t shuriken originally designed as a distraction. Why are they so powerful in this? It’s a good thing they’re a limited resource otherwise they’d break the game in half.

Eureka is also where you can get the last few spells, you can even buy the final summons if you hadn’t gotten those yet, but I’d recommend against it. You’re better off saving the money for shuriken since those are more expensive than current year grocery shopping. And you need these shuriken for the final boss. Trust me, you will need them.

You need all of this. Because the Crystal Tower is an absolute nightmare. It is one of the longest slogs of a final dungeon I have ever gone through. Just floor after floor of the toughest enemies, with no areas where you can stop to heal or save. You have to do the whole thing in one clean run. The Pixel Remaster’s Quick Save feature helps with this, but it doesn’t address the base design issues it has.

Here’s the thing though, I wouldn’t call the Crystal Tower hard. At least not in the Pixel Remaster. If you’re like me, you’ll likely max out on healing items and save your elixirs for emergencies. You should have plenty of items going in, and as long as you do you should be able to make it through the tower no problem.

Of course, that’s only possible in the Pixel Remaster. I can’t imagine what this place would be like with the limited inventory of the original Famicom game. That sounds like utter fucking hell. But even with this quality-of-life improvement making things much easier, it doesn’t actually make it any better.

The issue with the Crystal Tower isn’t that it’s hard. The issue is that it’s tedious. It’s one long slog of a dungeon with absolutely no reprieve that never wants to fucking end. Apparently Sakaguchi designed the tower this way because play-testers complained that it was too easy. If that is true, then this is a massive over-correction on his part.

It really is the incessant length that does it in. I know, it’s the last dungeon. Those are supposed to be long and arduous because they’re the final challenge. The final dungeons in the last two games were also pretty long. It’s expected. But the final dungeon in III isn’t just one long dungeon, it’s more like a group of long dungeons stacked on top of each other.

Remember in order to even get to the tower you need to go through the Ancient Labyrinth first, and you also have the Eureka dungeon to do too. Which is technically optional, but again, not really. You need the jobs and equipment you get from that if you want to finish this. So that’s two dungeons you need to do just before this one.

Now, you can go back to the Invincible after Eureka if you need to restock on items and heal up. That can help. But guess what, the Invincible is parked outside the Labyrinth. So if you want to rest you need to go through that all over again, and then go through it one more time to get back to the tower.

No matter what you do you’re doing multiple dungeons back-to-back. It doesn’t end with the Crystal Tower by the way. After an exhausting run up the tower, the party comes across a room with five dragons and a mirror. Interacting the mirror activates a trap set by Xande which paralyses the party and sets the dragons on us.

But just before the heroes become dragon chow, Doga shows up. He’s still dead, but he’s returned as a force ghost, and he decides to help us by gathering five allies to hold back the dragons. These allies all being the friends that helped us on the adventure, Princess Sara, Cid, Alus, one of the old men from Amur and Desch. They all come together to hold back the dragons and… wait a minute. DESCH!? I thought he was dead.

Nope. He’s been alive this whole time. He was just in the furnace back at Owen Tower trying to fix it like the ending to All-Star Superman. He’s fine, the whole death was a fake out. I sure hope the next game doesn’t overdo this and kneecaps its own narrative stakes or anything. Sure would be a shame if that happened.

But after getting by with a little help from our friends, we use the mirror as a portal to the World of Darkness. It’s here where we finally confront Xande who claims he has immortal life and is now unstoppable, before we promptly kill him. So that’s it then right. I mean we just beat the main villain so… roll credits?

No, because Xande was merely a puppet for a far more dangerous adversary. The Cloud of Darkness, an ancient primordial force that wishes to reduce the world back to the void. They’ve been behind everything the whole time, the earthquake, Xande corrupting the crystals, all the trials and tribulations we’ve been through are all because of this thing. This thing that came out of nowhere.

Yeah, Cloud of Darkness is a pretty shitty villain. I like the idea of it being a primordial entity of pure destruction. Less a character and more a representation of the inevitable end of all existence. That is an awesome idea, it’s almost cosmic horror, but there’s no build-up to it. It comes out of nowhere to take the spotlight away from the villain they’ve actually been building up all this time who is a lot more interesting.

The party is sadly no match for this thing as it kills them all in one shot. While all seems lost, Doga and Unei return to help us one last time by sacrificing their remaining magic to revive us. With that our heroes enter the World of Darkness proper to put an end to this. But we can’t just go and fight the final boss.

No, there’s an entirely new dungeon you have to go through. Because now you need to find the four Crystals of Darkness to rescue the four Warriors of Darkness, which involves fighting four more bosses, and that’s on top of the four Xande clones you fight in treasure chests for Ribbons. If you weren’t already tired of the end game, this part will do it. The one upside is that the crystals can heal you, so at least they offer us that small mercy.

But after all of that bullshit, you face the Cloud of Darkness after the Four Warriors of Darkness sacrifice themselves to weaken it. This final fight is a pain in the ass. The boss just spams Particle Beams at you which kill you in a just a few shots, This is why you save the Shuriken, because those can take it down quickly. So you throw a bunch of ninja stars at it, and it goes down. You get a speech about the power of hope, the day is saved, all our heroes and their allies go back to be with their loved ones, light returns to the world, roll credits.

Final Fantasy III is an interesting game. Even outside its status as the forgotten entry of the series. It introduced the Job System which would go on to become a staple of the series, both in the mainline games and in the spin-offs. It introduced many recurring creatures like the Moogles and the Summons. While II does deserve credit for giving the series a bit more of its identity, you could argue Final Fantasy III is where Final Fantasy became Final Fantasy.

I think the game holds up very well. The adventure is epic, the world is more fun to explore, battles are fast and strategic, the story isn’t great but has a lot of fun moments, and it looks and sounds great. I think Final Fantasy III is a good game, but it has some drawbacks that really hold it back from being great.

The Job System offers a ton of customisation, but the game forcing you into specific jobs for some sections goes against the idea of it, and it’s not as refined as it would later become. Maybe it’s not fair to compare it to games that came after, but it’s hard not to. It’s like comparing Paper Mario 64 to Thousand Year Door. The sequel does everything so much better it’s hard not to feel the predecessor is lacking.

And that endgame is exhausting. The game on the whole is a nice breezy playthrough. It only took me a little under twenty hours to get through, but that endgame is just too much. The Pixel Remaster helps out a lot here, but it was still way too long and tedious. I can see why the final sections kill this game for a lot of people.

But it didn’t kill it for me. Yes, there were moments that annoyed me before then, but it was a fun ride. I liked the adventure, and even in its simplest form I’m a sucker for the Job System. I still think the game is worth checking out, just be prepared for some frustrations now and then.

With that though, we are at the end of another Final Fantasy. But before I go, I want to introduce something new. I’m going to start ranking these games from best to worst. Since we’re going to be looking at a lot of games in this retrospective this should be a good way of keeping track of what I think of each of the games.

1.      Final Fantasy III

2.      Final Fantasy

3.      Final Fantasy II

No surprises that II is the worst one so far but choosing between I and III was tricky. I love the first game for its simplicity, and III does have much more recognisable problems, but III is a grander adventure and I think its high points are higher than the first game. So ultimately III is the best game so far.

But that could change in the next part. We’re heading into the 16-bit era, and this is where Final Fantasy really started to up its game. From presentation to story, the next game wanted to be the biggest and boldest adventure yet. Along with introducing a new battle system that would not only influence future Final Fantasy’s, but other beloved Square Enix games. Next time is a big one guys so make sure you tune in.