Final Fantasy III
Surprisingly important but heavily flawed
Disclaimer: This article will be covering the original Final Fantasy III and its Pixel Remaster. I will be discussing the 3D remake in a separate post at some point in the future.
In my previous post, I discussed how Final Fantasy II was largely considered one of the worst Final Fantasies in the mainline series. And the exact same sentiment also applies to Final Fantasy III, consistently ranking in the bottom four of Game Informer, The Gamer, Den of Geek, and Kotaku’s rankings of the mainline Final Fantasy titles. However, whereas Final Fantasy II had, in most people’s opinions, a good story but a bad leveling system, Final Fantasy III instead has a good combat system and a bad story. Again, both of those opinions are applicable to the general reception that these games got and aren’t actually reflective of my opinion nor absolutely everyone’s.
As I do with so many discussions of Final Fantasy, let’s start with discussing the gameplay, and more specifically the official introduction of the Job system. Although the idea of clearly defined roles with unique attributes was introduced in Final Fantasy, the job pool was very limited and once you chose your party setup, there was no way to change it. But Final Fantasy III both expands the potential job pool from 6 that you have unlocked from the start to 22 potential jobs that you unlock over the course of the game. On top of that, rather than just having access to specific equipment and magic, each class also has unique abilities (including magic), helping to make them stand out more. But despite how much praise it gets for pioneering this system, I think it’s important to address its shortcomings. To start off, the jobs aren’t exactly balanced, and many can feel like they’re simply replacements rather than additional options. Magus, Devout, and Summoner are almost strictly better than their Black Mage, White Mage, and Evoker counterparts, gaining significant stat boosts and the ability to cast much higher level spells, with the only trade off being that you can’t cast level 1 and 2 spells. But even that trade-off is basically non-existent since level 1 and 2 spells are themselves mostly just weaker versions of stronger spells available at higher levels. A second problem with the job system in Final Fantasy III has less to do with the system itself, and more with the world design. Despite having the potential for variety, the game really heavily incentivizes you to use specific class setups by only letting you buy weapons for a specific class from the town you're currently in and just outright not offering good equipment for early-game jobs in the late-game. Fortunately though, these problems would be solved in Final Fantasy V and onward.
But despite its shortcomings, it is still a good system overall. Even though it doesn’t feel like it actually adds options for strategies, it at least keeps the gameplay varied in its own way. But what about the story? Is it really as bland and forgettable as everyone says it is? For many the answer is yes, but I disagree in a few areas. To start off with the problems this story has: The protagonists are a group of four nameless Onion Knights, who are sent on a journey to restore the four crystals of light and stop the end of the world. The most obvious problem comes from the very start. Gone are the previous entries named protagonists with personalities and character growth, and instead we have another group of nameless nobodies. But the game does try to have characters, such as Desch (who is one of the only side characters I can remember, the others being Cid, Doga, and Unei). Desch is an amnesiac warrior you meet early in the game who helps you along your journey. After he helps you escape the clutches of the dragon Bahamut, you travel to the Tower of Owen which is vital to keep the world running. But upon entering the tower, you find it to be malfunctioning, and must climb to the top to find why. Here though, you learn that Desch was supposed to be this tower's guardian before losing his memories… somehow. But Desch decides to heroically sacrifice himself by jumping into the tower's inner workings in order to fix it from the inside, but at the cost of being exposed to the fire inside.
Desch’s character arc is arguably the best (tied maybe for only one other character) out of the whole game, but it kind of demonstrates the main problem with the story. There’s the framework of a story (an amnesiac warrior who learns that he failed at his one job and now must fix his mistake) but the gaps aren’t properly filled in. Why did Desch lose his memory? Was he appointed to guard the tower? If so, who appointed him? If not, then how did he come to be the tower's guardian? Unfortunately there isn’t really much else to talk about without getting into spoilers, so here’s your warning:
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
For the flaws in its story, one thing this game does get right is its two villains: Xande and The Cloud of Darkness. You’re told that Xande is the Big Bad(tm) and is trying to destroy the world by summoning The Cloud of Darkness. Xande was one of three students under Noah, the other two being Doga and Unei (who are immortal). Noah had granted all three of his students a special gift: Doga was gifted with great magic power, Unei was given dominion over the world of dreams, and Xande was made mortal. Doga reasons that mortality is what gives life meaning, but Xande was so focused on the concept of power that he couldn’t see that. So Xande turned evil and decides to destroy the world in an act of anger. His method for destroying the world comes from The Cloud of Darkness, which is kind of like a horror movie monster that acts within a specific set of rules. Essentially, the world the protagonists inhabit is actually only one of two worlds, the world of Light, and the other world is the world of Darkness. In order for both worlds to be stable, the forces of Darkness and Light must be in balance. But by overwhelming the world of Light with Darkness, this imbalance leads to the summoning of The Cloud of Darkness, who will try to return everything to The Void.
It’s also explained that our four Onion Knights were specifically chosen to fight and stop Xande because whenever an imbalance is made, four youths rise up to make things right. But despite our hero's best efforts, they are unable to stop Xande, and The Cloud of Darkness proves too powerful to beat on their own. So they get the help of four Warriors of Darkness, who had previously fought against an imbalance in the Light’s favor that would have also summoned The Cloud of Darkness (instead of a Cloud of Light for some reason). The Warriors of Darkness sacrifice themselves, and our Onion Knights kill The Cloud of Darkness (probably using shurikens) and restore balance to the world.
Now the reason I say that Final Fantasy III gets its villains “right”, at least relative to the rest of the cast, is that they feel like characters who actually matter and fit their needed roles quite well. Despite his low screen time, Xande does make for an intimidating figure, one who is foreshadowed over the course of the game and given an interesting backstory as to why he became evil. Meanwhile, The Cloud of Darkness is more of a force of nature. She’s an ever present threat that follows a strict set of rules which governs the world the game takes place in. She doesn’t have much character depth because she doesn’t really need to. The Cloud of Darkness is not a person who was born and had life, they are simply an entity that has existed since forever with only a single goal: To return the universe to The Void.
END OF SPOILERS
The story of Final Fantasy III is one that is simple and pretty forgettable, but it does have some good villains. And much like how this game introduced the Job system, it also introduced The Void. Although not as prominent, The Void is actually something that ends up tying all the different Final Fantasy games together, at least implicitly. In Dissidia Final Fantasy, it’s made clear that all of the games take place in separate universes (except for things like the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII) and there are times where two different characters share a name (like Cid) and the characters in Dissidia have to clarify who they’re talking about. But that is not the case with The Void. Despite only officially showing up in a few games, the term “The Void” never needs clarification, and is treated as though it is the same thing across every game, and indeed it has pretty consistent properties across each of them.
There’s a lot of detail I could go into, but to summarize the important points: The Void is both the beginning and the end of everything. All of the worlds in Final Fantasy are born from The Void, and being returned to The Void is treated as the same as the end of the universe. However, because all the worlds come from The Void, it can be used to travel between those worlds, thus allowing for the recurring characters of Gilgamesh, Omega, and Shinryu. Gilgamesh is a warrior constantly seeking Excalibur, the most powerful sword, and Omega and Shinryu are two incredibly powerful entities caught in a perpetual war with each other across almost every world. All of this is to say that Final Fantasy III introduced the idea of The Void, which would eventually become a lot more important for the series as a whole, and I wanted to give Final Fantasy III credit where it’s due on that end.
But that still leaves the question: Should you play Final Fantasy III? Probably not. I still like the game overall, and I enjoyed playing it, but it really is more of a relic. Its story is very lackluster and its gameplay doesn’t really hold up to modern standards. But if you're a fan of Final Fantasy who wants to see where The Void and Job system came from, then I’d say it’s at least worth giving a shot.
Normally, I would paste a Youtube link here to my favorite song from this games soundtrack, but the pixel remaster soundtrack is not available on Youtube, so instead I will simply say that The Forbidden Land, Eureka is my favorite track and you can listen to it on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/final-fantasy-iii-pixel-remaster-soundtrack.