Get a job! - Let's Play Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy III, the last of the series to come to the US shores. Not nearly as obtuse as its predecessor, but it more than makes up for it with sheer malice towards the player.



The game opens with a short setup for the story. Our main characters are a cast of four nameless orphans who just happen to stumble upon their destiny.

Final Fantasy III is the first in the series to focus on a job system where you are not locked into a specific job for the entirety of your quest. Currently the only one we have access to is Onion Kid, but soon (as in, minutes into the first official update), we will have the following choices:

Onion Kid: Almost totally worthless. They have no magic and pretty terrible stats...until the higher levels. Keeping one of these guys around is only worth it if you vote for me to exploit the glitch where I can get their job-specific gear a lot earlier than intended.

Fighter: The go to guy for the perfect combination of attack and defense. Might be a little more expensive to equip than the other jobs, but it pays off to have at least one of these in your party to shrug off a few hits that would decimate other party members.

Monk: Not a favorite of mine, but super cheap to equip and excellent HP growth. Monks specialize in hand to hand combat.

WhiteWiz: aka White Mage. The main healers of the party, and pretty much required since Phoenix Downs are so damn rare and they eventually get Raise.

BlackWiz: aka Black Mage. You should know what these do by now.

RedWiz: aka Red Mage. Fighter/White/Black combo that isn't as good as any of them. Mostly worthless.




This is our main character, named for myself. I will take total control of his job choices as the game progresses (more than likely going down the Fighter => Knight line).



This is our second character, named for my wife (ignore that "boys" part in the intro...). She will be a healer of some sort for the majority of the quest.



These are the two nameless mooks that will be accompanying us on the quest. They need space-appropriate names and job choices.

So, there we have it! Be forewarned that there are a few specific sections of the game where I will have to take control of job choices, but otherwise its totally open to the forum. The faster I get responses the faster we can get on with this show.


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As punishing as this game can be it's also fun as hell. I look forward to your LP!

I hereby suggest IKA, who shall be your main caster/nuker/wizardguy!

Second

Also, we of course need one character to take up all the awful, awful jobs like Scholar and Ranger. A focus for our hate and scorn of the game. A font of utter disdain.

You all know where I'm going with this...

Well, you're going to need a Ninja at the end right? How about EDGE?

I've tried emulating this a couple times but I always get distracted. I've played a small chunk of the DS version and I look forward to comparing the two. More than 3 monsters per battle will be nice to see once again.


Winner, Loser, Chubby, Giant, Three, Four, PENS, Luigi + Mario, Butz, Letters, Empty, Pants, Percy, Tyrant
How many letters are there?

Edit: Or, you know, any of the better ideas posted above.

6, I think.

You really should be playing this and FFIII DS side by side to showcase all the differences and how the Famicom version is so much better.

Yeah, I too vote PERCY for all the suckjobs.

"I have a SING command, boss!"

fix'd

He'd be done with the FC version before the four twerps in the DS version get out of the Sealed Cave.

Percy for Suck jobs and Ika as BlkWiz!

I'll do Percy if you guys demand it, but don't expect me to do his voice or anything. Hell, if he's going to be suck jobs he'll probably spend half the LP dead.

Shouldn't your wife be TheKL? I kid, I kid.

Character #3 should be named Arc - DS version represent! Percy totally goes in slot #4, of course.

I love that Kid#4 is so desperate to fit in that he's wearing exactly what Kid#1 is.

I say name him Luneth and stick him in jobs that are good in the DS remake but not in this version. So, Red Mage out of those listed. Alternatively, just leave him an Onion Kid forever.

EDIT: Heh, looks like Pappy had a comparable idea

I have the DS version and I'm quite sure that I like the Famicom version a lot more, but for the life of me I cannot remember why. "3D on the DS makes Jesus cry tears of blood" might be part of it, and I enjoyed the fact that the famicom fan translation doesn't tell you who is talking during dialogue (so I could interpret the inter-party banter as one schizophrenic character talking to himself, which is a lot more fun.) But I think there's something deeper than that.

I know that I quit playing the DS version after acquiring the Ninja job and discovering that it had been nerfed. Ninja should be the all-powerful über class that invalidates all other classes. If I wanted any degree of sense, realism, tastefulness, strategy or restraint applied to the concept of the Ninja then I would not be playing a video game in the first place (except maybe Inindo, which practically goes to FFIV-esque lengths in portraying ninjas as weak and ineffectual.)

What was so great about the DS version again? All I remember is that Refia didn't want to be a frog.

They did a very respectable job of conveying famicom sprites in three dimensions. Although I agree that 3d doesn't belong on the DS.

I haven't played the famicon version but the DS versions random encounter rate was crazy high and the enemies seemed to always outclass your chars... I never got very far into it

I really like the DS version. Ultimately, I'm not sure which version I prefer, but I think both are pretty rad.

I look forward to this LP and hope to see Percy Singing soon.

If you master every job with every character, I will play along with you.

With a little help from onions

Ha! They can be the Glass Onion Kids.

That Beatles reference was awesome -- and it sprung my memory of article header art I did a while back:

Well that pretty much settles it.

Finally, a Let's Play I might follow, but probably won't.

Eh, pretty much one in the same for most of the Famicom version. Well, probably not 'Suck', but other jobs are so much better.

You'll also probably find this game's level of challenge to be a tad overestimated. Though it is a step more difficult than the DS version, a fact I attribute to the face-rocking DS guides on line... Thing to remember most with the Famicom version is that the game more or less determines the ideal party for you, so if you insist on using a traditional FI/BB/WM/BM party throughout, it's gonna be a harder ride.

I made a decent stab at playing this game back when all I had was a half-finished translation ROM. The menus were mostly english, but the dialog petered out about 20% of the way in, and not even all the items were finished. I was actually doing pretty well until about the 2/3 point, when my emulator crashed and lost my saves back to about the 1/3 point. Got discouraged and never picked it back up. So I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the rest!

As for characters, the Onion Kid sprite is making me think Overalls or Pantaloons, but alas, those are way too long.

So I went with SL, Katie, PERCY and Ringo. Update coming either later today or tomorrow.

Katie should be just Kate and she should be a Thief and never change because it's her nature. Also she should crash her airship on a godforsaken island. Oh wait.

So... which one of them gets all the shitty jobs?

Wow, there's a lot of good new LPs lately. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Famicom FFIII LP goes, since the farthest I've played in FCFFIII was up to dicking around with the ship. Did see a good number of field sprites that were recolored and repurposed in FFIV, though.

P.S. It's a ways off, but could you please capture your party dying from crossing through Zande's lawn ornaments too soon on Chocobo back? I'm curious how it looks in eight bits.

PERCY, of course.

But Ringo is starting as the BlackWiz.