FF3 Complete!

24.8 hours to finish Final Fantasy III. I spent so much time preparing so much for the World of Darkness… and those preparations worked out really well.

Here’s how we defeated the Cloud of Darkness and their feckless minion, Xande.

Last time I played, I leveled all my warriors up to level 50 by running around the first floor in the Ancient Maze. The Invincible, parked just outside the entrance, was a perfect place to return to for resting, so I could use full power in all encounters without any regard for safety.

I didn’t know what level everyone should be, for the final dungeon. My party was in the low 50s at the end of Final Fantasy I, and I figured the designers would keep that as a target level. The DS 3D remake has some higher leveled content which encourages players to level further, but the FF3 Pixel Remaster instead sticks with the original characters.

I prepared by buying a full stack of Hi-Potions from the vendor in the Invincible — 99 of them. Since I didn’t think there would be any place to restore health and magic in the World of Darkness, I wanted to do as much healing with items as I could, to take the strain off of Ally’s healing magics.

That still left me with over a million gil. I planned to spend that entirely on Shurikens for my Ninja to throw. These do a considerable amount of damage, but they are very expensive — 65,000 gil each. I was able to buy 18 of them from the vendor at the bottom of Forbidden Land Eureka. Since I knew the vendor area also featured a wellspring, I could do some light leveling on the way down, too.

We teleported out, made our way back into the Crystal Tower, and climbed to the top, avoiding encounters along the way (unless they looked easy enough for Tipa and Drew to take out alone).

Five drakes stood on the top floor of the Crystal Tower, in front of a mysterious mirror. They didn’t seem like they were about to attack, though — they seemed paralyzed, somehow. We all felt there was a super good chance they’d start attacking us, though. Five drakes at once would be a pretty tough fight.

When we looked into that mirror, that same paralysis struck us! And released the drakes from theirs! They were moving in for the kill, when the spirit of Doge appeared, along with five people with pure hearts we had met along the way. Princess Sara, Desch, Cid, Prince Alus and one of the Fellows. They were able to keep the drakes busy while we took on Xande, who had appeared to watch us be swallowed without so much as fighting back.

None of the bosses have any particular weaknesses, which makes the huge variety of attacks the characters have pretty pointless. Tom, the Sage, had good luck with Bio on Xande. Tipa and Drew just kept hitting him in the face, while Ally was as stingy with heals as she could be, mostly using items for healing.

Xande is not a tough fight, and we soon had him on the floor.

His death roused the real villain behind the encroaching darkness, the Cloud of Darkness. They pulled us into battle and quickly killed us all with two blasts with their particle beam.

Doge and Unei appeared, and used the last of their spirit energy to resurrect us and bade us to enter the World of Darkness and bring balance back to the Force.

All the disciples of Noah were now gone, forever. We were all that was left. And so, we jumped into the darkness and found ourselves in the world of darkness.

We’d found four Crystals of Light during our travels — the crystals of Water, Fire, Air and Earth. The World of Darkness also has four Crystals of Darkness — the crystals of Dark Water, Dark Fire, Dark Air and Dark Earth. Each of those had a powerful guardian, one of whom was the deadliest boss we’d encountered thus far:

It was that last one, the Two-Headed Dragon, that I really hated. Defeating each guardian releases a Warrior of Darkness from the Dark Crystal, who then heads out to help us defeat the Cloud of Darkness. Each area also had a chest that contained a Ribbon, a head item that protects the wearer from all status effects. The game clearly wanted everyone to have one before the main fight. These chests were guarded by weakened clones of Xande, and usually died in just a few rounds.

We didn’t know, going in, that touching any of the Dark Crystals revived everyone and restored HP, MP and status. I’d been so frugal with magic to that point. Once I understood that I’d have plenty of chances to charge back up, it was Tom the Sage with the big guns, all the time. We gave Bahamut no chance to rest.

Finally time to confront the CoD, we were met by the Warriors of Darkness, who sacrificed themselves to remove the connections to the Dark Crystals. This depowered CoD’s particle beam quite a lot.

It was a long fight, and Tom had to help out with Raises occasionally, but Cloud of Darkness ran out of health before a hasted Tipa ran out of Shurikens. Those little spinny weapons were well worth the million gil.

The Darkness left us back at the top of the Crystal Tower, where we met our friends, who had dispatched the drakes while we were away.

With the world saved, we took the Invincible and the Nautilus and brought everyone back home.

We were a little surprised that Princess Sara wanted to stay with us, romantically. What, with the four of us? Awkward! She soon said she was kidding, but really, maybe it could have worked. Maybe it was just a crazy idea.

Unsure how to feel about the Princess now, we made our way back home to the village of Um on the Floating Continent (which Desch had saved while we were off bumming around on the Surface World). Dancer wanted to greet us with a kiss, so now we were all even more confused. A six person relationship — could it even work?

We ended the game with all characters at level 52, largely from leveling on the trip to the bottom of Eureka, and while fighting the minibosses in the World of Darkness. The jobs were largely what they were after we’d unlocked them with the Earthen Staff — Ninja, Devout, Black Belt and Sage.

• Ninja — decent physical attacker. Chose this job as the only job that could wield all the weapons we got from Eureka. The Throw ability would be key to cheesing the final fight. I didn’t really seriously consider any other job for the first position.
• Devout — this White Mage upgrade was always going to be in the final fight. Lots of advanced heals and each was overpowered.
• Black Belt — I could have chosen another job for this. In the final fight, Drew wasn’t doing as much boosted damage as he’d done in regular fights. In the end, though, this job was maxed out and any job swap would require a lot of grinding.
• Sage — this Black Mage upgrade can use all White Magic, Black Magic and Summoner spells. Like the Devout, they can cast a lot of advanced magics. Tom largely cast high level summons, while helping with Arise and potions as necessary to help Ally out.

Those were the jobs that made the list. Here’s the ones that didn’t make the cut.

• Scholar — known as Chemist in future Final Fantasy games, they are item masters, and can also cast Libra for free to analyze enemy weaknesses and strip them of buffs. This Study action was only rarely useful. Damaging items were so rare that they were impossible to keep as a party job.
• Geomancer — Tom spent a lot of time with Geomancer. It casts random spells, some of which are group, but all of them take no mana. The randomness of the job meant it was prime candidate for replacement once I unlocked Sage.
• Dark Knight — Didn’t have the DPS or the tanking ability to earn a spot on the team.
• Dragoon — the iconic Jump ability was too slow, and made healing awkward.
• Knight — Tipa was this class until unlocking Ninja, which was a clear upgrade.
• Ranger — low DPS. I did sometimes put Tom in this job when Black Mage was low on magic, before I unlocked Geomancer.
• Red Mage — I started Tipa off with this, but low physical attacks, bad weapon selection, and low magic just made it the worst of all worlds. I really love the concept of a jack-of-all-trades, but the master-of-none of it all was just too overwhelming.
• Viking — it’s likely Tipa or Drew could have switched to this, once unlocked, but with the job level so low, it didn’t keep up with the damage. Ninja so outclasses every other physical DPS that Tipa was never going to be a Viking. It’s the one class with Provoke, but we made do without any real tank.
• Summoner — Tom had this job for awhile; I believe that’s what he was when we unlocked Sage, a clear upgrade.
• Bard — another job I wanted to like, but it’s a weak support job. It might have been able to take on some healing duties, but it’s not like we were going to get rid of a White Mage or a Devout, so… no place for it.
• Fighter, White Mage, Monk, Black Mage — the first jobs I gave everyone. These are the jobs I used in FF1, except I’d used Red Mage instead of Fighter. I’d regretted that decision and pretty quickly moved to Fighter here.

It might be fun to replay with some less traditional jobs. The whole having to level each job separately means you can’t casually swap jobs, as the new jobs will be far too weak to compete.

Here’s a video of the final World of Darkness run, including the epilogue after: