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

7/22/2010 - Side Questin': The Search For Odin



First of all, since physical attacks are worthless in the next story dungeon anyways, I switch Ringo back to a Black Mage so at least he can get some skill ups while we're out here. I'm able to pick up a good number of spells from Dorga's secret city, but the level 7 stuff is a bit out of my price range at the moment.



♪♪Deep Under the Water♪♪

Our destination for this update is a not entirely obvious underwater cave near Salonia- the Salonia Catacombs.



The monsters here are especially rough for our paper-thin mage lineup, especially the blue palette swap ones.



There is a pretty amazing shield in one of the chests here, and I take this opportunity to switch SL from being a dual sword attacker to a sword+shield setup. While the first 2/3 of Final Fantasy III are generally easier with the extra attack afforded from dual wielding, the final 1/3 of the game calls for expert survivability.



Reaching the end of the rather short dungeon, we find ourselves face to face with the man we could see on the other side of the wall from Salonia Castle's hidden treasure room.

♪♪Boss Battle♪♪

In case the title of this update didn't already spoil you on it, the man waiting for us at the end of this dungeon is none other than Odin. His move of choice is the all-targeting Atom Edge that just rips though my back line of mages. Thankfully SL's high defense stat lets him shrug off the attack like nothing.



Ringo is able to do respectable damage with his new spells, and PERCY manages to turn the growling badass from hell Ifrit into a cure-all spell.



Having been hasted by Katie, SL is doing near 1000 damage each round. Not to be outdone, PERCY occasionally gets an attack off with Titan that does similar amounts of damage.



Of course, I can only keep up with such punishing attacks for so long...



The mages may have bit the dust, but SL continues to shrug off Odin's assault until an eventual win.

After blowing through a FenixDown and a couple charges of Life, PERCY is the new owner of a brand new Odin spell! That he can't use yet!



The way out hides a secret cache of rare items, but all of the boxes are rigged with monster attacks.



After a couple back attacks, though, I leave the remainder for a later date and Exit the hell out of there.



Oh, and PERCY and Ringo had wiped again from the second back attack.



That's it for today's update, though.

Next Time: Ancient Ruins? Maybe?

In the DS version I wasn't aware that there were secret Summon Bosses until I was at the final boss.

And I didn't have any Summoners, so they weree useless.

In my experience, they were pretty useless even with Summoners and Evokers. I think I only cast each spell once, to see what it looked like, and never again.

Summonings did most of my damage in the final boss fight(s). They were pretty ace in the DS version.

I like the idea of each summon having two properties, and I'm a little sad the series never ran with that idea. Though I am in the middle of replaying VI, and I'm shocked that I never really used the Espers effectively as summons before, but only as a tool to get magic. This run I'm using Kirin for instant, full party Regen in almost ever boss battle.

I think that the higher level (summoner, in this case) should be able to pick which one they want it to do.

My thief that I never changed out hit everything for max damage by the final dungeon. That tells you everything that's wrong about this game

XI uses it, and allows you to choose which help/hurt spell you'd like to use. I believe that is the only other one, though.

Oh, XI doesn't count. It's like how, seemingly, we skipped from III to VII back in the day. I just pretend the series goes X, X-2, XII. It's new-math!

Pssh, you'll never convince me. Just because its a time sink doesn't mean its ineligible for inclusion. X-2 was garbage anyways. Interesting job system and not much else of substance.

I used to like TheSL but then he badmouthed FF10-2.

You mean that game where they took some terrible characters from a terrible game, dressed them up like strippers and gave them splish splash girls love fun times in a hot spring? Fantastic game, that.

I have never played X-2.

The hot spring scene is not nearly as embarrassing as the massage mini-game, I'll have you know!

But the real question is: What's worse? Mini dungeons or sphere break?

They're both pretty shameless, but I suspect the massage one wins by a thin margin since it instructs you to "jack up Leblanc's satisfaction". Subtle. But then, this is Final Fanservice X-2 we're talking about.

How about setting up a network of sphere-cams to spy on every last one of Spira's denizens, up to and including the hot springs? Which, for some reason, are then visited by everyone in the world?

Oh hey, I remember 100% completing the DS version of this game, wi-fi bonuses and all.

I hated every minute it (I think my playthrough was like 70% grinding and I still died every time I got ambushed). Especially the Wi-Fi BS.

[rant]

I mean, do you have any idea how badly implemented that **** was?

You could only send two letter like every hour. One to an in-game person, and one to actual people. So barring DS clock f*ckery, it's going to take a while (you need a minimum of 7 real world messages sent IIRC) before you can actually start the Wi-Fi bonuses.

And even then you still have to wait, because the game requires you to send a string of letters to the in-game people. And if you don't have a FAQ, sucks to be you because it's as confusing as all get out.

The Onion Knight class was thankfully not that bad. Just had to send four letters to the Elder. In other words, four hours.

But the Ultima Weapon sidequest? Four letters to Sara, four letters to Tokkul, find and talk to the Legendary Blacksmith, five more letters to Cid, and then finding and talking to the Smith again. Without time f*ckery, this takes at minimum 13 hours (assuming you didn't already send some mails to them earlier in the game), and you can't even get the Ultima Weapon until you open Eureka.

But the Secret Dungeon is just annoying. It's relatively easy: four letters to the Four Old Men, four more to Alus, then you just have to go find it. But the secret boss is absurd. Its got ridiculous defense (I was using a squad of Onion Knights that normally hit over 9999 dealing... what, 3000-5000?), ridiculous HP (199,999 I think. Might have been an extra 9), and ridiculous strength (I think it actually hit the cap at 255).

And guess what? It gets 4 moves per turn. It's physical attacks can apparently inflict status ailments (not that I noticed; Ribbons > Onion Helms), he spams Meteor, and he has a move that hits my entire party for 3000-4000 damage. Do note that as level 99 Onion Knights, my party has 99 in everything. In other words, they had max possible defense and they still took that much damage.

At least you get a boatload of XP and gil from it though.

But the worst of all are the class specific equipment. After you max out a job's level (isn't too hard but it's as boring as hell), and after you get the Ultima Weapon, you can talk to the Legendary Smith with the person who maxed the job as your avatar to get a class specific piece of equipment.

See, problem is that she randomly appears in certain areas. So unless you have a FAQ you are screwed. And even if you do know, it's still random. I was using the best possible place to look for her and I generally had to go in and out of it at least 50 times until she showed up.

And the worst part is, the equipment is, like I said, class specific, making it fairly useless to my team of Onion Knights (well, the Onion Blade was nice at least).

[/rant]

FF3DS does get pretty dickish, yes. The bonus boss is practically impossible to beat without a Viking to constantly Provoke him.

Yeah, but at that point, what for?

Meh, I did it with a full party of Onion Knights. Since everyone has the same stats I just gave everyone Curaga and had them take turns moving to the back row and casting.

Yeah, Onion Knights really kill the variety part of the game, but to be honest the rest of FF III DS's jobs just suck in comparison. Onion Knights get all magic, can equip pretty much anything, and have the best stats in the game final.

Well... you could get a level up, and you could buy a bunch of Shurikens and Elixirs (though you could just duplicate them) I guess.

But if you've already beaten the toughest boss in the game.... whats the point?

Well the final boss segment is still a pain in the ass.

And, well, as a reward for beating the Iron Giant you can... er... fight him again.

Yeah.

You guys really know how to sell a game! I'm going out right now to pick this up!

I guess this job was a success!

Don't worry, it's easy now.

Here, let me put it this way: when the game came out it was $40.

When I bought it it was $20.

The price drop was not due to player's choice or something like that.

I'm not sure if I like this new paradigm where we judge an entire game by the quality (or lack thereof) of one endgame sidequest. It's not like people go "lol zodiac spear, ff12 is stoopid".

Oh wait, they do.

Carry on, then.

Do you want me to go into detail about how bad my FF III DS experience was?

Because I can do that.

Nah, I'll save everyone a lot of time and just disregard you preemptively. =)

That works too.

Seriously though, if you really want to get FF III DS you must either really love Final Fantasy, grinding, or you're a masochist at heart.

At least it's cheap though.