The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 6
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Everything seemed to be going so well for a while there. We had an airship again after we’d wrecked the first one. We had not only just finished one leg of our supposed quest, we had done so immediately after finishing the prior leg of the quest, very efficient-like. (It’s good to have these things on your resume for future world-saving gigs according to Destined Heroes Quarterly.) We failed to save one shrine maiden! And now here we are, stuck inside of a town with a big lock on our airship.
I supposed we’d better walk back into the town and find out what’s going on, huh?
Well, yes, but we should also take the opportunity to examine the new jobs we got from the Water Crystal, because this is when we start getting into the fun stuff. The first crystal gave us the basic lineup, the second one gave us a few nice outliers, but we’ve got some new jobs to play around with! So let’s take a look at the lot of them.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 5
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
My return to the Dwarven Caves saw me welcomed as a hero, which was sure nice, as was the fact that the dwarves opened up their treasure stores for me. Being a heroic sort, I naturally took this as the perfect opportunity to rob the short, hairy men of literally every valuable they had on hand. They wanted me to do it, I was just helping them along! Look, don’t judge me, I’ve got two more crystals to find, this is a difficult job.
The end of our Light Warrior Victory Tour (with special guest Rob the Dwarves) hit something of a down note, though, with some dying guy showing up and informing me that Tokkul was in trouble. Tokkul, that rings a bell… oh, right, that town full of sad people from way back when that I briefly pilfered. And it’s apparently being burned to the ground. Well, it would take a truly heartless individual to just keep plowing ahead and ignore that sort of news.
…no, turns out I’m not quite that heartless. Fine, let’s go save the stupid town.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 4
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen: I’m in some real trouble here. I kind of expected that by this point in the project I’d be halfway-ish through the game, like I was with Final Fantasy II, but darn if there isn’t a lot of good stuff going on here and if we’re not even at the second of four crystals. This is not going to be a shorter jaunt, it seems. I’d be much more upset about this if Final Fantasy III weren’t a joy to play.
Albeit one with some reservations. I mean, we’re up to the Tower of Owen now, and this dungeon pulls in a lot of stuff that really could have remained by the wayside. Sure, it was cute when you had me turn my entire party into miniature versions of ourselves for about a year, but now you’re asking me to turn the group into a bunch of toads. Toads! Go home, designers, you’re drunk. At least it’s not something you need to keep up for the whole dungeon.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 3
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Let’s recap, shall we? When I left off, I was in a cave full of friendly vikings. My options at this point seemed fairly simple:
- Remain forever in this happy place full of vikings, which presumably would mean plenty of mead, lots of singing, fun times in general, and maybe the occasional raiding party against coastal villagers unable to put up an adequate defense. Eventually we might even reach North America!
- Go back to the whole “saving the world” bit based on some vague thread of fulminating darkness overtaking the world.
The correct option seems clear, and yet for some reason I still wound up heading back to that Light Warrior thing. What can I say? I love hanging out with vikings, sure, but I am a sucker for fulminating darkness.
There’s not a whole lot to do in the cave other than pilfer every available bit of treasure, possibly taking a slight detour back to the gnomish village to get another copy of Aero. While there’s not much else of interest here, though, the vikings do agree to give you a ship if you can quell the super-angry dragon off in the sea right now. Seems like a lark; we’ll do it.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 2
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Easy come, easy go. After a quest to retrieve an airship that took all of ten seconds, you are deprived of your first airship shortly thereafter. Yes, your constrained little world opens up by smashing your airship into a rock, revealing a much bigger world than you had thought you occupied. This is a regular theme in this game, as it happens; you think you know what the world looks like, but soon thereafter you get something bigger. It’s also the first of many airships that you ruin, but let’s not talk about that.
The important thing is that this opens up a path to head south and to Cid’s hometown, where he promises that he can conveniently build you a replacement airship if you can just get him an engine. So we have a long-term goal, and astonishingly it doesn’t really involve the crystal at this point. Sure, we’re supposed to be saving the world from darkness, but it’s not yet clear how we’re going to go about doing that. Is there darkness in the optional little side-dungeon in Kazus (which I’ve been calling “the second town” the whole time because of laziness)? Nope, just some Mythril Swords and a chance to wear out that job sickness.
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 