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

You spoony bard.

What? We can't immediately change Percy's class now that you've just bought him new equipment? Lame. But Bard is still gonna be reserved for Percy, it's gotta happen. In the interim, why not make SL a Viking to smash things up?

fix'd

I look forward to the day that Percy can serenade the group with tales of talking vegetables and clumsy persimmons.

In the meantime, I'm going to throw in a vote for SL becoming a Viking and Katie adding the randomness of summons to battles!

Man, I recently went through hell trying to get a good screenshot of the chocobo summon from FF3. It didn't occur to me to ask TheSL if he could hook me up.

I agree that SL should be a viking, he's doing too well. And Katie has had it so easy as the same class for so long! She could be a Conjuror!

I am all for mixing it up.

You have to have a tank and a healer or the game's basically unwinnable. He already said those two aren't negotiable, anyway.

I'm voting for Conjurer, so you can go nuts trying to get good screenshots of the summon effects... Er, assuming there's effects to speak of in this version.

Well, the viking and conjurer could sort of be categorized under those class roles. Sort of. If you squint really hard.

But you're right in that I missed the fact that SL didn't ask for roles for those two. I just assumed that, since Percy and Ringo had already just recently changed jobs, we were looking for changes for the others. My bad.

Just make Ringo a silly geomancer already and save the bard for Percy at some point in the game where there's actually a margin for error.

Update will come one day late due to unforeseen crunch time at work. Spoiler: PERCY joins a band.

5/25/2010 - Golden Opportunities



For the hell of it, Ringo takes up Geomancy. There's nothing but leather armor that he can equip at this point, so those Terrain abilities better be good!



♪♪The Dungeon♪♪

Into the sewers! I wonder why they're keeping flying shoes down here anyways?



Oh how the tables have turned. PERCY is suddenly a boomerang chucking bad-ass, while Ringo is consistently hurting himself with the terrain.



♪♪Good Ol' Fellows♪♪

Terrain does do wonders at times, though. Not that it mattered here because even Katie could kill these goblins that attacked the four old men that had been trying to retrieve the shoes before we could.



Oh you goofy old "Light Warriors."

There aren't a whole lot of monsters that can take down our group with PERCY doing such damage at the moment, but status effects can still wreck havoc from time to time.



There are a few items hidden in the walls near the bottom of the dungeon. Outside of the Power armlet (+5 STR) its nothing particularly noteworthy, though.



Wow, this was remarkably easier than most of our quests.



Or not. I guess those old guys are worth something after all!



The old men bully the even older woman into cooperating.

Bottomless swamp? Its like the Light Warrior's have a mind of their own about where they're heading at this point.



They even had to fake the Exit spell? Well, I guess not everyone was imbued with the power of the crystals, which makes it even more confusing that magic shops exist if only the Light Warrior's can use them.



Leaving to the south of town, we eventually come across a black hole (I'm assuming this is the "Bottomless Swamp") and a big mansion. Note that one of the random encounter enemies is now a palette swap of one of our previous boss encounters.



♪♪Crystal Cave♪♪

This is Goldar's Mansion and the #1 reason to have a Thief on hand at this point in the adventure (beyond the fact that they're awesome). Pressing select until PERCY is in the lead (i.e. visible) position, he can unlock any locked doors without the use of a Magic Key. Key's disappear after one use and doors re-lock after you leave them, so this cuts back on a lot of unnecessary purchases.

Note the music! Doesn't something seems suspicious about this giant gold mansion?



Most of the rooms are empty, but thankfully none of the squares are spiked and we start directly adjacent to the exit.

♪♪Battle♪♪

Every enemy here adheres to the "Gold______" pattern of naming, outside of the Nightmare here. All of them are total pushovers.



There are 11 shiny (worthless) swords and one dragon claw hidden in the back of the mansion.



Speaking of hidden, the actual content of the dungeon is hidden in the wall in the top right locked room of the first area.



♪♪Boss Battle♪♪

From there its just a straight shot to Mr. Goldar himself.



Goldar spends most all of his turns casting the three different elements of tier-2 black magic. SL quickly bites the dust to a ridiculous Ice 2 (more than likely because of the gear I was still wearing from the volcano). Once Katie died, Ringo gave up on hurting himself with Terrain and used our small cache of Hi-Potions to keep him and PERCY alive long enough for our mega-thief to finish Goldar off.



Well, crap. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of having come down here, doesn't it?

Oh, so that's why we had to do this whole set of quests. It turns out that Goldar was really just a huge dick and had locked our airship down in the port so we couldn't leave.



Randomly inspired by Ringo's stories of his musical career, PERCY takes up the mantle of the bard. He doesn't have much in the way of gear at the moment, so I guess we should probably remedy that.

Ringo takes up PERCY's thief mantle so we can continue to have a decent damage output.



Speaking of gear, those worthless Shiny Swords still net a pretty penny when selling them off.

Now that we've got an airship again, let's go exploring!



Wait, what?

This is the road to the final dungeon, but its currently blocked off by some kind of magical spell that instantly annihilates you if you happen to step inside of it.



♪♪Dastar♪♪

Eventually we come across the small island town of Dastar, home to Geomancers and Bards.



PERCY becomes a little less useless with some new gear.

This town is full of interesting, potentially plot-related revelations.



Yeah, we found out the hard way. Screw Geomancers.



There are a bunch of bards around singing tales of history or summon monsters, but my favorite one is the guy who wrote a whole song about Chocobos.



This is where we end for today, though.

Next time: World Travelers

I forget what exactly bards can do in this game. I get the impression they were greatly improved for the remake.

Considering that prince Edward (Gilbert?) of FFIV was their direct successor, it would suffice to say that these guys are Edward before Square managed to work out the bugs.

I'm just sayin', if the party needs to lose some dead weight in order for the LP to go on then we shouldn't hold it against theSL. At least he humored us with the geomancer for as long as any sane person could stand.

I find it hilariously appropriate that the closest RINGO got to becoming a musician was ringing a dinky little bell (and then being silenced by the fury of Mother Earth.)


EMERGENCY EDIT:


I can't be the only person who has tried singing this to the tune of the chocobo theme.

Does this count?

Well, they're very good at dying. Exceptionally good at it, in fact.

Actually, Bards primarily are useful as buff/de-buff troopers. Their Scare skill can make enemies miss or even flee, and their Cheer skill ups your team's hits-per-turn count (you know, just like Haste). The former isn't nearly as useful as it sounds (it usually misses), but Cheer is a handy Hastega equivalent. It's pretty damned useless in a party with only one heavy hitter, but what can you do?

Oh, and they paradoxically have a pretty decent HP growth curve in FF3. I don't get it either...

I love the four old dudes.

FYI - taking a week off because of the holiday and because some of our customers are in town from China this week.

6/7/2010 - Grounded Again



♪♪ Go Above the Clouds! / Eternal Wind ♪♪

Back to exploring! This place looks interesting...what the fuck! No we're without an airship once again. This game is a huge tease with those things.



For some reason, the local kingdom is embroiled in some sort of civil war, with the losers destined to be executed.



♪♪Salonia♪♪

The castle is locked up as well. What the hell is going on here?



There are four smaller towns surrounding Salonia castle. Most of them are fairly worthless at this point, though, because the King has ordered that the shops be closed as well.



Pay attention. If you don't heed these words of the local villagers you're about to totally fuck over your playthrough.

There is a tower here full of Dragoon gear, though, so at least we're set in that regard.



Here is your short PERCY Bard showcase. Cheer (party haste) is fairly helpful, but far from essential. From what I saw of Scare its just a good way to waste your turn.



PERCY's harp is doing a lot more damage than I figured it would, but its still being easily outpaced by SL and Ringo.



There are 3 sets of gear up here, so we've got enough to fill out most of our party as Dragoons for whenever we attempt to face the king and Garuda.



Ringo and PERCY both give up their jobs in favor of the new Dragoon gear. Might as well get some skill into it before I have to take on the next big bad boss. Ringo is caught in the act of a Jump in the last shot there.

The southwestern village is where our next big plot point is. Something about how this guy walks five feet and reiterates the prince's location amuses me.



Like always, we but into the prince's business to save him. The guys attacking him are the same lame enemies from Goldar's Mansion.



They obviously didn't know they were picking on anyone nearly as tough as the Light Warriors. The prince works his way into our party in an attempt to bring his father to some kind of sense over this whole civil war situation.



There are a group of old men around the town that give us another set of Dragoon gear with Prince Allus in tow. Now we're set in case Garuda is tough enough to warrant a full party of Dragoons.



Speaking of which, might as well swap SL out now.



Who knows what's in the library, but I'm sure its important at some point if they're trying this hard to keep us out.

Despite the whole banishment thing, the king allows Allus to waltz right into the front gate of the castle.



Something doesn't feel right, though, and Allus wakes us to ask whether or not we think that his father really loves him. The Light Warriors respond with a question of "What kind of parents don't love their children?" A: Bad ones.



Of course you feel frightened, there's the king sneaking in for a midnight "hug" of some sort, I'm sure filled with no sort of malicious intent.



It turns out that the king was under the control of someone named "Gigames" all along. Who he is or what his intentions are are never really explained to my knowledge.



The king manages to break free at the last minute and stab himself instead of his son. Gigames doesn't really like this option, though, and decides to kill everyone himself instead.

♪♪Boss Battle♪♪

The gist of the strategy for Garuda is thus- the big bird manages to get off a group Thunder spell every turn that does ~300+ to the entire party. The only way to avoid this is by jumping off screen via the Dragoon's Jump command and hoping that you're lucky enough to hit the sky before the spell goes off. Needless to say, this fight is like 90% luck / job selection and 10% skill; there is no way you could have beaten this without Dragoons in your squad.



Needless to say, even after swapping in Katie as a fourth Dragoon its a rough fight and does me in a half dozen times or so.



I grinded for a bit for skill ups and the cash to outfit everyone with a second lance for extra damage. There is one weapon shop still open in the northeastern section that sells Dragoon polearms exclusively.



Rematch! Same strategy as before of Jump and pray.



A few rounds later we return slightly lightning singed, but mostly OK. Garuda is down!

♪♪The Requiem♪♪

Following the fight the King passes away, telling Allus that he loves him with his dying breath.



Allus pledges to take his place as king since that was his father's last request.



Allus pledges his assistance for the future, and offers up his castle's treasure as a token of appreciation. Unfortunately for us, most of it is rusted junk armor and Geomancer/Scholar gear.

Thanks it for this update! Feel free to suggest new jobs for PERCY and Ringo as we go forward.

Next time: The Fastest Airship In the World

What?

...WHAT?!

That completely defeats the point of a job system!

"Here are twelve different ways to build your character! All of them but one will get you killed against this boss!"

RRGH DRRGH BRRGH GAAAAAAAAH