Final Fantasy III Classic Jobs Part I
Oct. 3rd, 2023 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingImmediately after finishing Final Fantasy V with a party of knight, thief, white mage, black mage, I wanted to do the same with Final Fantasy III. Now, my Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta playthrough that I had just finished was a bit cursed with technical issues, especially at the beginning, that prevented me from streaming entirely. In the interest of confirming that I could get things working, I streamed a very short "session 0" on the exact day I finished my Final Fantasy V run, August 8, 2017. This was really just checking that it could work.
In 2023, this version of the game is now known as "Final Fantasy III 3D Remake" to differentiate it from the Pixel Remaster release.
We went to Kazus and got our ram to open up the tiny map area a little bit, and then we found out we are all orphans which was way less awkward than Final Fantasy VIII. Kazus also gave us a few equipment upgrades, and some of the thief's equipment options surprised me; in the original FF3 on Famicom, they could use certain low-level swords, but here they can't... but their armor options are actually pretty good here in the early game.
We went into the Mythril Mines, and it's kind of cool seeing how much stronger we have become so quickly. Those skeletons are no longer a real threat.
We did some shopping and looting in Canaan and went onward to Dragon's Peak. The enemies were a minor step up here. Then we met Bahamut and Desch, who gives us Mini and joins us for no particular reason. In Tozus we also got an Aero spell, a Cura spell, and a Fire Staff. In Tozus Tunnel, it was fun on the two occasions when Desch showed up and won the battle before anyone else did anything. We entered Viking Cove and got the Spark Dagger which I gave to Refia and a bunch of -ara tier magic. I literally stumbled into some of these hidden passages by accident. So far, the treasures in this game really seem to have a feeling of significance.
The next area is one where you need to be tiny-sized with Mini to get through but you need to battle; the game would seem to be expecting you to use mages, since your physical power would be abysmal in this state. I found that Luneth's spells and Arc's Fire Staff were pretty well able to pull us through.
The Nepto Rat was pretty tough, with two actions per round often including a spell. In fact, Ingus spent most of the fight flat on his face and we had to use two Phoenix Dows. I thought those -ara tier spells would've ended the battle quickly but it still took several rounds. Desch didn't join in.
We restored the Nepto Dragon and got the Fang of Water, earning our sea ship, the Enterprise. With freedom to explore we went to Tokkul, Castle Argus and Tower of Owen. I checked them all out but there wasn't much indication of where to go or what to do next, and I was ready to wrap up for the night... so after resting at Sasune again, I did.
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In 2023, this version of the game is now known as "Final Fantasy III 3D Remake" to differentiate it from the Pixel Remaster release.
I thought it was remarkable that this 2014 release of Final Fantasy III on Steam - a port of the DS game from 2006 - ran perfectly on my mid spec'd computer, streamed well, and controlled so much better than the 2015 2D Steam version of Final Fantasy V. I only played for about 9 minutes, enough time to get the first character, Luneth, out of the game's cold open initial dungeon. No issues there!
Final Fantasy III is a good game to play with specific, limited jobs. It's semi-balanced to allow different jobs, even though most people consider it a relatively hard Final Fantasy title. This balance was partly added in the DS versions, where the jobs were modified to all include some kind of feature to help make them somewhat endgame viable. Somewhat.
As with my other "classic" playthroughs, my intent was to play with an as-constant-as-possible party of knight, thief, white mage and black mage. As with Final Fantasy V, jobs are unlocked based on story progress. Thief, white mage, and black mage are all unlocked at the first crystal, quite early in the game, but knight is unlocked sort of mid-game. My plan was to just keep characters in the default freelancer job until they had their real jobs.
Unlike my other classic playthroughs to date... I had literally never beaten this game in any form before. There was a time I played more than halfway through on an iOS device but got a bit hung-up on the stat maxing and lost interest.
The real first session was played on August 14, 2017.
Final Fantasy III is a good game to play with specific, limited jobs. It's semi-balanced to allow different jobs, even though most people consider it a relatively hard Final Fantasy title. This balance was partly added in the DS versions, where the jobs were modified to all include some kind of feature to help make them somewhat endgame viable. Somewhat.
As with my other "classic" playthroughs, my intent was to play with an as-constant-as-possible party of knight, thief, white mage and black mage. As with Final Fantasy V, jobs are unlocked based on story progress. Thief, white mage, and black mage are all unlocked at the first crystal, quite early in the game, but knight is unlocked sort of mid-game. My plan was to just keep characters in the default freelancer job until they had their real jobs.
Unlike my other classic playthroughs to date... I had literally never beaten this game in any form before. There was a time I played more than halfway through on an iOS device but got a bit hung-up on the stat maxing and lost interest.
The real first session was played on August 14, 2017.
I made a very pretty, sprite-based sidebar image for my streams.
The sidebar actually differs from this a little bit at the beginning, and I update it again later when my impressions of these jobs start to change.
From the start, I didn't even have jobs, and with that it took a while for this game to feel interesting. Not that it was without danger or anything. I didn't recall needing to grind, or even the order of some specific events at the start of the game. I went into the Mythril Mines pretty early, which resulted in this mess:
I always found it quite weird how quickly you get an airship in this game, but it's a very, very limited airship. On the, uh, second attempt we neatly recruited Refia and Ingus. Even as level 2 and 3 freelancers, I had the characters vaguely align to their eventual jobs: Refia was using daggers, Arc was learning healing spells, and Luneth was my only offensive mage. Maybe partly as a consequence of this, some of the early game battles took ages.
There's a part when we meet Ingus inside Sasune Castle where Refia says, "His sword is worth twice these two!" or something, referring to Luneth and Arc. It's amusing because it's not normally true, but in this playthrough it's almost certainly the case.
Early game enemies other than the first few basic overworld monsters were still pretty tough; I grinded out a couple of levels - which I think is expected? - and then also explored the tower of Sasune Castle. Even though the Wightslayer is kind of intended for Red Mages, I decided it wasn't so out-of-character for Ingus to wield it as a freelancer.
Next, we headed to the Sealed Cave across the water. We were much more able to handle the enemies here, especially with princess Sara occasionally chipping in. We took the Djinn out in just a couple of turns with Luneth casting nice, strong Blizzard spells.
With that, we got our first jobs! From here on out, Refia will be a thief, Arc will be a white mage, and Luneth will be a black mage. Ingus will remain as a freelancer for now but we'll restrict him to knight-like equipment until such a time as the knight job is actually available.
The sidebar actually differs from this a little bit at the beginning, and I update it again later when my impressions of these jobs start to change.
From the start, I didn't even have jobs, and with that it took a while for this game to feel interesting. Not that it was without danger or anything. I didn't recall needing to grind, or even the order of some specific events at the start of the game. I went into the Mythril Mines pretty early, which resulted in this mess:
I always found it quite weird how quickly you get an airship in this game, but it's a very, very limited airship. On the, uh, second attempt we neatly recruited Refia and Ingus. Even as level 2 and 3 freelancers, I had the characters vaguely align to their eventual jobs: Refia was using daggers, Arc was learning healing spells, and Luneth was my only offensive mage. Maybe partly as a consequence of this, some of the early game battles took ages.
There's a part when we meet Ingus inside Sasune Castle where Refia says, "His sword is worth twice these two!" or something, referring to Luneth and Arc. It's amusing because it's not normally true, but in this playthrough it's almost certainly the case.
Early game enemies other than the first few basic overworld monsters were still pretty tough; I grinded out a couple of levels - which I think is expected? - and then also explored the tower of Sasune Castle. Even though the Wightslayer is kind of intended for Red Mages, I decided it wasn't so out-of-character for Ingus to wield it as a freelancer.
Next, we headed to the Sealed Cave across the water. We were much more able to handle the enemies here, especially with princess Sara occasionally chipping in. We took the Djinn out in just a couple of turns with Luneth casting nice, strong Blizzard spells.
With that, we got our first jobs! From here on out, Refia will be a thief, Arc will be a white mage, and Luneth will be a black mage. Ingus will remain as a freelancer for now but we'll restrict him to knight-like equipment until such a time as the knight job is actually available.
We went to Kazus and got our ram to open up the tiny map area a little bit, and then we found out we are all orphans which was way less awkward than Final Fantasy VIII. Kazus also gave us a few equipment upgrades, and some of the thief's equipment options surprised me; in the original FF3 on Famicom, they could use certain low-level swords, but here they can't... but their armor options are actually pretty good here in the early game.
We went into the Mythril Mines, and it's kind of cool seeing how much stronger we have become so quickly. Those skeletons are no longer a real threat.
We did some shopping and looting in Canaan and went onward to Dragon's Peak. The enemies were a minor step up here. Then we met Bahamut and Desch, who gives us Mini and joins us for no particular reason. In Tozus we also got an Aero spell, a Cura spell, and a Fire Staff. In Tozus Tunnel, it was fun on the two occasions when Desch showed up and won the battle before anyone else did anything. We entered Viking Cove and got the Spark Dagger which I gave to Refia and a bunch of -ara tier magic. I literally stumbled into some of these hidden passages by accident. So far, the treasures in this game really seem to have a feeling of significance.
The next area is one where you need to be tiny-sized with Mini to get through but you need to battle; the game would seem to be expecting you to use mages, since your physical power would be abysmal in this state. I found that Luneth's spells and Arc's Fire Staff were pretty well able to pull us through.
The Nepto Rat was pretty tough, with two actions per round often including a spell. In fact, Ingus spent most of the fight flat on his face and we had to use two Phoenix Dows. I thought those -ara tier spells would've ended the battle quickly but it still took several rounds. Desch didn't join in.
We restored the Nepto Dragon and got the Fang of Water, earning our sea ship, the Enterprise. With freedom to explore we went to Tokkul, Castle Argus and Tower of Owen. I checked them all out but there wasn't much indication of where to go or what to do next, and I was ready to wrap up for the night... so after resting at Sasune again, I did.
Index | Next >
