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freshfeelingI had been wanting to play more classic Final Fantasy games, especially just to get a feel for the new Pixel Remaster versions. The only one I had played so far was Final Fantasy III in October of 2024. While I'd been talking about doing the side quest challenge for Final Fantasy I, it happened that Four Job Fiesta season had started and it seemed opportune. I started a playthrough on June 16, 2025.
Thinking that I've spent lots of time lately using knight, thief, white mage and black mage, I decided I wanted to choose a playthrough style that avoided the wind crystal jobs as much as possible. The new Volcano Run option seemed like a good fit.
I was nervous about Liquid Flame, and rightfully so. This is a counter-based boss that had one major weakness my one non-berserker could exploit, but he could only do it while the boss was in a specific state. This did take a few tries...
...but I was delighted to find out that the Pixel Remaster has a room-based quicksave. This time I broke two Frost Rods and won.
We did the Karnak 500 (as they call it) and I turned off encounters until near the end and got literally every item. The Main Gauche is actually better than my berserker's axes on paper so I gave it to one of them. It lacks the axes' defense-splitting property but has no inherent miss chance and the Main Gauche's unique dodging chance. I also put the game's first Ribbon on the freelancer. We had lots of time to get out.
Having escaped, we earned our third job: bard. Bard isn't bad, and it's actually a fire crystal job, but you don't get it until a short while later after you sail to Crescent. I wasn't able to sail anywhere until after meeting Mid, so I had to go through the Library of the Ancients first. Since one character was now designated as a bard, I was travelling with two berserkers and two freelancers, where one freelancer was equipped to deal damage with Ashura and the other for support with the Healing Staff.
Believe it or not, Ifrit was a non-issue even without any rod breaking. I wasn't even that attentive during the fight and just managed to deal lots of damage while healing the worst of it. The regular encounters here were also on the dry side.
Byblos was harder, and I think it took me three attempts.
It seemed like his AI script might be ramping up his aggression as his HP lowered - where his Drain spells were pretty gnarly and made him practically out-heal out damage on attempt #2 - so on attempt #3 I led with as much damage as I could while staying safe and used two Flame Rods quite a bit later in the fight. Eventually, this worked well.
I thought we'd benefit from bard so rather than sailin' 'round the world I just went to Crescent.
Since my legal classes right now are dragoon (represented by a freelancer), berserker, and bard, that means I can have two bards in the party to reduce my proportionate berserkitude. We started gaining some songs, too, so I went to Istory and Lix.
After procrastinating the Sandworm fight by visiting basically everywhere I could (actually, I skipped that cave near Jachol for now), I went to the desert. This fight was stupid.
This is one where Enkibot says something like, "If you have 4 berserkers, grind to level 40" or something like that. Berserkers make this fight miserable, and if I had any other damage-oriented characters I could compensate better.
Well... compensation was the order of the day. I had bought just a few extra rods in Karnak and I chucked Frost Rods with my freelancer and just openly provoked the Gravity counters. It wasn't pretty, but with three rods we won.
I went ahead through the Town of Ruin to get an airship. The graphic improvement of Pixel Remaster was noteworthy in this part, to me.
We fought Crayclaw or whatever it's called, too. The freelancer wielded a Coral Sword, the bards mostly kept it locked down with Romeo's Ballad, and it was generally super easy.
Next time, we'll prepare for the Soul Cannon or whatever this version calls it. It won't be too long before we have all of our jobs; I'd like to say, "That will be nice", but there's a good chance this run will be completely stupid: dragoon, berserker, bard and one of samurai, dancer, or chemist. It is very likely to be three very boring melee characters and one support.
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Thinking that I've spent lots of time lately using knight, thief, white mage and black mage, I decided I wanted to choose a playthrough style that avoided the wind crystal jobs as much as possible. The new Volcano Run option seemed like a good fit.
This means the first assigned job would be from any crystal, the second assigned job (at the water crystal) would be from the water, fire or earth crystals, the third assigned job (post-Karnak) would be from the fire or earth crystals, and the final job is guaranteed to be from the earth crystal. A bias toward later things, like fire and earth jobs.
Part of what this means is that it's reasonably likely you'll be dragging some unemployed people around for a while at the beginning, and that's precisely what happened. My initial job is dragoon, which we get quite late. With that, we've got freelancers through Walse (Worus?) at the earliest.
I played with boosts on to 2x just to cut any grinding I might be tempted to do - which saves time, but ultimately means a slight disadvantage, in a way, in that I'm not accruing dropped items. I carried a comfortable level with my very, very boring characters, which I knew would start to become an issue in fights like Siren and Garula. Siren wasn't actually too bad.
I almost forgot about Magissa and Forza until right before I met them.
With my levels being as high as they were, I wondered if I might beat Magissa before she called her husband. That didn't happen, but it was still quite an easy fight. We were level 11 at the time.
With our newfound wind drake friend, we returned to Tycoon and got the few goodies there, including the Ashura katana which is quite nice while we're stuck with freelancers. We were level 13 for Garula, and I had Galuf in the back row whacking people with the Healing Staff. I thought it might be more of a problem that it was.
I did my roll for my second job and got... berserker.
Oh goodie.
So, from reading the rules, one of my characters is currently freelancer as a stand-in for the dragoon job that we haven't earned yet and the others are berserkers. I decided that Galuf would just stay on healing duty with the Healing Staff for most battles. Berserkers are strong, but they're really slow in this game and they have an unusually high miss rate, which made everything feel very safe but slow during this part of the game. The fire-powered ship was a slog.
Part of what this means is that it's reasonably likely you'll be dragging some unemployed people around for a while at the beginning, and that's precisely what happened. My initial job is dragoon, which we get quite late. With that, we've got freelancers through Walse (Worus?) at the earliest.
I played with boosts on to 2x just to cut any grinding I might be tempted to do - which saves time, but ultimately means a slight disadvantage, in a way, in that I'm not accruing dropped items. I carried a comfortable level with my very, very boring characters, which I knew would start to become an issue in fights like Siren and Garula. Siren wasn't actually too bad.
I almost forgot about Magissa and Forza until right before I met them.
With my levels being as high as they were, I wondered if I might beat Magissa before she called her husband. That didn't happen, but it was still quite an easy fight. We were level 11 at the time.
With our newfound wind drake friend, we returned to Tycoon and got the few goodies there, including the Ashura katana which is quite nice while we're stuck with freelancers. We were level 13 for Garula, and I had Galuf in the back row whacking people with the Healing Staff. I thought it might be more of a problem that it was.
I did my roll for my second job and got... berserker.
Oh goodie.
So, from reading the rules, one of my characters is currently freelancer as a stand-in for the dragoon job that we haven't earned yet and the others are berserkers. I decided that Galuf would just stay on healing duty with the Healing Staff for most battles. Berserkers are strong, but they're really slow in this game and they have an unusually high miss rate, which made everything feel very safe but slow during this part of the game. The fire-powered ship was a slog.
I was nervous about Liquid Flame, and rightfully so. This is a counter-based boss that had one major weakness my one non-berserker could exploit, but he could only do it while the boss was in a specific state. This did take a few tries...
...but I was delighted to find out that the Pixel Remaster has a room-based quicksave. This time I broke two Frost Rods and won.
We did the Karnak 500 (as they call it) and I turned off encounters until near the end and got literally every item. The Main Gauche is actually better than my berserker's axes on paper so I gave it to one of them. It lacks the axes' defense-splitting property but has no inherent miss chance and the Main Gauche's unique dodging chance. I also put the game's first Ribbon on the freelancer. We had lots of time to get out.
Having escaped, we earned our third job: bard. Bard isn't bad, and it's actually a fire crystal job, but you don't get it until a short while later after you sail to Crescent. I wasn't able to sail anywhere until after meeting Mid, so I had to go through the Library of the Ancients first. Since one character was now designated as a bard, I was travelling with two berserkers and two freelancers, where one freelancer was equipped to deal damage with Ashura and the other for support with the Healing Staff.
Believe it or not, Ifrit was a non-issue even without any rod breaking. I wasn't even that attentive during the fight and just managed to deal lots of damage while healing the worst of it. The regular encounters here were also on the dry side.
Byblos was harder, and I think it took me three attempts.
It seemed like his AI script might be ramping up his aggression as his HP lowered - where his Drain spells were pretty gnarly and made him practically out-heal out damage on attempt #2 - so on attempt #3 I led with as much damage as I could while staying safe and used two Flame Rods quite a bit later in the fight. Eventually, this worked well.
I thought we'd benefit from bard so rather than sailin' 'round the world I just went to Crescent.
Since my legal classes right now are dragoon (represented by a freelancer), berserker, and bard, that means I can have two bards in the party to reduce my proportionate berserkitude. We started gaining some songs, too, so I went to Istory and Lix.
After procrastinating the Sandworm fight by visiting basically everywhere I could (actually, I skipped that cave near Jachol for now), I went to the desert. This fight was stupid.
This is one where Enkibot says something like, "If you have 4 berserkers, grind to level 40" or something like that. Berserkers make this fight miserable, and if I had any other damage-oriented characters I could compensate better.
Well... compensation was the order of the day. I had bought just a few extra rods in Karnak and I chucked Frost Rods with my freelancer and just openly provoked the Gravity counters. It wasn't pretty, but with three rods we won.
I went ahead through the Town of Ruin to get an airship. The graphic improvement of Pixel Remaster was noteworthy in this part, to me.
We fought Crayclaw or whatever it's called, too. The freelancer wielded a Coral Sword, the bards mostly kept it locked down with Romeo's Ballad, and it was generally super easy.
Next time, we'll prepare for the Soul Cannon or whatever this version calls it. It won't be too long before we have all of our jobs; I'd like to say, "That will be nice", but there's a good chance this run will be completely stupid: dragoon, berserker, bard and one of samurai, dancer, or chemist. It is very likely to be three very boring melee characters and one support.
Index | Next >
