🧅 Final Fantasy 3 - Week 5

[simias]

Final Fantasy 3 Beginner Club W05

Week 05	2026-04-24T15:00:00Z
Previous week	🧅 Final Fantasy 3 - Week 4
Next week	🧅 Final Fantasy 3 - Week 6
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Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:

FFIII BC

Stopping point

After the Water Cave.

週刊完璧主義通信

生きてる森

The living forest will only remain available at the very start of this week. If you want to visit every location in the game, make sure that you visit it at the start of this week. There are no treasures or other items to be found there, just some dialogue.

The forest is located on the west coast of the inner sea, surrounded by mountains.

Hain’s Castle

This is a non-revisitable area, make sure that you look everything you want before facing the boss. There also area few unique enemies that can only be encountered there, so if you’re trying to get a full bestiary make sure that you defeat these monsters:

• #66 ファラオ
• #67 レムレース
• #68 ラミア
• #69 デーモン
• #70 デュラハン

難破船

The wrecked ship will also only be very temporarily accessible, if you don’t collect the treasures while you’re there, you’ll lose them forever.

More details

Last week we helped the dwarves and received new jobs from the Fire Crystal. Then a messenger told us with his dying breath that the village of Tokkul was under attack. Let’s see what we can do!

Tokkul

Tokkul is located on the southern shores of the inner sea, next to a large desert.

Be warned that as soon as you enter the village, a cutscene will play and you’ll be automatically transported inside Hain’s Castle, our first dungeon for this week. The only way out will be through the dungeon, so make sure that you’re prepared before you enter Tokkul. In particular you probably want a good stack of potions and possibly Phoenix Downs.

Hain’s castle

If you wondered where all the people of Castle Argus were, now you know!

Once you’re done gathering the lore from the various NPCs in the area, you have to turn into a 小人 in order to pass through the wall. In the Pixel Remaster there’s a magic pail (or something like that, I don’t recall exactly) that lets you recover your MP, but in the Famicom version there’s nothing at all as far as I can tell so I’m pretty sure that you can be deadlocked in this area of the game.

It also means that you have no way to recover your MP until you finish the dungeon on Famicom. Fun.

The boss has a trick that you will have figured out if you discussed with the various NPCs these past few weeks, but in case you haven’t here’s the deal:

Hain can change his elemental defenses on demand using his “Barrier Change” skill. When he does, his elemental weakness changes randomly. In order to discover his current weakness, you can use the Sage job’s special skill.

This fight can be a bit tedious because you have to be patient. You don’t want to risk queuing an attack and then have the boss change element before you get to execute it, so it’s a good idea to only queue spells and offensive items right after he Barrier Changed, since I believe that he will never Barrier Change twice in a row. If you use the wrong element, not only will it not hurt him, but he will absorb the spell and heal.

The good news is that Hain’s offense is relatively mild, so you should be able to withstand him for a while if you have a healer in your party and you stocked up on healing items before entering the dungeon.

Once you’ve defeated the boss and spectated the cutscene, you can travel to (the formerly empty) Argus castle and talk to the king to receive a reward. If you haven’t explored this castle previously, you should because there’s a lot of treasures to be found. Be sure to talk to the guards for hints.

And even if you already looted the castle previously, there are new things to be found.

Once you’re ready we can follow the King’s instructions and go look for Cid where we last saw him in Kanan. Also don’t forget to replenish your potion stash if you need to, we have quite a lot left to do this week.

The Enterprise, Remastered

Hand the “time cog” to Cid and he’ll gladly refit your ship in order to turn it into… a flying ship!

We can use it to explore the rest of the world map… which it turns out is mostly a whole lot of water. If you play the Famicom version, you’ll probably want to buy a good chunk of 小人のパン to get your bearings.

There are only a few places that can be visited, but the only one where we can do anything is a shipwreck located next to a small island. Find the survivors and see if you can help them. At some point, one of them should ask you to bring her to the Water Temple. So let’s do that.

Water Temple

The temple is located on the biggest continent, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. There’s healing in there too, which is nice. Find the Crystal Shard in the back of the temple, then follow your new friend’s instructions and head for the cave to the North.

Finish the cave and save as soon as you reach the world map again, we’re done for this week!

Map

Participation

• I’m playing along
• I will catch up later
• I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this section yet
• I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion

[JupiterJesus]

Week 5 PR

Didn’t have any trouble this week, but then again I didn’t have any trouble last week either. I guess I’m just a pro gamer man.

Scholar pulled his weight by equipping an ice tome, scanning Hein and throwing an antarctic wind for over 1700 damage. I proceeded to never use him again. If I wasn’t dirt poor every time I went shopping for weapons and armor, maybe I’d be able to afford more than a few high potions. Until then, my WHM heals for free.

I can’t believe they made us go small for 5 seconds - AGAIN.

After I finished the dungeon, I panicked because I could no longer enter the living woods, and there was still an item there. It’s fine though. Apparently it’s a key story item that you get later.

This week continues FFs hilarious parade of pointless deaths, started in II and continued succeeded in IV. I’m so glad they cut that crap out. By five, there’s usually just one or two major deaths of characters you actually care about.

Anyone notice how entire conversations end every line with at least one exclamation point? When you go through the game script it becomes much more obvious. EVERYONE IS ALWAYS SHOUTING ABOUT LITERALLY EVERYTHING. If a game did that in english, it would become a meme forever.

[simias]

reply

I also thought that this week wasn’t too hard, gameplay-wise. I was concerned for Hein in the Famicom version but it wasn’t a big deal, I managed to kill him first try despite messing up two times early on and healing him back to full health by mistake…

I really hate how getting a back-attack is basically a death sentence though since fleeing is so unreliable. I had to redo the entire Water Cave because I got ambushed a few steps before the boss:

@JupiterJesus

I can’t believe they made us go small for 5 seconds - AGAIN.

They really love that trick, don’t they?

@JupiterJesus

This week continues FFs hilarious parade of pointless deaths, started in II and continued succeeded in IV. I’m so glad they cut that crap out. By five, there’s usually just one or two major deaths of characters you actually care about.

I thought it was a bit better than Deshu, if only because the whole arc actually made sense, but yeah that was unnecessary.

@JupiterJesus

Anyone notice how entire conversations end every line with at least one exclamation point?

That and ⋯ all over the place.

By the way navigating the empty ocean on Famicom is a very different experience from the PR. You don’t have a map, so you just fly over empty ocean of what feels like forever until you randomly stumble upon land. Even finding the floating continent again is very difficult given how tiny it is.

And if you use the 小人のパン more often than not you end up with

At least there are no monster encounters while flying…

[JupiterJesus]

Those enemies in your screenshot wiped my party when I walked in with several characters in new jobs. I keep forgetting that a new job is almost like starting a new character, and sometimes they take double or triple the damage you expect. I wasn’t even back-attacked. Switched to my standard party and waltzed through.

[simias]

By the way still no Phoenix Downs for sale anywhere in the Famicom version, even at the end of this week. I kinda like that it makes death something you want to avoid at all costs since having even a single character die in a dungeon almost necessarily means that you have to bail out and retry from the start, but it’s a bit crazy that we’re reaching the halfway point of the game and I still have no reliable way to resuscitate my warriors.

[JupiterJesus]

Phoenix Downs

Well, looks like you’ll be waiting a long time. They added them for sale in the PR, but all other version including the 3d version do not include them for sale, ever.

They are rare drops and comes in chests, and can be stolen from Rust Birds on Dragon’s Peak near Canaan.

I think they meant for them to be used for emergency in-battle revival, and then made out of battle revival free at any town.

[Daisoujou]

Week 5 in one go

Tokkul and Hain are fine. Hain was a little tedious trying to guess which turn I should wait and scan on but he was really easy anyway. Inventory management for making someone be a scholar for one fight was the hardest part of the fight. Getting inundated by stuff in the castle was even worse but it seems like it was mostly scholar junk so I threw it right out.

Then we got to blindly sail over a blank blue screen for like 5 minutes straight. Maybe FF2 isn’t the only one with bizarre クソゲー decisions. In theory having a sunken world and revealing it later is nice, and I’ll admit that sailing off the starting continent for a first time leaves kind of a cool impression. The following minutes being wondering when you’ll ever see land again over the blank void ruin it though.

The 巫女 is another case of her being red on the field and green in the menu. No strong feelings about the water cave; I felt it was running a little long but I think it’s because the combat in this game bores me, while it was actually a better dungeon than some of the past ones so I probably shouldn’t blame the temple itself.

At least we got our necessary week ending death. In a lot of ways this was the least absurd but the guy popping out and shooting her was so sudden it was still really funny. At least this works as a comedy RPG.

As probably the first really good enemy sprite in this game, I’m locking in my vote for this being my favorite. I guess Hain as a flamboyant skeleton man was decent too.

@JupiterJesus

scanning Hein and throwing an antarctic wind for over 1700 damage.

An antarctic wind thrown by a scholar in the Famicom version against the same boss does 300-400 damage so they absolutely did insane things to the numbers on PR again.

I similarly think it’s goofy we have to press small and unsmall at the beginning of every dungeon.

[simias]

I like the spritework in this game, it’s very unique and over the top. I’m happy that it hasn’t become the standard for future games because it would have gotten old quickly but this game being generally lighter in tone overall I think it works well. Looks like Amano popped some acid and started drawing.

But generally I seem to enjoy the game more than you do. All your criticism is perfectly warranted but for me there’s enough cool things to discover to balance it out. I love how the game just keeps throwing grand setpieces at me and I never know what awaits next. In that sense it’s very indicative of where the series is headed I think.

I do wish that they had built upon FF2 on the narrative side of things to have a better overall structure but oh well…

[Daisoujou]

Yeah, most of the game really isn’t doing it for me, I think it’s definitely looking to me my least favorite of the Famicom ones (and by extension of all the FFs I’ve played yet, I suppose).

I forgot I wanted to say some of the environment art caught my eye though, the temple was especially pretty.

[simias]

You should have continued playing Xenogears, FF3 feels like a relaxing stroll in the parc after a Xenogears play session. It’s like alternating Infinite Jest and Dragon Ball.

[Daisoujou]

I got hit with a few weeks of bad sickness and the sudden clarity that life is simply too short for Xenogears. By comparison, absolutely, FF3 rocks.

I promise I tend to like games more than I dislike them! Having some bad luck recently with clubs pushing me to get grumpy

[Sisthra]

Summary

@JupiterJesus

If a game did that in english, it would become a meme forever.

Nope, no idea what you are talking about…

[JupiterJesus]

That Pokémon pic actually works. It makes the kid sound silly and excitable, like a yappy dog in human form.

But when you apply that to people who are supposed to be very serious, it no sound so good.

[Sisthra]

Week 5

This week’s content felt at the same time strangely short and packed of things happening.
Hein wasn’t that difficult, especially because he randomly decided to become weak to thunder damage twice in a row so the Scholar just obliterated him by throwing items. I guess that if you don’t have those you can have a Scholar and Black Mage work in tandem, but it does sound relatively easy to accidentally deadlock yourself in that part of the game on Famicon. I wonder how people took it when the game first came out.
The dwarves treasure and all the stuff in the castle basically give you a full set of gear for a Ranger and Scholar so I dumped all my money on buying high potions.
By the way, the Ranger is great. A free “hit all” attack every turn that does a very nice chunk of damage, especially if they decide to hate one enemy in particular and unload all four/five arrows on a single target.
Love it.
The water cave was interesting in that every character of mine except the Knight was getting hit pretty hard because of their new job change, with normal attacks from random enemies routinely hitting for 200 damage.
Meanwhile a fully armoured Knight was getting hit for a ridiculous 1 damage, and I even gave him the Blood Sword I found to heal himself.
I was burning through Phoenix Downs and struggling to keep the rest of the team’s health up(and had no mages at the moment , so items where the only heals) when I realised that literally all enemies in the cave only used normal single target attacks.
And the Knight’s special skill just so happens to be that he shields an ally and takes the hit for them if their health is in the red.
So it was actually better to just leave them at death’s door and have him tank every single hit for 1 damage for the entire dungeon, basically being unkillable.
It wasn’t long and I don’t know if that was actually the “intended” solution, I just found it incredibly funny that it worked out so well.
I then asked myself “Will this work on the boss too?” And the answer was obviously “No” when he nuked my Ranger with a Blizzaga that can’t be tanked first turn. I still somehow managed to squeeze out a win first try by the Scholar throwing out all the Zeus’s rage I had left.
The thief however was pretty useless except for stealing some potions here and there off random enemies, I didn’t have any equipment for him so he was severely undergeared.
Will probably switch around him and the Scholar for some of the other jobs we got.
Feels a bit weird that we go a month with the starting ones and now we get so many other dumped on our lap.
(I think some got added only in the PR/3DS versions?)
Will be interesting to see what they can do, and if the game will build other future encounters around specific jobs. It’s a part of the game I’ve been enjoying.

I really liked seeing the “real” world map for the first time. Seeing that the entire continent we’ve been playing these weeks is just a tiny floating speck over a massive ocean made me actually pause a moment and say “okay, that’s cool”.

One random detail that’s been bugging me however is that, after you are done helping out a specific town/place, it will play the generic happy celebratory fanfare music overriding the usual location’s theme. And it stays that way! It makes all the places we helped feel a bit samey if they all have the exact same music.
By contrast, the music in the sunken ship was absolutely gorgeous.
Really looking forward to exploring next week!

[simias]

reply

@Sisthra

it does sound relatively easy to accidentally deadlock yourself in that part of the game on Famicon. I wonder how people took it when the game first came out.

I think this dungeon is short and simple enough that it doesn’t matter much, especially by the standards of the type of bullshit games of that era could throw at you. If you’re stuck you just have to reset to your last save that was probably only minutes ago.

I was concerned that this dungeon would be really annoying on the Famicom but it turned out to be very straightforward and unchallenging. I struggled more with the Water Cave due to its stronger enemies.

[JupiterJesus]

They also tell you how to deal with upcoming boss fight many, many times. It’s possible the info was all in optional areas though. Plus, a child of the 80s knows to save their game every time they can, in as many slots as possible, so you don’t deadlock yourself. Wait, how many slots are there on famicom? Probably not enough.

[VikingSchism]

Week 5

ハイン was fine for the most part, but I got bad luck and he chunked my knight on the final turn (by which point I’d already locked in the fatal blow) so I had another character dead and miss all the xp. At least now he’s about on par with the monk?

I think this week has kind of highlighted something of a flaw with the job system in my eyes, and it’s that I just don’t think the new jobs we got last week are all that useful compared to the original set. We have warrior/knight (knight being basically warrior but better), monk (high damage, decent defence), black mage (incredibly useful and versatile for taking advantage of weaknesses), and white mage (free healing). For this dungeon I swapped the white mage for a scholar, but that didn’t ultimately feel like the right move because I couldn’t then take advantage of the item bonuses for healing if I wanted to do damage (and didn’t have any group healing options). Then with the next dungeon I wanted to try some of the other classes, and I switched the monk over to ranger for a bit but didn’t really like it and switched back. Hopefully the new classes we unlocked at the end of this week are a bit better. I think the 空手家 will probably become a replacement for the monk at least. But yeah, I value having my mages too much to switch them out - they’re just too versatile to lose

Flying off the edge of the world and seeing a new world map was a fun moment - I just did it to see what would happen and was pleasantly surprised. But then I did have to look at the guide to work out what to do because there didn’t seem to be much guidance on that front

The water cave was fine, my white mage died in the kraken boss fight, but I managed to revive before dealing the killing blow fortunately

[frequent4832]

Week 5

Flying off the map to find a way bigger one was such a cool “leaving Midgar”-type moment. Just wish there were a bit more to see on the new map. At least in the PR it’s not hard to find where the action is.

The shrine maiden getting merc’d out of nowhere was absolutely laughable. Of all the storytelling innovations they could’ve carried forward from FF2 they chose the worst one - disposable guest stars.

[JupiterJesus]

Week 5 3D, first half

Despite having lower levels overall and not bringing a BLM, Hein was still easy on this version too because of how powerful the items used by the Scholar are. I also discovered how insane the Geomancer is. He basically alternates between hitting the entire enemy team for 700 or a single enemy for 1200, for free. He didn’t care about Hein’s 弱点 at all.

I didn’t take any mages into this dungeon, and my items were limited, so it started to feel like an SMT game. It still wasn’t too tough though.

The craziest part was where they insert an entire extra Cid backstory after you bring him the wheel. Apparently, he had a bunch of folks on an airship and some darkness attacked him, yada yada, crash, flames. Oh look, four orphans! I guess I’ll bring them home.

Right before quitting, I saw some mognet messages from your adoptive father. So, I guess there’s a 3d-only quest to save some kids who got lost in the starting cave.

I have to agree about Scholar being a bad healer right now. There are only two healing items. When their effect is doubled, potion heals way too little and hi potion heals way too much!

[Akashelia]

Week 5

3D version:
I was surprised in the first weeks at how small the world was, and that you could get around it on foot and not meet higher level monsters. I was also not seeing a lot of unexplored towns or caves, but I figured it could be like in FF2 where the next locations are hidden, i.e. you go to underwater dungeons or city in the skies.
Turns out we were already in the world in the skies and there was a whole other world? Wasn’t expecting that at all, very nice!
Then when I arrived in the new world, it felt a bit underwhelming.

Not a lot to see here! But the sea is very different than before, and there was a cutscene getting there so that added nicely to the mood. The PR version doesn’t have all that.
Then I found Elia quickly, the 3D version has a nice ここはどこ？

I must have looked cool, because she immediately joined me, still in her night gown, and even gave her life for me. Now it looks like we get to explore a whole new world again. Nice!

On the PR version, spent some time leveling up my Onion Knight in the water cave, after I had used at least 4 phoenix down on him. He kept dying because he was below 400 HP while the rest of the team is above 500HP, and there are so many surprise attacks, and for some reason they all target him so he kept dying. In that regards the boss was much easier.

@Sisthra

So it was actually better to just leave them at death’s door and have him tank every single hit for 1 damage for the entire dungeon, basically being unkillable.

Oh that’s smart. One soldier in the castle did mention that that’s what the Knight could do but I didn’t think about applying it!

@Sisthra

Feels a bit weird that we go a month with the starting ones and now we get so many other dumped on our lap.

Yeah, I was also just getting used to my team. Not sure if I’ll change / what I’ll change to (except in the PR, definitely grabbing that Geomancer to see if it’s as good as the 3D version)