Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano

Fun story about the endgame area here: while the game was still in design, it was discussed whether the last area should feature a save point or not.  It was decided against because it would make the game “too easy.”  So instead, you have to fight six bosses and climb through a huge long dungeon with no chance of saving, and if you die for any reason you have to do the whole thing all over.  Thanks, guys.  That was a great decision and I’m super glad you made it.

Those irritations I’ve had about the remake come full circle here; these bosses posed enough of a challenge in the original, but giving them all extra attacks results in the degenerate state wherein one of them can literally kill you in one turn if you get unlucky.  Seriously, you could at least have added a “continue” option for groups that get unlucky.  Throw us a bone here.  I suppose it is the source of darkness, though, you can expect certain amounts of unfairness.

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Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano

It’s kind of a shame that this game hasn’t made as big of a deal about Xande as the root of all evil.  Sure, he’s the guy behind a whole lot of crap that we’ve dealt with up to this point, but we haven’t seen him or even heard from him directly.  Yes, I know, up until we reached the surface world he was kind of frozen in a flooded landscape, but still.  It would have been nice to put a face to the name before now, you know?  There’s no sense of an emotional grudge match.

Of course, Final Fantasy II tried doing that, and that had its own problems.

At any rate, the last “dungeon” in Final Fantasy III is pretty ornate, composed of four separate dungeons, albeit with one of them as an optional sidequest.  Once you’ve broken through the guardian statues with the four Fangs, you’ve got the chance to see the start, but you need those keys from Unei and Doga to really get into the meat of the dungeon.  So off we go, back to the spot where we unlocked the final set of jobs, ready to crush the face of whoever stands between us and our goal.

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Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano

If you take nothing away from this series of columns, aside from the fact that I really enjoy this game, let it be this: the remake does a whole lot of things that aren’t to its credit.  The last set of jobs is this in a microcosm.

See, in the original version of Final Fantasy III, the jobs were not anything remotely approaching balanced.  Vikings were completely forgettable, for example, having nothing to recommend them aside from HP and some weapons that weren’t needed.  Scholars were a joke.  And everything in the game was outclassed by the last two jobs you got, which didn’t become available until the last dungeon of the game was well underway.

When Matrix Software remade the game, they really wanted to ensure that all of the jobs had some purpose.  Certainly, the remake succeeds in making some of them far more viable – I just listed a couple of them, but even Geomancers, Bards, and Rangers became more viable with the remake.  But the last set of jobs now includes Ninja and Sage, and it kind of makes a mess out of things.  The efforts to “balance” these jobs ultimately just make the last set less interesting.

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Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano

You’d think that this series would involve more submarines.  Exploring the underwater world seems like a natural extension, yet only here and in Final Fantasy VII do you get to slip beneath the waves reliably.  Otherwise, the water is an effective barrier to everything you want to do.  Ah, well.

You’d also think that having access to a submarine wouldn’t really open up more exploration options, since you can sort of fly right now.  Au contraire, dear readers.  Unlike most games in the series, airships in Final Fantasy III can’t pass through the majority of mountain ranges, which means that you can’t simply soar everywhere.  There are places that are completely inaccessible unless you have a ship that can fly past some low-lying foothills… or a ship that can go under those same mountain ranges.  Hmm.  I wonder what sort of ship might be able to do that?  Oh, right, a submersible airship able to explore strange new lands.  Away we go!

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Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano

I shudder to think at what would happen if the Light Warriors were to put in an application for an airship loan at this point in the game.  They’d be laughed out of the office.  Our first airship got blown up, we used our second one for about three minutes before getting it chained up by some jerk who may have broken one of the foundations of the planet, and then once we get that back we get it shot down in minutes.  The skies here are just evil.

Leaving aside the fact that we can’t keep a flying ship in the air, of course, there is the minor fact that the Light Warriors are trapped somewhere strange after having their ship shot out from underneath them.  As we were in a vehicle at the time, everyone is perfectly fine but the ship is destroyed, leaving us kind of up the creek.  Boy, I sure hope this doesn’t mean we’re about to all be forced into changing classes for a big gimmick section!

(That is exactly what we’re going to have to do.)

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