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

4/12/2010 - And Then They Were Midgets
*Now with music, courtesy of DeeMer*


♪♪Road to the Summit♪♪

Here we are on the road to the summit, if for no other reason than because it was the only new place left for us to go. Maybe that lost Desh guy is up there? Regardless, that big orange dragon we saw upon entering couldn't be good news.



The mountain is a lot more treacherous that the areas up to this point. These Rukh can really tear through a group if you're not prepared for them.



PERCY, as usual, was not prepared.



Going back to Canaan and picking up Bolt for Ringo increases our survivability, seeing as how the birds are weak to it. He's only got three charges, though, so we'll have to be conservative to survive the trek.



There are a few more monsters on the mountain which are total pushovers compared to the Rukh.



The one box of interest is the spell Aero, which gives Katie a bit of firepower to boost her damage output when she isn't needed for healing.



Reaching the summit, we're immediately grabbed by that orange dragon and dragged off to his nest. I guess he was supposed to be Bahamut?



I guess baby dragons are part Chocobo?



Huh? Who's this other guy in the nest?

Oh, how convenient that he was just the man we were looking for. He's got amnesia, though, so who knows how he ended up here. He warns us of the huge dragon approaching and the fact that we have to run from it to "win."



Bahamut looks quite a bit more traditional in-fight than out of it. He has essentially infinite HP, since his total is at the cap and he regenerates all of it at the end of each round. No point in sticking around, just run!



Rather than escaping the nest, Desh randomly hands off a spell of Mini to us. I guess the amnesia affected his self preservation instincts as well.



He also forces his way into the guest position of the party with the hopes that we'll be able to jog his memory (what's left of it).



Down we go! I forgot to grab a screenshot of our destination, but its a nondescript forest with no visible towns or exits surrounded by mountains and ocean.



Well, that sucks. I guess we're out of luck getting into such a place since we don't have a specific physical condition?



Or not. It would have made a lot more sense for Desh to give up the spell here rather than back in Bahamut's nest.

♪♪Battle♪♪

Midgets are totally worthless in regards to physical abilities in battle. If I was taking a more cautious route through the game I'd probably take the time to grind a bit here and change SL over to a mage job as well, but I'm a glutton for punishment so I just do it the hard way with only three battle-worthy characters.



♪♪Tozas♪♪

Just south of that healing spring is the town of Tozas, the midget capital of the world. Desh uses this opportunity to repeat what I just explained about magic being the only useful tool for a midget.



One of the villagers mentions an upcoming plot point. Stay tuned to find out!



The local magic store is filled to the brim with all of the attack magic spells available to this point. This was pretty smart planning on the designers since you're essentially stuck here in Tozas and the surrounding area until you cross an area where you have to stay in midget form.



One of the midgets requests an antidote and, when you oblige him, will reveal the path ahead for our journey.



The hidden road is our ticket out of here, midget or no midget.



Between Katie, PERCY and Ringo we're pretty well off for defeating the monsters between here and the exit. I mean, we would have been had PERCY not bit the dust on the second or third battle in.



Somehow we manage to reach the exit and our freedom to stretch our legs as full-grown humans once again.

♪♪Viking Base♪♪

The vikings are all stuck indoors because a sea dragon went berserk and destroyed every one of their ships save the Enterprise.



None of the vikings seem particularly confident in their ability to defeat the sea dragon.



I guess we should go check out that shrine to see what's up then?



There are a number of treasures hidden about in the walls here, but the most noteworthy are the trio of tier-2 spells.



I give all three of them to Ringo rather than giving one to PERCY because he's yet to gain a single charge of level three magic. Since we're going to need all the firepower we can get in the next section, I grab another Bolt for PERCY's arsenal as well.

The captain of the vikings says he'll give up their final remaining ship if we can do something about that sea dragon. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.



♪♪Eternal Wind♪♪

I guess we've just gotta hop on this ship and get to fighting?



Or not. It looks like this is another Bahamut situation, only without even the option to run.



The correct choice is a little less obvious- just off-screen is the Nepto Shrine and our next destination.

Next Time: More Midget Misadventures

Ugh, when I first played this game, the version I had ceased being translated right after Bahamut, leaving me quite stuck at this point. I battled Nepto (who was labeled, "Levia," in that incomplete translation, I believe), and spent an eternity digging through the game's hex trying to find the variable for his health so I could cheat past him, so sick of being stuck at him, I was... I'm still mad that I don't get to actually fight him...

Hah, I played that exact same rom. Even the item list wasn't fully translated, I don't think, which definitely made things interesting. I actually got pretty far.. at least to the part where you're airshipping over a couple armies somewhere and... I think there's a fight where dragoons are strongly encouraged? Anyway, that was about where my emulator crashed and wiped my saves back to about the first 1/4 of the game and I said hell with it.

This mini-themed section should have been a sidequest or appeared much later on, because it brings the game to a screeching halt.

It's precisely where I got tired of the game and quit, in fact!

The farthest I'd made it in a playthrough of the Famicom version was to getting past the mini dungeons and dicking around with the ship 'til I got bored and couldn't figure out where to go. I saw enough to facepalm at all the field sprites Final Fantasy IV recolored and repurposed from it, though. =/

Speaking of which, many of Final Fantasy I's remake's field sprites were pilked from Final Fantasy V and given a recolored/edited makeover. The NPCs are more obvious, but if you compare Bahamut's sprite to Hiryuu's you'll find he's an edit.

Isn't Nepto, like, beatable though? I mean in the theoretical sense? Bahamut is literally impossible, but I thought Nepto was merely very very very very very very difficult.

Nepto I know for sure is beatable. I may be pulling this out of my ass, but I believe Bahamut is also beatable. If what I may or may not be making up is correct, if you beat Bahamut, you don't get his summon towards the end of the game.

Again, I don't know whether or not that's true.

When I played the ROM the dialog ended right at the exit to the cave. All the items and spells and abilities were in, though.

I needed an FAQ for Garuda and one or two item uses, but I finished the game on it.

Nepto I might believe, but could imagine the kind of grinding (or cheating) you'd have to do? Well out of the scope of this LP.

But what happens if you do defeat netpo there? Does the game glitch (more)?

Its just a spiked square, like the EYE in FF1. Via the FF wiki-

Enjoying the LP! As someone who only has experience with the DS port, it's interesting to see the game in its original capacity. Sadly, it looks and sounds way more fun.

Reading along with the LP has motivated me, like a few others, to pick up the DS port again. I never finished it, though I was quite a ways through, and have now gotten to just before where the final classes are unlocked.

As I've been playing through these last few days, trying to find my way around the game again, I began to realize what it was that has been keeping me from finishing this off. It's boring. This could entirely be a failing of the DS port, but I just can't get into the game at all. I really enjoyed the job system in V, but here I find that there seems to be little motivation for experiment. The whole job level system feels like an excessive grind, and after reading how the Famicon version of FF III handles job changes, I really hate the whole stat decrease punishment. A lot of the jobs seem pretty useless, and by the time you get to the more useful jobs, the game is nearly over.

Looking at the LP's of FFI, I am appreciating the relative briskness of the game compared to III. You only had your job selections at the beginning, and there wasn't much of a narrative, but it wasn't a terribly long game. By the time your characters might have started to feel a little stale, HEY, How's it going, Bahamut! And those class changes were always an improvement. Red Mage --> Bard? Not so much.

FF III, on the other hand, feels really stretched out. It tries to have a narrative, and the main quest is longer, but it feels very artificial. I imagine this is exacerbated by the DS remake as well, as several have mentioned the needless cinematics and the whole "Let's have you play several hours to gather your party and actually get your first jobs." Anyway, when I put the game back in, I was immediately assaulted by the fact that I remembered virtually nothing of the story, locations, and dungeons that I played a few months prior. That doesn't speak too well for how gripping of a game it is.

At any rate, because I hate myself and I am so close to the end, I am slogging onwards. If anyone else who is messing with the remake would be willing to get some pointless mognet letters from me so I can access the extra dungeon (another fantastic innovation *sigh*), lemme know!

Hmmm, I played through the remake when it first came out a few years ago, and even after beating it I never even touched the post game dungeon or onion knight class. Which is weird for me because I've never not experienced all the extra content in a Final Fantasy game with the exception of this and 11 because the whole idea that I had to interact with anyone real to experience something in a single player game both confused and infuriated me. It's just so damn gimmicky. Anyway, my rage has subsided with time and I am willing to do this with you. Shoot me a pm with the necessary info. Or just post here. Whatever you wanna do.

Oh, yeah. Great LP! With this, Crystalis and Dawn of Souls running concurrently, I'm in LP Heaven. Revisiting FF3 in more traditional fashion is making me so sad there was never a DoS style remake. I mean, the DS one is okay... but... wow... to dream.

Edit: In the interest of staying on topic, I suppose you really should send me a pm. We don't need our fumbling around with mognet cluttering up this great LP.

My perspective is probably a bit skewed, here, due to the fact that I didn't really have the opportunity to start playing more "traditional" RPGs (turn-based combat, loads of experience levels, magic spells, equipment, etc.) until the PSX came out, but I actually like FFIII DS a lot. Obviously, it's not as brisk as the NES version seems to be, but it's still fairly speedy compared to most modern RPGs, and I like that they actually gave the player's party members a little bit of individuality.

I think some of my fascination with it does stem from the older gameplay elements that were left in (spell charges as opposed to MP, for instance), so it requires me to think a little differently compared to what I'm used to.

What I like most about it, though (and which does apply to the NES version as well), is the sense of pure adventure. Sure, there's an overarching plot, but a lot of the things that happen in the story just seem to happen along the way. Much like Odysseus and all the difficulties he encounters in The Odyssey, a lot of the obstacles are a natural part of the overarching problem, but aren't really connected to each other the way they would be in a more recent RPG, which is more deeply concerned with the sort of narrative in which everything that happens ties back to the central idea or conflict. There's a free-wheeling sense of adventure to FFIII that really pulls me.

There's something about Percy's mini-corpse that's disturbing to me. Maybe because it looks like it got squished.

The job-change weakness in FFIII DS wasn't a deal-breaker for me. As I recall, it tells you how many battles you have to get through to get back to full stats again, and it's never very many. The gradual gathering of characters didn't bother me, either, though in retrospect, seeing how the FFIII people in this LP don't have even the illusion of being "characters," I feel they probably should have taken the same approach with the DS version, because once they're together in party, the little background they're given in the first bit of the game has no relevance whatsoever.

4/19/2010 - Aimless Wandering



♪♪Nepto Shrine♪♪

We rejoin our heroes in the Nepto Shrine. Looks like this is just another contrived reason to make us trudge through another crippling mini dungeon.



There are a few treasure chests scattered about in here, all for our Fighter. Of course, since we're all mini at the moment none of this will be useful at all until after we've finished the dungeon.



The majority of the dungeon is filled with these monsters. I usually just run from all of them rather than wasting spell charges better left for the boss.



It looks like a Big Rat was responsible for the loss of Nepto's eye. I guess the real question I have is this- how in the world did the rat build such an elaborate dungeon behind the eye of a statue? I mean, it couldn't have been the architect's intention to create what is essentially a doll house dungeon inside the head of the statue of the monster to which they were paying tribute, right?



♪♪Boss Battle♪♪

Its the same old story- Ringo kicks ass, PERCY bites the dust, SL continues to wish for a man-sized dungeon. Big Rat goes down in three rounds flat.



Aaaaand...now all those monsters inside starve to death.

I honestly don't remember what exactly the Water Fang actually does. I guess we'll find out soon enough.



Having done his duty in turning over the fang, Nepto falls back into hibernation assuming that we'll get things done.



♪♪Sailing Enterprise♪♪

While returning to the Viking Base for healing we're reminded of the fact that we're the brand new owners of a sailing ship. Time for exploring!



♪♪Tokkle♪♪

First up is Tokkle, which seems to be under siege by another nation and pretty on edge. I wonder who could be responsible?



Argass huh? Wasn't that the King that Cid said we should seek out for another airship? I guess this is going to be more trouble than I'd thought.

There are quite a few hints as to what we should be doing eventually, but none of it can be done at the moment. For how wide-open the world is we're still pretty stuck on a particular path, especially so long as Desh is with us.



The same griffons from Sasoon's W. Slayer box are just wandering around here. Needless to say, taking on four of them at once is a bit of a challenge for our team. Further to the west is the flying tree that the villager mentioned, but there's no way for us to reach it so long as we're airshipless.



♪♪Living Forest♪♪

Sailing a bit further to the northwest, we find a group of fairies that give hints about how to defeat the wizard Hyne. It turns out he is the one controlling that flying tree, which originated in this forest. This quest is still quite a bit off, though, so we'll just have to keep that in mind.



♪♪Castle Argass♪♪

Further north we find Argass Castle, but its empty save a few treasure boxes.



Sadly, PERCY can't even hold his own in random overworld battles most of the time. My Knight upgraded (with Cover) can't come soon enough.



♪♪Tower of Owen♪♪

At the northernmost area we can reach is the Tower of Owen. There doesn't seem to be anything but one room here and its filled with frogs. I wonder what this could mean?

♪♪Time Remains♪♪

To the west of the tower is the Valley of the Gurgans. Somehow everyone managed to die between here and the tower, so Ringo walks alone to find the secrets of the ancient ones.



There guys are like a living walkthrough of where I'll be heading as the game progresses. Too bad there's no real explanation of which part goes first.



Desh's destiny, huh? And here I thought he was just a random hanger-on to our legendary heroes. Now we've got Toad, so I guess its back to Owen's Tower.



Not before returning to Canaan for a quick revive and heal. For whatever reason being revived in FFIII does not remove any negative status effects you had before dying. Luckily, a quick stay at the Inn does.



And here we are back at the tower, ready to unravel the secrets within.

Next time: Desh's Destiny (or Deshtiny)

Isn't Hyne the name of some unimportant backstory deity thing in FF8? I don't remember seeing this in the DS version, but I could've just been not paying attention.

Yes.

It's one of a set of four McGuffins. You need all four to get to Eureka. There are eight statues of some kind lining the path to Eureka (four on a side). Each fang destroys one set of statues, and allows you to progress along the path. Trying to go to Eureka without all four fangs results in instant death once you run out of fangs, though. At least, that's how it works in the DS version

Hyne comes up in the DS version of FF3 as well. As for where you saw it in FF8, he's name-dropped at one point as the origin of all the Sorceresses (by way of any Rinoa being referred to respectfully as "Hyne's descendant" after the Ragnarok lands).

(There's also some NPCs who talk about the creation myth somewhere but whatever)

And, inevitably, there are those who believe that fact means something.