Before we finish off Final Fantasy III’s endgame, here’s a rare video: the original Japanese FFIII.
Note that whoever did this somehow replaced Luneth’s sprite with one of the Four Old Men sprites, and a couple battle sprites are scrambled. Nevertheless, it shows the NPC storylines are all here, except for the individual friendships with particular party members.
As with Final Fantasy I, it seems that original FFIII presented the party as a blank slate upon which we could project our own character development, dialog and proficiencies, while the world and NPCs were at least somewhat fleshed out. Again, this mimics old tabletop RPGs and D&D, in which the game master provided the story, world, and npcs, while the players were in charge of their characters’ histories and development.
We’ve gotten so accustomed to games that create the player characters for us that we’ve quite forgotten the original strong distinction between PCs and NPCs.
Now, back to our playthrough of Final Fantasy III and the grand finale.
I’ve played through Final Fantasy III three times now, so here’s my take on the different job classes with random tips and observations. Mostly, this is just an excuse to share iOS screencaps of all the FFIII jobs. (And while I’m at it, I’m going to plant my party in as many different locations as possible so you can enjoy the scenery. Aren’t I obsessive nice?)
For more thorough info on jobs, I recommend Seferaga’s FFIII FAQ and the nitty-gritty stats info hidden in the job section of Arkfullofsorrow’s FFIII walkthrough.
Freelancer
Don’t you wish we could just leave ’em in these adorbs costumes the whole game? Wait, no, that’s what happens in nearly every game after FFV, so that people complain about “dress up” in X-2 and XIII-2.
Freelancer can use: Level 1 Black Magic/White Magic, most equipment.
Insane stats at high levels make it almost worth leveling up. Almost.
Where the heck ARE we? I’m going to shamelessly screencap the maps and add captions so we can find our way around. Here, belatedly, is the Floating Continent. The Fairy Forest isn’t marked because the Elder Tree has put up a You-Can’t-Go-Here-Now barrier, but it was just west of Castle Argus, and before that it was floating around in the desert southwest of Tokkul.
Map of Floating Continent:
And here’s where we are now, on the surface world now that it’s been resurfaced:
Apologies for repeating this, but my playthrough just caught up with the Final Fantasy III prologue video from the DS version. So let’s review…
The ruined castle is the Tower of Owen, I suppose, while the Impossibly Tall Tower (yet another FF trope) is the endgame’s penultimate dungeon. Aeris Aria hasn’t yet appeared in my playthrough, but we’ll be meeting her shortly. And Refia’s default costume (the blue vest with the poofy poet’s shirt) is still one I covet.
Which reminds me, you have GOT to see Twinklebat’s FF cosplays: Refia, Cloud-in-a-dress, Mjrn, Red XIII, FFI White Mage, and a Moogle wearing Lulu’s dress. (Also Twilight Sparkle. She wins so many internetz, this cosplayer.)
Okay! Enough futzing around. Time to leave the Floating Continent for the greater world beyond!
Aside: I was tempted to call this episode “Oh. Okay.” in honor of Sev’s recurring response to all the WTF incidents during her playthrough of Final Fantasy III.
However, it turns out there is a supreme moment of WTFery involving a sheep in this episode, so… just keep Sev’s Mantra in mind.
Now let us roam as sheep.
Off we go with Desch the Fifth Party Member (uh oh, we know where THIS is going) to find the Gnomish Village! Poor Arc is hoping he won’t have to use the Mini Spell…
The original, 1990 Japanese Final Fantasy III starts out differently. It’s much more like FFI, with four completely generic, unnamed “Onion Knights” (aka “Onion Kids”) bumbling into a cave after an earthquake.
Here’s a derpy fan translation of the original:
Official Square material makes all four of them 14, whence the kawaii generic Onion Knight representing FFIII in Dissidia.
In 2006, FFIII finally came out in English via a Nintendo DS remaster that made the heroes more than cardboard and converted 8-bit sprites to 3D chibis. That’s the version that got ported to iOS. So with apologies to old-school purists…
After two months of discovering the joys of FF games I’ve never played before, it’s back to one of my recent favorites, Final Fantasy III. I and my iPad fell in love with this game last year, thanks to the remaster graphics that melted my cynical Grinch heart and won me over with the Power of Cute.
This doesn’t happen often. I was deeply suspicious of Mr. Rogers as a child, for Valefor’s sake, just because he was a little too saccharine. However, something about this band of heroic superdeformed polygon people managed to win me over to the point that…
*hangs head*
Once you start down the chibi path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
Anyway, I have never seen any particular fandom with this game, before today, when I discovered this:
Which is awesome, because I always approve of obscure characters getting cosplay love. It’s obviously based on the opening FMV added to the Nintendo DS remaster a few years back:
I have to say: Luneth, Ingus, WTF? I don’t recall any particular friction between these two characters in the actual game. Guess I’d better pay more attention.
Nonetheless, I love this FMV for all the Final Fantasy Nostalgasm imagery rendered so magnficently: airship, chocobos, characters who like each other (this makes me happy), Behemoth, Aerith praying, the crystal, some of Uematsu’s glorious music,* and for once some actual costume changes, thanks to the Job System, giving us updated 3D renderings of some of FF’s original character classes: white mage, red mage, black mage, fighter. Most of all I love Arc with his nose buried in his books, and that simple image of the party doing party things in camp, which FF games seldom show.
(I will, however, boo Squeenix for giving the White Mage job to the girl. Really? Don’t you ever get tired of that? Oh, right, you finally wised up with Lightning and Fang. Sigh.)
*As a matter of fact, I first saw this FMV projected behind a live Distant Worlds concert performed by the San Diego Orchestra. Yay!
All right. I’m starting to get into recap mode when I haven’t got my recap together. Hang on, we’re in for an ADORKABLE journey!