Final Fantasy III

Of the first three games in the series, this is the playthrough I thought would be the most interesting- and for a lot of reasons it was. Of the ‘NES Trilogy’, Final Fantasy III is undoubtedly the best game, and the one that has the most in common with later entries in the series. This is to its credit though, and although it has its flaws, Final Fantasy III is actually a pretty good game.

It seems that Squaresoft had heard the criticism of Final Fantasy II, and they heard it well. The retarded levelling system from FF2 was scrapped, as was the magic system, the dialogue system, and the concept of player characters with names and personalities. The blank-slate characters you had to name yourself were back from FF1, as were character classes or ‘jobs’ as the series calls them. The return of the jobs was one thing, but Final Fantasy III added the ability for the player to change the characters jobs at any time. This opened up a massive amount of flexibility with the gameplay. Up against a boss with really high defence? Change your Warrior into a Black Mage for the fight, then change him back afterwards! For its time, the job system was unlike anything in any other RPG, and the system would return and be expanded upon later in Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Somehow, Squaresoft head honcho Hironobu Sakaguchi managed to lure the lead Final Fantasy II designer Akitoshi Kawazu away from Final Fantasy III and replace him with the designers responsible for the first game. Despite the fact that Final Fantasy III was more popular than the first two games, and it was widely regarded as one of the best games for the NES, Final Fantasy III didn’t leave Japan until it was remade for the Nintendo DS a few years ago. For over a decade, Final Fantasy III went unplayed and unnoticed by the majority of the world- which is a shame, because its a far better game than the first two entries in the series.

Much like the first game, Final Fantasy III tells the story of four youths known as the Warriors of Light, who embark on a quest to rid the world of the evil threatening to destroy it. The four youths are orphans from the village of Ur, who one day stumble upon a cave which houses one of the four Elemental Crystals. The crystal grants the player the ability to change the characters jobs at will, and instructs the orphans to use their new found power to restore peace to the world. Because y’know. It’s one of those crystals that can talk.

I’m actually not going to tell you about the characters this time- purely because the Warriors of Light are unnamed and without personalities, leaving the player to decide what they’re like. There are some minor characters that appear throughout the story, but they are just that- minor characters. There is a certain character that is worthy of mention, however. But for the wrong reason.

The final boss of the game is a manifestation of pure evil called the Cloud of Darkness, which takes the shape of a green humanoid woman. What makes the Cloud of Darkness worthy of noting is the fact that until you fight her at the very end of the game, she isn’t seen or even mentioned at all. For the majority of the game the villain is a man named Xande, who you defeat at the end of the game, only to have the Cloud of Darkness appear out of nowhere and declare that she is going to destroy existence… because… well, she’s evil. That’s it.

The concept of having Xande revealed to be a puppet to the Cloud of Darkness at the last goddamn minute feels somewhat cheap- and it certainly is. Final Fantasy III may just be the first game to utilize the concept of a final boss appearing from nowhere with no explanation- a trend now known as “pulling a Necron”, a trend named after the infamous last boss from Final Fantasy IX; an incarnation of death that like the Cloud of Darkness, appears out of nowhere at the last minute to try and eradicate existence as we know it. When you go through a game as long and as fucking difficult as Final Fantasy III, having the last boss feel like some last-minute tack on is more than a little frustrating.

The Cloud of Darkness as she appears in Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Squaresoft be hatin’

Which brings me to another thing- this game is fucking hard. Final Fantasy III is the hardest game in the series by a very wide margin, and considering how brutal the first two can be at times, that’s pretty damn hard. I usually enjoy a challenging game but man, this was ridiculous. If it weren’t for the magic of savestates, I honestly have no idea how I would have made it through the final dungeon in this.

Those of you familiar with the series but who missed Final Fantasy III might want to know that the only place you could save the game was on the world map. Save Points weren’t introduced until Final Fantasy IV, so if you got stuck in the middle of a dungeon you were faced with a very difficult choice on whether to press on to the end or retreat back to the entrance. You couldn’t just hope to stumble upon a Save Point in the middle of a cave, because it just wasn’t going to happen. It’s also worth noting that in addition to the random encounter rate being maddeningly high, any attempt to escape from a fight instantly reduces your party’s defence stat to zero until they do. This means that if you even try to escape, an enemy can poke you with his thumb and your super-buff warrior guy will drop dead.

Luckily, the series was never this hard again. At its worst, Final Fantasy III is brutal and unforgiving on a level equal to Contra or Battletoads. What was with this generation of games and their stupidly hard difficulty levels anyway? It’s certainly one aspect of the series that I don’t miss.

The main problem with Final Fantasy III for me, anyway, is that it’s ultimately a very forgettable game. Despite the fact that I’ve completed it a few times before, none of the game really sticks out in my mind as being very memorable. I like to think this says more about the game than it does about me, but it very well could be a bit of both. All things considered, Final Fantasy III didn’t really bring that much to the series apart from the admittedly excellent Job System- none of the characters were particularly interesting, and none of the locations really stood out. Don’t get me wrong, this is a much better game than its predecessors, but the whole experience was just very forgettable.

I know this write-up isn’t very long, but I really don’t have all that much to say. Even though Final Fantasy III has a lot of flaws, it does so many other things right that the first two games didn’t that I can’t judge it too harshly. It may be frustratingly difficult and sometimes downright unfair, but I can’t help but like it much more than FF1 or FF2. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again though- I’m so glad the games were never as hard as this again though. In fact, they just get easier from here on out.

Oh well. Onward and upward.