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

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed the time I spent with FFIIIDS. Sure, there was a LOT of grinding (I specifically remember spending a few hours underwater before Garuda, and then at the Ancients' Temple, and then at Bahamut's Peak. And maybe an hour in the Crystal Tower) but since I was fresh off FFIV Advance I accepted it and enjoyed it.

The fact that my Geomancer Refia pretty much steamrolled everything in her path in the Tower and the Crystal World, and that I beat the final boss in my first try, probably has something to do with why I liked it so much. If only it didn't have that ill-conceived email-based sidequest!

Yeah, Geomancers were pretty overpowered.

Too bad I never bothered using them (I played FF V first, and there Geomancers are mediocre at best).

Hahaha I must have played through the endgame segments at least 40 times hahaha I'm so sick of the cutscenes.

Update coming tomorrow!

8/16/2010 - Grinding the Ancient Ruins



The Ancient Ruins, my old nemesis, I have returned.



Maybe throwing summon monsters at these splitting monstrosities will help alleviate my pain?



Well, at least someone survived.



...though not for very long.



[INSERT ONE HOUR+ OF GRINDING AGAINST THESE DUDES]



While the upper level splitting monsters seem to do so at random, these dudes only split when hit with a physical attack. The copies have the same amount of HP as the one that did the split, though, so as long as you spread the hurt around you'll get them eventually.



These neat looking guys are down here too.

Down, down, down...what's this?



Oh, this is the airship we're looking for!



The ship ascends from the waves via a quick cutscene.



Just in case you can't figure out the obvious.



This place is like a fully stocked, flying city.



The shop options aren't too shabby either.

One other bit that I forgot to post in the previous bit, this airship is equipped for high gear "jumping." Rather than just fly a bit higher to cross tall mountain ranges, the ship temporarily ascends/descends to visit hard to reach places.



One more fang to go! Unne leaves us to scour the globe for it, promising a reward of some sort if we visit her at Dorga's house later.



One other nice feature about the new ship is that its equipped with automated cannons to help thin the ranks a bit.



Jump, jump, jump.



And here we are at our destination, the Cave of Darkness aka Splitting Dungeon II. Fuck this, I'll do it next time.



Next Time: The Magical M.Knight Shyamalan

Ugh, those splitting monster dungeons. I don't recall which of the two it was, but I nearly stopped playing when I got to them they were so frustrating. I made it through only through the power of my hatred for those dungeons. I was really dreading it and getting into hardcore mode as I approached the in the DS version, but found them quite easy compared to my original NES run. Rebalanced, or just that I knew it was coming? *shrug* Also, FF III & IV have the best variety of airships, period. FF III probably wins, via having submarine airship, mountain hop superspeed airship, and jumbo shop/store airship (I think it has a store?).

On the DS, I went for Dorgas house first, and the Earth Crystal second.

That made one really hard, and one really easy...

I ... lost track of the LP. Do you not have the Dark/M.Knight job yet? Where do you get it? I seem to remember having it and cruising through these places on the DS.

I've got the job, but you can't get any weapons for it until after you get that airship that I personally am aware of.

Oh, gotcha. I didn't remember how it worked. So you can hopefully get them now before you do crappy cave part 2.

If you can do videos, the final dungeon needs to be a video LP. Straight through. With no savestates. I want it to be like SA (also on LPArchive)'s Sonic '06 LP where you can hear the game eroding at the poor fools' sanity.

When you finish this you need to try FFII. Mwa ha ha, btw.

FFII isn't that bad.

Aside from that extremely exploitable grinding glitch, there is the fact that you can pretty much Frog anything.

Besides, the fact that the best possible equipment set-up is a naked party with only a ribbon and some weapons on just makes it hard for me to hate this game.

Oh, good point.

Then do it WITHOUT glitching.

I wonder who thought this was good game design?

Maybe it's the guy responsible for the Garuda fight, or the guy who made only two classes viable in the endgame, or the guy who thought splitting monsters were a good idea, or the guy who invented mini dungeons or...

Y'know, I'll cut it short and say that this game has a lot of terrible ideas for something so widely acclaimed for its system.

You can get two free anti-splitting swords before that point, both in Falgabard (aka. Fargabald). One is given to you by a random bloke in town, the other is deep in a cave in Falgabard. Oh, and you can buy the weakest grade of them at the Falgabard shop. You can reach Falgabard at any time after the Nautilus becomes a submarine, by sailing through an underwater passage to the place.

The DS version having less monsters in battle is likely a big factor. Splitting's a joke when only three monsters can be onscreen in most situations.

I actually think I may have abused it for grinding, now that you mention it.

In that case, I guess I may have never actually been to that town then.

Looking at the guides, apparently you do need Invincible to reach it. This is surprising to me, as I seem to remember using the Nautilus to reach it. Maybe I got it mixed up with Mur from FF5. Anyway, it's to the southwest of Saronia/Salonia.

Yeah, I knew that I had to go through at least one splitting dungeon before I could actually get the swords (short of glitching); maybe they rebalanced it to make more sense in the DS version? Its been so long since I played that one I forget.

Nah, the DS version still pulls the same trick. It's just that splitting enemies are limited to 3 monsters alive per encounter at a time (meaning it doesn't take nearly as long). Also, I never even noticed since I always train up at least one of my characters to C.Lv 99 as a Monk right from the get-go.

That's...

Wow, you have a lot of time on your hands. I mean, I know it's not hard, but it takes a while.

It doesn't actually take that long, maybe 2 or 3 hours. And it's well worth it: 4 C.Lv 99 Monks can pretty much carry you through to Garuda without having to stop and grind at all before that.

On the subject of leveling, my used copy of FF3DS came with a file that still had the Enterprise (post-Goldor, pre-Saronia), but everyone was level 99 and had job levels of at least 40 in two or more classes. The previous owner must have had a lot of time on his/her hands, while managing to avoid Saronia. I wonder why they sold it?

I accidentally erased it, though. T_T

I don't remember exactly about the remake but in the original you needed to fly over Saronia to trigger the next part of the game with little indication that that's where you needed to go, and that's a bit obtuse. So could they have been stuck? Is that even possible in this day and age of FAQs and whatnot?

Well, when you float around the world, you're eventually going to try going to that conspicuous city on the coast.

Not necessarily. See, Saronia's gates start out closed, and your airship at that point can only land in water. Meaning flying OVER Saronia makes no sense, since you can't bypass the walls by landing inside the city proper that way anyway. To even a veteran RPG player, it would seem that Saronia is in fact locked off for the duration and will be accessible later, not that you need to fly directly over the castle gates and get blown out of the sky.

I would (and did) see if there was a body of water within or if there was anything to be gained by crossing over Saronia to the inside area of the continent. I'd think by the point I had a level 99 party I'd try going over every bit of airspace. Besides, he had only gotten to whatever town you wake up in on the surface world, according to the topscreen map.