Final Fantasy Legend III: Defeat

I have reached the point in Final Fantasy Legend III where I believe I can no longer make progress. My ship which was once able to travel between time periods broke and stranded me on another world. This is normal. The game was designed taking this into account. You're supposed to be able to get things done and complete the game from this point. Unfortunately you run into a strange race of beings blocking the way. The only way to get up the stairs they're guarding is to cast the morph spell. A spell you can only obtain in the future. Which you don't need to get to the other world. Which I don't have. Which I can't get.

I was thinking this game was better than the previous ones in the series. They mostly got rid of consumable weapons. They switched to a MP system. They allowed you to swap between character types on the fly so you could experiment without getting permanently screwed. Robots still seem like the best and monsters feel a little underwhelming but it wasn't way out of whack. Every fight felt like it moved the party closer to being powerful. The story felt a little more coherent but still pretty surreal.

And then it took a page right out of the Manders' RPG. I didn't pick up an item I didn't know I needed and can no longer beat the game. Maybe I should restart from scratch. Maybe I should check to see if I still have a save state from before I left the future. Maybe I should try to hack the game and add the morph spell to my inventory. But I just don't care enough to do so. I want to move on to the next game in the marathon. I'm playing through all the games and can no longer make progress in this game thanks to terrible game design and I'm going to count that as good enough. And give this game the worst rank thus far.

Final Fantasy Legend III: Back To The Future!

I ended up needing to use the internet to find a town which sold better gear in Final Fantasy Legend III. I don't believe there were any in game clues as to the location of the town in my current time. (I have since heard reference in passing to the town in the future but no hints to its location yet.) It turned out to be underwater! (The dungeon containing Chaos is also underwater but at least there was an indication on the surface world that the dungeon existed!)

The town sold four new pieces of armour for my three non-monster characters. It sold a better weapon for my human. Most importantly it also sold the cure2 spell! I bought four copies of that and hoped it alone would be enough to turn the tide in the fight against Chaos. The extra armour didn't really help most of my characters but the cyborg scales his max health with gear so adding four new pieces moved him up out of danger from getting two-shotted.

With my new gear and spells I headed back to the dungeon, quickly made my way to Chaos, and ruined him. Two of my characters had no relevant way to deal damage to him and a third was my best healer but it didn't really matter as I essentially was able to go infinite on him with the improved healing. I would eventually have run out of mana but my human was going to win the fight in 20 attacks so I didn't need to go truly infinite, just long. It really helped that my monster had an ability that did 0 damage but actually lowered his agility. This let me guarantee my healers would act first each round which in turn meant I didn't have to worry about being gibbed. I did eventually lose a character when he got a crit with one of his single target attacks (and therefore hit for more than my max health) but it wasn't the character doing damage so it didn't really matter.

On the way out of the dungeon after beating him I finally got a second part to drop and was able to transform my cyborg into a full robot. It then turned out I had enough money to completely max his health and attack stats and bring his agility and defense to very high levels. (Certainly higher than any of my other characters.) I haven't gotten into a fight since doing that but if it's as good as it seems the game had better end soon since I'm now maxxed out in power on that character. I don't want to get into a situation like I did in The Final Fantasy Legend where I have nothing to gain by fighting the random encounters!

Final Fantasy Legend III: Chaos

I've made it through a few dungeons now in Final Fantasy Legend III and came up against a boss named Chaos. His first action was to use an area damage spell which hit my party for anywhere from 40-75% of their max health. Then he did it again, which killed my cyborg outright. I tried the fight a few more times and while he didn't always start with double quake he would use it from time to time which was a real problem. When he didn't use quake he'd attack for more damage than my heal could take care of. I have two people with heal spells so I could theoretically win if he only used his normal attack and didn't chain them into my cyborg. But I'd have to go about 20 rounds with nothing going wrong in order to win and that just feels really unlikely.

My cyborg has an infinite use healing spell which is pretty great for fighting in a dungeon. (I can spam it out of combat to heal everyone to full.) But he can't do any damage, his heal is for half a normal heal, and he has half the health of my other characters. I think in order to beat this boss I'm going to need to level up, change him to something useful, and maybe even go searching for a town and buy some better gear.

Final Fantasy Legend III: Jump!

It's been a while since I'd been to town in FFLIII and I'd forgotten that my controller had a jump button. I was in a dungeon filled with pits and couldn't find a way to get by them. I kept falling down to the floor below and couldn't find any way around it. So I went to gamefaqs for help and it ignored the existence of pits. I was confused and started mashing my controller in frustration. And then I jumped. Over the pit. Woohoo!

I bought a new weapon in town and it turned out to be a 1-shot weapon. That did less damage than my normal weapon. Stupid worthless consumables.

I also finally got a monster to drop a spare part and turned one of my humans into a cyborg. He doesn't seem like a particularly good cyborg class so far but that should change as he levels up.

Final Fantasy Legend III: Persistent Items

I've played a little bit of FFLIII in the last couple days and realized something quite remarkable while playing... My weapons aren't decaying! My spells aren't running out of charges! My beast/monster character has unlimited uses of her abilities! In short, I won't need to keep buying the same base level items over and over again to deal with the consumable nature of found gear. I'm thrilled!

Other things are pretty great too. My beast/monster character changes species when she levels up. So even if there is a particular monster that is particularly overpowered I can't possibly stay at that species forever. This could be seen as a negative but after the way I played FFL I'm pretty glad it works this way. In fact, I don't even feel the need to try to find a broken monster! I can just eat whatever drops and transform into anything and not have to worry about making a crippling mistake. That's a lot of pressure gone.

I think I'm going to go for balance in my party. One human, one mutant, one monster, one robot. I have yet to find an enemy that drops parts so I haven't headed towards Mr. Roboto yet but that's the plan anyway.

Final Fantasy Legend III: Classes

So it turns out there are 6 types of classes in the game and each character can end up in 5 of them. There's a spectrum between monster and robot that goes monster - beast - human OR mutant - cyborg - robot. If you eat meat you slide towards the monster end of the spectrum. If you install a spare robot part (dropped from robots after fights) you slide towards the robot end of the spectrum. You keep your level earned from experience no matter which class you have, and you get a subclass within that class based on some weird elemental algorithm and your level. Each class has something they're particularly well suited towards:

Monsters - Don't need gear, have good stats, and get potentially awesome abilities from the specific monster they are
Beast - Do 50% more damage with martial arts, get to wear gear and use monster abilities
Human - Do double damage with weapons
Mutant - Do double damage with spells
Cyborgs - High stats, get to use roboty abilities
Robots - Can drink stat potions, 50% more damage with roboty talents

Thinking back to what I disliked about monsters before the problems were that they scaled not based on anything except planning out a meat path. You could get to almost maximum power on the very first world if you planned things out properly. And if you didn't you were screwed since a lot of meat progressions actually lost you power instead of gaining it. In this game it sounds like the type of monster you turn into is based on your character level.

Robots in this game get the stat potions than humans got in the first game. This sounds like you might be able to get really twinky if you spend a ton of cash on it but that power is only there while you stay as a robot. So maybe if I have a lot of extra cash I'll switch into a robot but I don't want to head there early. Beyond that everything seems useful so I think I'll just switch things into things by eating everything that drops and see what happens. Worst case scenario I just switch back into something else! Experimentation with no long term consequences? I like it!

Final Fantasy Legend III

Not knowing anything about the game except it's the third game in the Final Fantasy Legend series I booted the game up today to give it a spin. I'd been thinking what sort of characters I'd want to play assuming it worked like the last two and would need to pick my classes from the start. I didn't care much for monsters in the first one and really liked both mutants and robots in the second one so I was thinking I'd lean towards those this time around.

I started up the game, got a little back story about how the world has been flooded by some monster from the past, present, and future. Some dude in the future sent three kids back to the past in the hopes of stopping the flooding and they're going to team up with some old guy's granddaughter. Then it asks me to enter a name for a 'Hero'. Then for a 'Boy'. Then for a 'Girl'. Then for a 'Heroine'. No class choices this time! Also interesting was the even gender split which hasn't been the case in any other game played thus far in the marathon.

I start the game and it turns out the boy and girl are mutants and the other two are humans. Ok, sure. The female mutant started with a spell. No one else did. I end up with a 5th party member standing in a different box than the rest so I'm guessing they'll end up rotating as the game progresses. He has way more health than everyone else and starts with three spells! I'm thinking he's just there to make sure I don't lose to an early random encounter - which I then proceed to almost do. I end up running away and barely make it back to town to rest in the inn. On the plus side people who die in combat come back with 1 health after he fight!

I was also given a radar which I can use to scan the time period I'm in for units which I think I use to upgrade my time traveling space ship thing. Seems like a collection quest like in FFLII. I just hope it's a real collection quest where you don't have to find everything but get cool bonuses if you do. I like those a lot more than fake collection quests where you actually have to get everything to progress like the magi in FFLII. 

After finally winning a fight I earned some experience and my living characters went up a level. Sweet! An actual level system! This doesn't seem like Final Fantasy Legend at all. Then I won my second fight and the enemy dropped some meat. What could possibly go wrong? Eat up, Jo! Which caused my female mutant to turn into a beast broomer, whatever that is. Beast broomer seems to have 4 talents - kick, scream, resistance to paralyze, and resistance to fire. She kept her character level, health, and maximum mana. And her spell. Intriguing...

I explored the town and found item, weapon, armor, and magic shops. With nothing to indicate what any of this stuff does or if it's better than what I have equipped. I have no idea if my new monster wants gear or not. It doesn't seem like I have an easy way to find out in game since there are no tooltips or explanations. I think I'm going to end up turning to the internet already at level 3 to try to get a handle on what's going on. I will say the game seems interesting so far and I have high hopes...