Ehren's 3FP: Final Fantasy III ~Fin~

Oh how time flies when you’re having ‘fun’! It’s now Friday (the 26th of April), and I’ve got a pretty big update for all of you which I think needs to be prefaced with a little bit of back story. Feel free to skip right to the meat and potatoes below if you don’t really care either way.

Now, as many of you will notice below, I actually managed to beat Final Fantasy III in a matter of days. Less than three, even. This last week, I went to visit my mother for a few days and ended up watching my sister’s 15-month old baby the whole time! Since he’s really fussy (and I basically sleep like I’m dead), I realized quickly that the only way to this effectively would be to just stay awake, and only take short naps when there was someone else around to watch him. As a result, I barely slept at all between Monday morning and Wednesday night! Final Fantasy III was a good tool to keep me entertained, so that’s what I was doing when I wasn’t calming an infant or catching a few minutes of rest.

Enough of the boring life stuff though, on to the reason you clicked this article. Some of you may recall in my last article that I said I had started Final Fantasy III right as I was writing up my final thoughts. This is quite true, but I had actually finished the article and started FFIII very early in the day, before three o’clock in the afternoon. I had to wait to post it until after the new layout went live, leading to it looking much later than it actually was. Because of this and the stuff mentioned above, this week’s playing schedule was a little weird. As usual though, I left my final thoughts for the game down at the bottom of the page.

 

Progress

~ Monday, April 22nd -Afternoon (After 3:00PM PDT)

  • United the four main characters (Renamed Luneth to ‘Zac’, Arc to ‘Brogan’, Refia to ‘Tonika’, and Ingus to ‘Ehren’)
  • Defeated the Djinn and obtained the power of the Crystal of Wind
  • Set out from Sasune Castle and crashed Cid’s Airship.
  • Climbed the mountain, rescued Desch, and fled from Bahamut
  • Passed through Tozus, the Gnome Village, and reached the Viking’s Cove
  • Calmed the fury of the Nepto Dragon, and obtained the sea vessel ‘Enterprise’

~Tuesday, April 23rd

  • Met with the Gulgans and climbed the Owen Tower to meet Desch’s fate
  • Visited the Dwarven Hollows, and pursued the Ice Horn thief
  • Defeated Gutsco and restored light to the Crystal of Fire
  • Saved the kingdom of Argus from Hein’s curse
  • Let Cid turn the Enterprise into an airship, and descended to the surface world
  • Defeated the Kraken and restored light to the Crystal of Water
  • Beat Goldor up and freed the airship from its tether
  • Freed Saronia from war and saved its prince, obtaining the airship ‘Nautilus’ as reward
  • Spoke with Doga and learned of Xande’s plot to stop time

~Wednesday, April 24th

  • Woke Unei from her sleep, and found the airship ‘Invincible’
  • Obtained the last ‘Elemental Fang’ from the Cave of Shadows
  • Defeated Doga and Unei, completing the Syrcus Key that unlocks Eureka
  • Defeated Titan and restored light to the Crystal of Earth
  • Ascended the Crystal Tower of Syrcus and defeated Xande
  • Entered the World of Darkness, and freed the four Crystals of Darkness
  • Defeated the Cloud of Darkness and saved both worlds from the Void

…And that’s where I am! I beat the game late Wednesday night (I think I might technically have strayed into Thursday morning, but I was so tired I forgot to catalog the switch!), and as of the time of this article I have not yet started Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection. I intend to start tomorrow morning, and I’ve just been slowly letting myself recover in the meantime. To be fair to the above timeline, Final Fantasy III [PSP] contains an auto-battle feature where you press ‘Select’ and the game will run battles at double or triple speed (not sure which) and all of the characters will continually act out the last command string you manually issued during the current boot-up. This made power leveling ridiculously easy, and since I had recently replayed the game on the Nintendo DS I still had most of the maps and treasure locations memorized.

 

Final Fantasy III ~ Parting Thoughts

Like many people in North America, I didn’t get a chance to play the original Final Fantasy III. I didn’t even play the renamed VI released as III. When the game was remade for the DS, I was ecstatic. I bought it and played it on release day, and absolutely loved it. Replaying the PSP version did not disappoint, either. The job system in III, which was eventually used in a slightly watered down form in V and then in a more sophisticated form in X-2, is easily one of my favorite class systems in any RPG, let alone just Final Fantasy. Every job had its time and place, and many of the jobs stayed relevant right up to the end of the game. I loved the idea of zooming in and out to find interactable objects and secret passageways, but was pleased when I discovered you did not have to zoom in to find these things. Lastly in terms of system, although I prefer the ATB gauge I feel like III really works without it even in the PSP re-release. The addition of the auto-mode made level grinding a little easy, but was a nice option since I had already played the game to completion several times. The world exploration is one of the most involved of any Final Fantasy game, although the world (like many of the world map-using games) is a little bit empty.

The story of the game still falls a little short for me, but I was happy that the remake fleshed out the characters you controlled and made them a little more involved. Giving the characters different hometowns and people to go back to was a step in the right direction from the original, which from my understanding is basically the same as FFI with the ability to change classes at any time. I must admit that Xande didn’t see anywhere near enough screen time to satisfy his reason for being evil, and the World of Darkness could have been a little more detailed and play-intensive. Despite that, the story is good if you take it for what it is, and contains a few themes which are shared among many of the Final Fantasy games both new and old. If this game were ever to see a remake, I would like to see many of the side characters (such as Desch or Xande) see more involved stories, and the inclusion of some non-combat/non-dungeon side quests.

Overall, Final Fantasy III was a decent entry with some shining gameplay and a great continuation to the direction of becoming story-focused. It’s fun and engaging without being too tedious, and while I have my complaints it’s still one of the games I enjoy most.


About the Author

Ehren Rivers Writer; Editorials, Final Fantasy News, Commenter. 24 years old and from the West Coast of the US, he is a longtime Final Fantasy fan who has played nearly every game in the series, both main and sideline. Favorite Final mainline Final Fantasies are XII and VIII, favorite side games are Crystal Chronicles and Tactics Advance 2. Avid reader of Nova Crystallis for many years, commenter for several months prior to being taken on.

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