Final Fantasy III

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JaySevenZero
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Final Fantasy III

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can leave your thoughts regarding Final Fantasy III for possible inclusion in the podcast when it's recorded.
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ColinAlonso
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Re: 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by ColinAlonso »

I feel that Final Fantasy 3, or at least the remade version of Final Fantasy 3, provides more charm than the previous two games in the series. The overall plot is fairly simple and the villains are pretty one-dimensional but the interactions between characters and the game's scenarios as the party travel from towns to dungeons are strong enough that I enjoyed the journey.

I will mention one section of the game that surprised and impressed me. When the party leaves the floating continent for the first time I was expecting to see an expanded world map, instead I was confronted with a dark abyss as time had to be frozen to prevent the darkness swallowing the whole world. It was an unexpected dark turn in what had been a bit of a 'young adventurers save the world' romp. In fact even when restoring the world your temporary ally Aria sacrifices herself in a moment that wouldn't be out of place in the darker Final Fantasy 2.

But for me, the main draw to play Final Fantasy 3 was the job system due to my experience of it in subsequent entries in the series. Although simpler than in those games, the ability for characters to change jobs during the game gives a lot of flexibility to battles. I always looked forward to getting to the next crystal and discovering the next set of jobs. I would then use those until they reached the following crystal. Many jobs have unique abilities beyond stats, weapons and magic which allows greater variation in playstyle. For example there was a period of the game where I felt I was using battle tactics more akin to an MMORPG as my Viking's Provoke ability focused one enemy's attacks onto him, my Bard could cast a protect spell on the whole party using his Sing ability and the Dark Knight and Dragoon would deal damage while being well defended. Developing and utilising strategies such as these for the different jobs made the random battles more interesting and gave them added variety rather than sticking with three attacking units and a healer for 30 hours.

To summarise, Final Fantasy 3 is a game that I actually quite like and ends the NES era of the series on a high. It isn't necessarily a game I'd recommend to everyone who likes RPGs as even the remake shows its old roots, but its worth a try if, like myself, you enjoyed subsequent Final Fantasy games that use flexible job systems and wanted to see where that started, or if you are simply want an solid if unspectacular old school JRPG to play.

TWR: Orphans get jobs.
MHninjabear

Re: 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by MHninjabear »

Having played the first 2 Final Fantasies and forgetting to post my thoughts, I wanted to ensure I had both played this one and shared my thoughts in time for the show.

I should preface this with the fact that I played the dawn of souls version of 1 and 2 and that I played the ds remake of 3, so I have not experienced true NES final fantasy, that being said this third installment in the series has been a joy to pick up and seems like the natural progression to the first game that two failed to capture for me. Once again being in control of four heroes of light whose task is to aide the crystals in saving the world, I felt at home.

I immediately decided upon what jobs they would have. Luneth was my monk who would later become a blackbelt, arc my blackmage who become a magus, Refia a white mage into devout, and Ingus a red wizard turned dragoon. I found the other jobs interesting, but being a nursing student my time was short and I knew I wanted to max out their final job levels to 99 which surprisingly only took a few hours. This enabled them to be the great warriors the story talked them up to be.

The story was fun and much easier to follow than one and the combat kept me engaged through just short of 40 hours of gameplay. The only major issue I ran into was in beating the final boss. I found my level to be about 10 levels to short and it was tedious to grind when all I wanted was to save the world, that being said when the last enemy fell to the four heroes I felt very rewarded. My only other issue is that the DS version utilized a wifi mail system to unlock a special job class and items, that system is now gone and a action replay was required to hack the letters. This issue is gone in the ios and pc version, but I was sad to find out I would have to tamper with my save.

Not to drone on too much longer, I really enjoyed Final Fantasy 3 I look forward to moving on to 4 soon and appreciate how this game has helped shape modern JRPG's. My hope is that more gamers have the patients to look back to this older title and see the value that is has as a piece of jrpg gold.

TWR: The ship broke.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: Our next podcast recording (14.4.18) - 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by Mr Ixolite »

Final Fantasy III is the last mainline game in the series I’ve played, but the first in terms of chronological release. That is to say, like many others I first played it for the DS, at a time where I had knowledge of decades worth of subsequent releases in the series. This, unsurprisingly, was not the ideal way to experience the game, as I found that virtually every aspect of it had been performed better later on.

To wit, the story of Final Fantasy III is bare-bones, the characters might as well have remained the blank slates they originated as, and the job system job system is massively inferior to its subsequent iterations.

Yet unlike Final Fantasy I and II, I actually completed this one. I may still rank it quite low compared to the rest of the series, but FFIII had just enough narrative and gameplay depth to get me invested. The job system, though simple, is nice to mess around with, hunting for summons is always fun, and the episodic story throws out some neat scenarios every once in a while. In no other game in the series did I have to shrink my party in order to fight a rat!

In terms of graphics, the game is a mixed bag for me. The technical achievement is certainly outstanding, and many of the enemies are quite memorable, but the character design in particular was highly unappealing to me. Compared to their sprite-based cousins the perpetually blank-faced characters seemed unexpressive, with their official artwork making them seem apathetic and doll-like. Their “chibi-fied” body proportions did not help.

The game is also a bit too old-school in terms of difficulty, with the last part of the game in particular being unreasonably unforgiving. On the other hand, the sheer excitement I felt at beating the final boss with my last standing characters last thrown shuriken must mean it did something right! It certainly trumps Final Fantasy XII, where I beat the final boss while taking a shower, but that is a story for another time.

Three word review: Sages and Ninjas
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Hallam Akbar
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Re: Our next podcast recording (14.4.18) - 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by Hallam Akbar »

I first played Final Fantasy back as a pre-teen in the late 90s on the NES. My brother and I poured hours and hours into the game and were able to beat it without the help of the internet (and without knowing that there is a guide to the first half of the game in the manual even though we had the manual). We fell in love with the game but without a SNES or a PlayStation, I proclaimed to be a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise having only played the first one.

Fast forward 10 years and in the summer of 2007 I learned that Final Fantasy 3 was released on the Nintendo DS. I thought portable gaming was somewhat childish (I now realize that is unjustified) but at 20 years old I bought a DS, Final Fantasy 3, New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS on Amazon. I was in Iraq and had to get it shipped to my parents' house and then asked them to forward it to me. It felt like forever but my package finally arrived, probably after 5 or 6 weeks.

I hadn't played many RPGs back then and I remember the job system was intimidating at first. I used to try and 100% games I played and thought that I could max all my characters job levels for EVERY job. I soon realized that idea was ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't remember much of my first play through but I thought the Chocobo and Pheonix Downs were odd additions to the series and wondered if they were added to the remake to make the game easier. I remember getting off the main continent and finding an entire other world and being amazed that all that could fit on an NES cartridge.

I played the game pretty much any time I wasn't patrolling, pulling guard, or sleeping and I loved the game so much that the next time we went back to a base with internet, I bought Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 on the GBA. Playing the DS with my friends and Final Fantasy 3 by myself are some of the best memories I have of an otherwise terrible deployment.
Ashtear

Re: Our next podcast recording (14.4.18) - 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by Ashtear »

I started browsing the web in earnest back in 1999. While I'd heard about the "missing" Final Fantasy games, I was surprised to find that they had fan translations. This is when I first learned about emulators and ROM patches, but all that was easier to get through than Final Fantasy III itself. The difficulty in the Famicom version of this game was shocking even to this long-time fan, culminating in a marathon run to the final boss. The game could not be saved during this last dungeon crawl, spanning multiple hours. Woe to the player that came unprepared to fight the Cloud of Darkness (or had a power outage), losing all that progress.

Difficulty aside, so much of what makes the series iconic started here: moogles, summons, a bunch of distinct job classes, themes of duality. Final Fantasy Tactics began my love of job systems, so it was exciting to trace all these elements back, but it's a bit sad that most Western gamers had to wait so long to see this game. Many more still wouldn't play it in English until the DS remake in late 2006.

I think Final Fantasy III also marks the point where Nobuo Uematsu's legend began to take shape. Though still greatly restricted by cartridge space, there's a number of solid dungeon and overworld themes, especially "The Boundless Ocean." My personal favorites are "The Crystal Tower," and "The Dark Crystals," so evocative of a long, epic journey coming to an end.

Even the remake is still challenging, so this early entry might be best left to the historians and series fanatics. For me, though, this is where Final Fantasy truly began.

I'm guessing the crew has been playing the remake, so here's a few bits of trivia from the Famicom version:
  • Similar to the first game, the characters were generic, unnamed warriors with very little backstory. Their appearances, names, and personalities were added in the remake.
  • Job class changes required expenditure of a resource, "Capacity Points," which were earned after battles.
  • First game in the series with dedicated battle commands for each class (e.g., Jump).
  • First time the battle system moved attacks from dead targets, which previously wasted that character's turn (and MP) in the Famicom versions of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II.
  • First appearance of damage/healing numbers on the battlefield itself (previously displayed in text box overlays).
  • The Famicom version was a big hit, seeing Final Fantasy break 1 million sales for the first time, though at this point the series was still just nipping at the heels of JRPG juggernaut Dragon Quest, which also hit its stride in the late 80's.
Todinho

Re: Our next podcast recording (14.4.18) - 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by Todinho »

I started playing Final Fantasy 3 for 2 reasons, one was because the podcast was covering it and the other because I wanted to see how the first incarnation of the job system would look like, so went and got a translated rom and started playing the game and the result was a bit of a mixed bag.

Storywise the game is really barebones and even though I played it recently I struggle to remember alot of details about the plot or characters, I was bit surpried though when you start to explore the world and find out that the entire beginning of the game took place in a floating continent but other then that I really cant recall much.

The Graphics are pretty good for a NES game I thought and I especially liked how unique each different job sprite looked and most of the monster designs were pretty good too, in comparison to the backgrounds and maps that can look pretty bland and uninteresting.

The gameplay actually surprised me because I liked it way more then I thought I would, the game does a good job at making you switch jobs often and for the most part the difficulty curve is pretty forgiving and for most of the game I didnt feel that I needed to grind to progress, I also really liked the airship you get in this because it's probably the most usefull airship out of any FF game I've played by allowing not only to move around the world but also save,store and buy itens. speaking of which I think exploration is done pretty well here with the game rewarding you with plenty of side content and ways to move around with different airships and even a submarine.

The game isnt without it's fair share of problems though for starters while the job system is fine I dislike that are so many classes that are straight up upgrades of others, once you unlock a Knight or karateka, fighters and monks become basically obsolete. The big problem with the system though is how you have to unequip your entire gear whenever you want to change jobs, the problem is that you have to do it manually item by item, switch job and then re-equip everything again this is system only becomes worse once you factor in that your inventory is extremelly limited. Another issue I had was how the magic system worked, you have limited casts for each tier of magic and I didnt like that at all, this mean you can use a certain magic A on tier 2 alot and then run out of casts for that tier when you reach a point where you want to use magic B, either every individual spell should have a limited number of casts or have a mana system, as a result FF3 makes you play really conservative with magic and severely limits the number of spells you can use versus the one you have.
Lastlly I have a big problem with how resting and saving works, first off you dont get healed at a save points and the game doesnt even provide you with itens like tents to heal your party in the world map or in the save points, the only way to heal your whole party is by resting at a bed or in a special fountain and even then or dead characer dont revive by doing that you have to either spend a rare fenix down, use magic or find another special fountain. The devs at the time seemed to have realized these problems so the airship you get helps aliviate some of those issues, what they didnt aliviate was how the dungeons worked, from the middle to the end of the game dungeons start to become these grueling mazes that you have to fight your way out of, your unable to save at all while in them and you have no way of healing either by spending itens or using precious magic, this makes the end game a complete nightmare to get through as dungeons become increasingly long and complicated, add to that the fact it's in the end game that FF3 demands that you have grinded, the fact that the final dungeon is gigantic, that your last save point is at your airship and you can see why I didnt bother to finnish FF3 nor do I intend to go back to it in the future.

Even though I couldnt stand the final third of the game I did enjoy most of the game up to that point and it was certainly worth seeing this earlier version of the job system and other quirks of early final fantasy and how they would evolve and change. If you're really into JRPGs you might find something more here then I did but other then that I wouldnt really recommend playing the NES version of this game unless is out of historical curiosity.
blueallday

Re: 315: Final Fantasy III

Post by blueallday »

I remember going to a Gamestop to purchase Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS in late 2006. Astonishingly, at the peak of the Wii craze, they had just received a shipment of consoles. So, I ended up buying a Wii that day. Fast forward a few months, and I went back and picked up this missing piece of Final Fantasy history. At that point, I had played all single player games in the series, and my compulsion to complete this one was strong.
Not strong enough, apparently. Final Fantasy III took me longer to complete than any other game in the series (yes, even XIII).
I played it in fits, stops, and starts, usually for an hour at night. I just couldn't get hooked on to the story. Somewhere along the line, the charm of these NES era Final Fantasy games had worn off for me. On top of that, I was disinterested in the DS graphical remake. It was too zoomed in, limiting my field of view, and where the 16 bit era games did enough to give character specificity with sprites, this felt like a step back. I wasn't connected to any of the characters because they all felt the same. The only connection I had to them was my own choice of which job they would have.
The mechanics are fine. I like job systems, and consider Final Fantasy V to be a highlight in the series because of it. Here, again, it feels like a step back. Perhaps I'm being too harsh since this game technically predates the other, but if there's a graphical overhaul like this one, I guess I expected a bit more tweaking in this area as well to bring it up to standard.
The game turned into a slog for me. The goals never felt urgent. The stakes seemed low. I didn't enjoy traversal in the world and dungeons. It's not that I feel like this game is significantly bad - I don't believe it is. But my enjoyment of it was incredibly low. Especially when it leads up to the final boss. I think I left my DS in a suspended state for two months before I actually trudged through that final gauntlet. Saving the world as the warriors of light with help from the warriors of darkness to vanquish the evil darkness that created an unbalance in the universe ended much as it began for me: with droopy eyelids and a subsequent nap.
Maybe someday I'll give it another shot, but for now, I know the music is great, as are most of Uematsu's Final Fantasy soundtracks. The Boundless Ocean and Priestess Aria are beautiful, and I love Eternal Wind. Listening to them in their NES incarnations are fascinating.
In short, I appreciate the game for what it is, especially in establishing a job system in the series, but my enjoyment of it hardly registers in my memory.
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