My thoughts on Final Fantasy III
In case you missed my other post about this, I've been beating all the mainline Final Fantasy games in order of release. And, I just now got done beating the third one!
First of all: This is by far the best game in the series so far, I'd say. It combines the combat of FF1 with the story-focus of FF2, while improving on both of those aspects. Honestly, I'd say you could probably just skip the first two games and jump right into this one.
The cutscenes in FF3 are a lot more expressive than they were in the past, with intricate move routes for the characters, fun dialogue and effects, and generally just a whole lot more personality. FF2 might've been the first FF game that really cared about the story it was telling, but I think this is when they really started figuring things out. We now have a job system back, which I really enjoyed, although this does mean that the temporary party members you get no longer actually fight alongside you. Still, If that's what it took to get back the job system, I'm very much willing to make the tradeoff.
We go from 6 Jobs with 1 Job advancement each, to 23 whole jobs! That's a huge upgrade. Granted, some of them are just better versions of existing jobs, akin to the job advancements in ff1. The Sage for example, is pretty much just the best spellcaster. Neither black, white or red mage really hold a candle to them. They're just a straight upgrade for all 3 of those jobs, once you eventually unlock sage near the end of the game.
Still, there's tons of variety here, and I appreciate that. One thing that was a bit iffy was the fact that each job had seperate levels. So, when you get a straight upgrade like the blackbelt, or the sage, you're going to have to completely relevel that job, and it'll be somewhat useless for a good while. Especially because you unlock those jobs fairly late - the sage unlocks only in the 2nd to last area in the game.
The final dungeon was also... Well, not ideal. It was a lot better than in either FF1 or 2, but it still left a lot to be desired. The Final couple bosses you need to fight are just massive HP sponges. The first four have 99,999 HP, and the final boss of the game has a ridiculous 120,000 hitpoints. I think it's fine for the cloud of darkness honestly, it makes it feel like a properly epic bossfight, as opposed to the first two games where you pretty much just have to oneshot their respective final bosses, and you do still have the shuriken which can take off pretty massive chunks of that huge HP pool.
The minibosses which you need to beat to confront the cloud of darkness though? Their huge HP pools just kind of feel like a chore. Ahriman especially took me forever to beat, without actually being all that difficult. It just took a while. I honestly think the final 4 minibosses could have 3/4ths or even just half of their HP pool, and it'd improve their respective encounters.
The amount of optional dungeons you can do is also a lot larger than in the previous games, and it improves the pacing. Sure, you still have to "grind" technically, but in FF3 that mostly just means doing some optional dungeons. Which is fun! The only part i really had to do any actual grinding was in the final world of darkness section. Even then, not that much of it was needed.
One thing I really loved was how much the shook things up with the transportation methods this time. You get the canoe very early on, and you actually get your own airship really early as well! Though you lose it fairly shortly after. The fact that they've got actual airship interiors now with the invincible later on is just awesome. It's such a nice quality of life feature too, since the airship has a bed, its own storage, and shops you can buy potions and gear from.
I also really love the twist about, I'd say halfway through the game? When you get second airship, and finally leave the floating island you start on, and suddenly discover another huge, second overworld outside of that island. It's a very cool moment. That's really all I have to say, honestly. The story isn't groundbreaking or anything, but it is quite charming, and while the gameplay still definitely has a couple of rough edges, it is honestly just very good overall. The final dungeon is honestly a bit bullshit still with those massive HP pools, and it basically being three whole dungeons just sort of glued together, and thus taking absolutely ages to beat... But still, it's a great time, and definitely my favorite game in the series so far (apart from 14, of course).
Welp, it's onto IV now. I'm really looking forward to playing that one, seeing as the games have just been getting better up until now. So, we'll see how that one goes.
Anyways, thank you for reading and cya next post!