JRPG Journey 2021: Final Fantasy III (Winter Bonus Game)

RPG Haven
7 min readMar 6, 2021

Feburary’s game: Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

March’s game: Trials of Mana [“Seiken Densetsu 3”]

Final Fantasy III, originally released by Square for the Famicom in 1990, didn’t make its way to the West until 2006, when it was completely remade for the Nintendo DS. That’s the version I played, although I’ve read about and watched gameplay of the original release for research and comparison. Major differences include stat rebalancing, particularly for bosses, and a few quality of life features. Other than that, the DS version is a surprisingly faithful remake, and I’m comfortable calling it the definitive version for modern players. I’m a fan of its chibi art style, and the updated music shines, especially in headphones.

Let’s start with the music, in fact. After being impressed with the soundtrack of the first two Final Fantasy games, especially FFII, I again wasn’t let down by the third entry. Early town themes are appropriately soothing, late game dungeon themes are epic, and the battle theme is another instant classic. The boss battle theme is my personal favorite, an I encourage anyone who hasn’t played the game to go listen to it. All of the charm and excitement of the revamped DS soundtrack is present in the original Famicom versions, demonstrating Nobuo Uematsu’s genius even when working with a restricted toolset. It’s a solid stack of tunes from Nobuo Uematsu, and my love for Final Fantasy’s music keeps growing with each new game I play.

Music aside, in many ways Final Fantasy III feels like a reimagining of the first Final Fantasy. It returns to the concept of four Warriors of Light (for some reason called Warriors of the Light this time), and the story centers around finding and restoring the four crystals of wind, water, fire, and earth. The world is largely open once you reach the main continent, and several of the dungeons were reminiscent of locations in Final Fantasy. Also like the first game, the big bad isn’t revealed until close to the end, and this also feels a bit underwhelming here. The story, in general, is again not very fleshed out; instead, the Dungeons & Dragons-esque freeform experience from the first game is present again in III, although the remake does give a bit more characterization to your main party members. There is no plot to speak of aside from “find the crystals” for a good portion of the game, and it’s clear the developers wanted to take a step back from the more specific storytelling in Final Fantasy II, for better or worse. I appreciate both styles of JRPG, and it’s good to see one more Final Fantasy game with little story, since I know the series gets rather story heavy from here on out.

Travel, again, gets a big upgrade. Instead of gradually moving from a canoe to a boat to an airship as in previous games, your party in FFIII mainly makes use of airships throughout the adventure. I had to laugh at the implementation of the canoe, though. It’s only mandatory in one spot immediately after acquiring it, and then, due to how the world is structured, it’s never needed again and is quickly forgotten. Instead, the many different airships you acquire play a large role in restricting and opening up paths through the world. The first ship you get feels overpowered, but it’s quickly lost as the plot advances—you never actually had as much freedom as you may have assumed. Then, each successive airship adds more options, such as diving underwater as a submarine, and by the end game, you end up with two airships, each suited for specific purposes. One is fast and acts as a sub, while the other is slower but can sail over small mountains, while also including an onboard city-like hub, complete with beds for resting, shops, and storage in the form of the Fat Chocobo. It’s with this game I feel the series understandably started to get its reputation as the JRPG with airships and, of course, Cid, who builds and maintains them.

I decided to try a party without a White Mage for this game, since I always use a White Mage in Final Fantasy, and while their healing powers are great, I wanted more damage output this time around. My initial setup consisted of a Warrior, Thief, and two Red Mages, and this turned out to be a fun, and very effective way to play through the game—also my first time using two of the same class in any JRPG. I had plenty of healing due to constantly stealing potions with my Thief as well as the occasional support from the Red Mages, and I didn’t miss having a White Mage at any point.

As I understand, the original game practically forced the use of certain jobs in certain dungeons, such as Dragoons for the Garuda boss battle or Dark Knights in one of the later dungeons, the remake allows much more flexibility. I did switch my Warrior to a Black Mage for the first dungeon where Mini was required, but in hindsight this was hardly necessary, as my Red Mages were more than enough to handle every enemy. I steamrolled the entire mid-game with a Dragoon, Knight, Geomancer, and Bard. Geomancer is a surprisingly fun class that casts spells at random from a pool based on the surrounding environment, all with no MP cost. While the randomness occasionally resulted in ineffective auto-kill spells that missed, usually my character was a powerhouse, and I kept a Geomancer for the duration of the game. The Bard is another unique class, perhaps closest to a Dancer class in a game like Final Fantasy X-2. He uses harps, which don’t deal much damage, but instead allow him to cast various party-wide effects at the start of every turn. The key here is that the Bard always goes before everyone else on the field, even enemies, so it’s a good way to get a guaranteed Haste up or heal off. Money and potions were plentiful by this point, so I had no need for Curing outside of battle, and my party’s HP stats were low enough to where High Potions were still OK for emergency healing in-battle. I still didn’t miss having a White Mage in the mid-game, thanks to my trusty Bard.

As soon as my Thief hit job level 71, I switched him to a Dragoon, and he and my Knight dealt consistently great damage, especially after getting tons of great weapons and dual wielding. I found there to be no reason to use shields during this part of the game, or any other— high damage by dual wielding was preferred. And after stealing Gugnir, one of the best weapons in the game available from a certain boss, my Dragoon got even better. I dual wielded it with the Blood Lance so that he fully healed himself after every Jump attack, making my lack of White Mage matter even less. Even in the dungeon designed for using a Dark Knight, I was able to crush everything with what I had.

I also tried out the Scholar, an interesting job where items are doubly effective, including the items that deal elemental damage to enemies, which I had plenty of thanks to stealing all game with my Thief. It’s essentially another class who can cast spells for free, and along with the Geomancer, I had a lot of fun not having to worry about MP for most of the game. That’s something I never thought I’d write about a Final Fantasy title.

Once I reached the Earth Crystal, the final crystal in the game whereupon all jobs become unlocked, I finally switched my Bard to a Devout—a sort of upgraded White Mage—and my Knight to a Summoner. I couldn’t resist trying out the various summons in the game, since FFIII is the first game in the series to have them and is the origin of many of well-known summons, like Bahamut and Leviathan, in later games. By the end of the game, though, I went back to a Knight as I wanted physical damage, and I loved my Geomancer’s lack of MP use. Along with my Dragoon and Devout, I was more than ready to take on the final dungeon.

Or so I thought. As it turns out, the final dungeon in Final Fantasy III is downright infamous for being long and punishing, with difficult enemies and six bosses, all without a save point. In practice, this wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I’m a player who doesn’t mind grinding for a few hours. Which is exactly what I did. After hitting job level 99 for all my characters and getting around 3000 HP, I completely wiped the floor with the final dungeon and every boss, including the final boss, with ease. It helps that I had a strategy of all-out attacking and healing every turn, but even then, I probably over-leveled a bit. I’ve heard it’s worse in the original Famicom version, for what it’s worth.

I’m glad I chose Final Fantasy III as my bonus game. I finally have the first three games of both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest under my belt, which was one of my main goals with this series. Now I have a good base of knowledge to play the rest of the games in the series without feeling like I’m missing anything. More Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy is in my future, but next month I’ll be discussing Trials of Mana, the third game in the Mana, or Seiken Densetsu, series. Stay tuned for that!

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RPG Haven

Playing a new JRPG every month and sharing my thoughts. These are basically rough drafts for my YouTube channel: youtube.com/@rpg_haven