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freshfeelingI resumed my playthrough, including the rest of Final Fantasy III's floating continent, on October 15th. As a reminder, my jobs for this run are Warrior, Onion Knight, Viking and Magus. Only Warrior is unlocked so far (although we're able to temporarily use a White Mage when the game design demands it), which means when I get access to the next set of jobs I have to start using an Onion Knight.
I had fixed some controller issues from last time and I was really appreciating it. With the handy map features this enabled I was able to check for treasures I had missed.
With the entire team as warriors, I was somewhat worried that things would be hard. Perhaps that part is mostly behind us? Or perhaps I'm overlevelled from the shenanigans I needed to pull to beat the Nepto Shrine's Giant Rat. Having beaten the Tower of Owen, I gained access to the outer sea of the floating continent, which I recalled had multiple small villages. I remembered this from the 3D version of the game, which I think had a slightly cuter version of the Gysahl music.
I shopped at these newly available places to get Flame Mails, Ice Helmets, and Salamand Swords - a significant power boost all around. Drile had to become a white mage briefly again to access the dwarves' underground lake, and then we battled Gutsco. It was very easy. With the controller working the way I wanted, I had access to auto-battle and I just used that.
I forgot where the fight with Salamander took place and thought it might happen the moment we triggered the scene with the horns. I hadn't healed completely nor saved, so this actually made me a bit nervous. Fortunately this wasn't the case.
Salamander is, I think, generally considered pretty hard. It certainly was when I last faced him in the 3D version!
The big worry with Salamander is that he's got a fairly strong attack that hits the whole party - not something we've had to deal with yet. I was actually using auto-battle and trying to take screenshots and barely noticed that the team was suffering bigtime from the repeated fiery assaults.
We mostly recovered, although Borlon was killed by the next turn's Flame attack. The turn after that, I decided to spend a Phoenix Down to bring him back and hoped I could keep him on his feet... but then Archibald and Drile defeated Salamander on the next turn.
With that, we unlocked...
...Onion Knight, of course.
I didn't realize how bad Onion Knight was going to be here. I know in the original Final Fantasy III on Famicom, Onion Knights basically stopped having access to equipment in the relatively early game and that this was among the many balance changes in the 3D version (which was basically an attempt to make almost any job endgame-viable). I guess I thought that might be partly preserved, given the changes to class commands and whatnot. Well... it isn't. Onion Knights are terrible.
With their recently-acquired elemental swords, Archibald, Borlon and Captain were regularly doing 200-300 damage to random enemies depending on their defenses and elemental resistances. Drile was generally doing roughly 30 damage. Ah well. I guess that's the point.
We did a little bit of treasure hunting without a lot to show for it, and then proceeded to Tokkul to get kidnapped and put in Hyne's tree castle. It wasn't hard although I would say difficulty stepped up at least somewhat, with characters taking actual damage meriting healing and some status effects presenting a challenge.
The area wasn't hard. We got a Royal Sword that I realized only knights could use - and this is part of how this game is going to get tougher with our restricted jobs, I suppose. At least we aren't all onion knights.
We got to Hein before long. For the battle with Hein, I was recalling how I fought him in the 3D version and figured we'd just have to wear him down forever over time with normal attacks. Being mindful, however, that Drile the Onion Knight is terrible, I thought it might be smart to throw a few spellcasting items. While I did make a few timing errors, this was generally very effective. Basically, the warriors each had two swords with elemental effects: Archibald had ice + fire, and the other two warriors had fire + lightning. Thus I could tell: if Archibald's attacks did roughly twice as much damage as the others, the weakness was ice. If Archibald's attacks did roughly half as much damage, the weakness was lightning. Otherwise, the weakness was fire. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but it wasn't planned or anything and I felt pretty clever.
Perhaps in part because Hein spends every third turn changing his weakness, the damage wasn't overwhelming and the fight generally seemed easy.
We got some prizes and went to the real world.
Enemies on this lower world were a bit tougher in terms of their damage output but we packed enough Hi-Potions not to worry about it.
We found Aria and did the whole Water Shrine (?) thing. Besides that ramp-up in damage it was no big deal. Kraken was taking ~500 damage each turn from every single warrior; it was easier than the last few bosses.
With that, we unlocked Viking! I had to sell some things to afford some viking equipment. It's actually pretty exciting, at least for now, because vikings are considerably stronger offensively and defensively compared to warriors at this point. With their much-higher vitality scores, it will result in larger HP gains over time, and consequently I thought it was a good idea to make two of my warriors into vikings. This ramped up the expense, but other than that it seemed smart.
I spent a bit of time exploring the continent around Amur while also grinding money, although that was a bit on the slow side. I also got Gill to open up the sewers, but I'm not going to play that part until next time.
The next big barrier I'm anticipating is Garuda, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
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I had fixed some controller issues from last time and I was really appreciating it. With the handy map features this enabled I was able to check for treasures I had missed.
With the entire team as warriors, I was somewhat worried that things would be hard. Perhaps that part is mostly behind us? Or perhaps I'm overlevelled from the shenanigans I needed to pull to beat the Nepto Shrine's Giant Rat. Having beaten the Tower of Owen, I gained access to the outer sea of the floating continent, which I recalled had multiple small villages. I remembered this from the 3D version of the game, which I think had a slightly cuter version of the Gysahl music.
I shopped at these newly available places to get Flame Mails, Ice Helmets, and Salamand Swords - a significant power boost all around. Drile had to become a white mage briefly again to access the dwarves' underground lake, and then we battled Gutsco. It was very easy. With the controller working the way I wanted, I had access to auto-battle and I just used that.
I forgot where the fight with Salamander took place and thought it might happen the moment we triggered the scene with the horns. I hadn't healed completely nor saved, so this actually made me a bit nervous. Fortunately this wasn't the case.
Salamander is, I think, generally considered pretty hard. It certainly was when I last faced him in the 3D version!
The big worry with Salamander is that he's got a fairly strong attack that hits the whole party - not something we've had to deal with yet. I was actually using auto-battle and trying to take screenshots and barely noticed that the team was suffering bigtime from the repeated fiery assaults.
We mostly recovered, although Borlon was killed by the next turn's Flame attack. The turn after that, I decided to spend a Phoenix Down to bring him back and hoped I could keep him on his feet... but then Archibald and Drile defeated Salamander on the next turn.
With that, we unlocked...
...Onion Knight, of course.
I didn't realize how bad Onion Knight was going to be here. I know in the original Final Fantasy III on Famicom, Onion Knights basically stopped having access to equipment in the relatively early game and that this was among the many balance changes in the 3D version (which was basically an attempt to make almost any job endgame-viable). I guess I thought that might be partly preserved, given the changes to class commands and whatnot. Well... it isn't. Onion Knights are terrible.
With their recently-acquired elemental swords, Archibald, Borlon and Captain were regularly doing 200-300 damage to random enemies depending on their defenses and elemental resistances. Drile was generally doing roughly 30 damage. Ah well. I guess that's the point.
We did a little bit of treasure hunting without a lot to show for it, and then proceeded to Tokkul to get kidnapped and put in Hyne's tree castle. It wasn't hard although I would say difficulty stepped up at least somewhat, with characters taking actual damage meriting healing and some status effects presenting a challenge.
The area wasn't hard. We got a Royal Sword that I realized only knights could use - and this is part of how this game is going to get tougher with our restricted jobs, I suppose. At least we aren't all onion knights.
We got to Hein before long. For the battle with Hein, I was recalling how I fought him in the 3D version and figured we'd just have to wear him down forever over time with normal attacks. Being mindful, however, that Drile the Onion Knight is terrible, I thought it might be smart to throw a few spellcasting items. While I did make a few timing errors, this was generally very effective. Basically, the warriors each had two swords with elemental effects: Archibald had ice + fire, and the other two warriors had fire + lightning. Thus I could tell: if Archibald's attacks did roughly twice as much damage as the others, the weakness was ice. If Archibald's attacks did roughly half as much damage, the weakness was lightning. Otherwise, the weakness was fire. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but it wasn't planned or anything and I felt pretty clever.
Perhaps in part because Hein spends every third turn changing his weakness, the damage wasn't overwhelming and the fight generally seemed easy.
We got some prizes and went to the real world.
Enemies on this lower world were a bit tougher in terms of their damage output but we packed enough Hi-Potions not to worry about it.
We found Aria and did the whole Water Shrine (?) thing. Besides that ramp-up in damage it was no big deal. Kraken was taking ~500 damage each turn from every single warrior; it was easier than the last few bosses.
With that, we unlocked Viking! I had to sell some things to afford some viking equipment. It's actually pretty exciting, at least for now, because vikings are considerably stronger offensively and defensively compared to warriors at this point. With their much-higher vitality scores, it will result in larger HP gains over time, and consequently I thought it was a good idea to make two of my warriors into vikings. This ramped up the expense, but other than that it seemed smart.
I spent a bit of time exploring the continent around Amur while also grinding money, although that was a bit on the slow side. I also got Gill to open up the sewers, but I'm not going to play that part until next time.
The next big barrier I'm anticipating is Garuda, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
< Previous | Index | Next >
