#ty plays ff3 ds

[magpiejay1234]

I have been playing FF3 DS remake for a while, and I have recently finished the Garuda stuff. Here’s the thoughts:

*Since this is a remake of a game that didn’t have named characters, the first thing the remake does is to create new characters in replacement of the nameless orphans in the original game. First of these characters is Luneth, who is a big main character sydrome character.

He is the first playable character you have so by default he has the most story relevance in this game, and he will be the strongest character until you max out everybody else. He is the only other character with a definite parental figure, and there is a mystery to his background that will never be explored, since he is a self-insert for a nameless character. The game shows him to be a flirt of sort of I guess, but each character has a definite ship, and in Luneth’s case, his ship is with Aria Benett, a rather tertiary character that is repurposed as an Aerith clone (though she feels also like a proto-Lunafreya).

Arc is the second character you encounter, but he is not the second strongest, since he is clearly intended to be a mage, which is not a bad thing in this game specifically, but FF is still FF, so mages are expensive. Arc is more archetypal than Luneth, he is a bookish character that is shown to be curious but somewhat neurotic. He is, of course, super relatable to me, except for the fact that he isn’t as depressed as I was when I was a kid. 

Second thing he is unlike me is his gay coding. As said with Luneth, each character has a definite ship in this game (I originally misspelled as “in this gay”, heh), so Arc’s definite ship is Alus Restor, or Prince Alus as he is known in the game. Alus is sort of another prototype for Tidus, at least for the “Jecht is Sin” storyline, since his father King Gorn is brainwashed by Gigameth, Garuda’s disguise, who kills himself to free himself from Garuda. Arc doesn’t have a lot of lines with other guest characters (besides Desch) so this gay coding feels a bit weird for me.

Third character, Refia, is your traditional 90s animé red-haired heroine. She is supposedly a tomboy despite being the chick of the group, she gets annoyed by Luneth’s flirting until Aria, and she is insecure about her adoptive father. She is supposedly the tough kid of the group, but since she is harder to Level than other characters it seems, you can’t buy her toughness (though this might be because I grinded in Kazus with Cid, where Refia isn’t part of your party for a while).

Refia’s definite ship is technically with Luneth (because, again, gotta ship the main guy and main girl I guess), but there is an emphasis on her crush on Desch, who is the most recurring guest character, since all the others so far have been guest members for a single dungeon (or possibly none in the case of Cid).

Fourth character, Ingus, is a more traditional SE protagonist, at least for post-FF7 games. His design also looks like Roxas, which I’m sure is intentional. He is the knightsguard of Princess Sara (Not Sarah, since since Floating Continent has a lot of Near Eastern influence, and Sara is presumably meant to be Arabic (though her design feels more (current) Assyrian), hence the different spelling from Sarah Cornelia of the first game).

Being a soldier (trademark) he is supposed to be no-nonsense of the group, while also believing in traditional values, but his commentary feels more like a science nerd, which makes me wonder why SE didn’t make him a military engineer rather than a knight.

I will do another post on worldbuilding and antagonists next, maybe.

Edit: Corrected Refia’s hometown. It is Kazus, not Toppul.

[theotherseapancakes]

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I really need to make a pinned post, so I’m going to do that now!

Hi, I’m Salem, he/him, 30s. Pagan witch, hobbyist artist, etc. This is my main blog.

Inuringly (my main art blog; multifandom, OC stuff, etc.) Thanatophagency (my FE sideblog. I post my brainrot there, reblog FE fanart I like, and dump my FE art so I don’t super-spam my main blogs.) OTHER sites (not tumblrs): My Pixiv Twitter Plurk AO3 (fanfic) (it’s mostly Fire Emblem rn im sorry)

I don’t have a DNI list or anything but AI, crypto, terf-y shit, homophobia, ableism etc. is a free block on sight. My main is mostly a thought vomit/reblogging place though so keep that in mind. I am American and I can sadly only speak English (and a small amount of other stuff) because of Brain Damage Reasons, so if I misunderstand plz be patient ty!!! So here is a list of all the things I can recall I care about. If it’s bolded it causes me massive brainrot and I love it to death, probably. Non-comprehensive Games List:

Fire Emblem, Persona, DrakeNieR, Stella Glow, Monark (please GOD ask me about Monark), Yugioh, Pokemon (up to USUM), Digimon, Splatoon, SMT (this is broad so I’ll just say DeSu DS DDS and mainlines), Legacy of Kain, Zelda, Cookie Run, Guilty Gear, Blazblue, KH, FF3 and FF14, DMC, Halo, Dragon Quest, a lot of VNs such as Hate Story/Hate+, Hatoful Boyfriend, Ib, Funamusea games/manga, Mad Father, Ace Attorney, Case Book of Arne, Touchstarved, Cave Story, Paranormasight, TWEWY+NTWEWY, DDLC, Psychonauts, Undertale/Deltarune, Obey Me!, Hello Charlotte, Sonic, Ghost Trick, Fear and Hunger, Portal, Mass Effect, Spooky’s Jumpscare Mansion, Jet Set Radio, just so many goddamn platformers but especially MISCHIEF MAKERS and Hat in Time, OFF, Eternal Darkness, Sly Cooper, Catherine Full Body, Hades

Everything Not Games:

Sailor Moon, When They Cry, Dragon Ball, Code Geass, Pandora Hearts, Star Driver, Lupin the Third, Detective Conan, Angel Beats, some older Pokemon, Digimon (esp Tamers, Frontier, and 02), OG Yugioh (manga too), Madoka, Little Witch Academia, Kamen Rider (W/Futo PI mostly), Paranoia Agent, Mahou Sentai Magiranger, MLP (mostly Equestria Girls tbh), She-ra PoP, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Cats (the musical), Phantom of the Opera, Beetlegeuse (musical too), some Disney, Gundam (Mobile Fighter G / Wing), GitS, RWBY, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, Wander Over Yonder, PPG, Sonic Prime, March Story, Homestuck, some Vtubers (Garbage Barstool), Alice in __ (Country of Hearts/Clover/etc.), Vocaloid/SynthV (Evillious, Deadline Circus, basically anything Gakupo or Kaito), Ghost & Pals, Clover song series, Vampair, Voltaire’s music in general tbh, Blood+, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, YYH, Spiderverse, Gwenpool, Venomverse, Red Hood, Teen Titans, Howl’s Moving Castle (the books and movie), and other various Ghibli films (HMC and Princess Mononoke are my favorites that aren’t Spirited Away or Porco Rosso), Tithe series (novels), Yozakura Quartet, Are You Alice, FMA (original), Fruits Basket, Adventure Time, horror stuff in general rly (I fucking love Junji Ito’s anthologies.)

... If you read all this, hey thanks, and go play Case Book of Arne. Or Paranormasight. Or NTWEWY. They all need more love--

[magpiejay1234]

Since I’m at Crystal Tower, or rather Syrcus Tower, I’ll continue on the analysis with guest party members, with the recent reveals first:

*Doga and Unei have to ritualistically die to energize their respective keys. Doga’s Key unlocks Eureka, Unei’s Key unlocks later floors of Crystal Tower.

*Each party member supposedly represent a different “light”:

**Luneth is Light of courage

**Arc is Light of kindness

**Refia is Light of affection (very girly)

**Ingus is Light of determination (insert Undertale/Deltarune memes here)

I’m not sure if this is a thing in the original game, but this may be inspired by FF5′s characterization of each crystal’s affinity, which I discussed in the FF5 GBA commentary (tagged ty plays ff5 gba)

*Crystal Tower is not actually made of crystals, but rather solid light. It too is created by crystals power. I suppose this building exists because of the “Tyranny of light” era.

*The true Earth Fiend of the game is Titan, everybody’s favourite Summon, except he is a recolor of the previous boss Hecantoncheir (who will later become an Eidolon in FF13 ironically). Before Titan, I have encountered both Summon bosses (Bahamut and Leviathan, since I did Odin much before), and Shinobi in Falgabard.

*Ancients’ Maze has the Unei’s Clone enemy and Crystal Tower has Doga’s Clone. Obviously these are reused sprites (or models in this version), but it makes you wonder if these are Xande’s creations, or clones created by Ancient technology which seen running amok in Ancients’ Maze.

Their true forms’ design seems to inspired Amano’s later designs io Edge’s parents in FF4.

Either way, all the previous bosses except maybe Leviathan and Odin are shown to have recolors by this time (Dragon enemy from Temple of Time is a recolor of Bahamut). Encountering Aeon (Gutsco’s recolor) took me some time.

*Falgabard’s Dark Knights and Shinobi boss reference Ninjas which exist in this game in the late game, but were the original Dark Magic users back in FF1. It is a clever reference, though FF lore about Dark Knights is different from medieval stories about Black Knights (some of which, you know, were actually Black, as in African). But I like the “dark is not evil, negative emotions can be used for good” angle they are going for.

*******

So the guests:

*Princess Sara isn’t particularly useful, but she is a good introduction to the game. She only appears in one dungeon, The Sealed Cave, and most of her optional dialogue is about quicksaves, but she is fine enough. She apparently has more story in the Mognet sidequests, but I haven’t done them yet.

*Cid is surprisingly very useful, being the sole physical only support you get. He was very good at early game grinding, but his sole dungeon, Mythril Mines, is technically optional, so you might never use him in battle.

Much like Sara I didn’t do his Mognet quest yet, so we’ll see how things go about with him, but he obviously has more screentime as a NPC than as a guest party member.

*Desch is the most characterized guest member, and he is the one that sticks around the most. Most of his optional dialogue is about Mini and Toad mechanics, except with Salina, but he gets lots of screentime so it is not a big deal.

Apparently his death is a fakeout like FF4 party members (well, most of them, RIP Tellah), but I’m not at the end of the game yet.

*Aria Benett has powerful support magic, but she, like Sara’s Cures, rarely uses them. Since she dies pretty soon after her introduction, we can’t say much about her. She apparently has a more prominent role in Brave Exvius for some reason, I guess to rile up the waifu crowd.

*Prince Alus (Restor) is technically supposed to be party member of the Dragon Spire, but I defeated Garuda without going there with him so I didn’t see his in-game prowess. Apparently he casts Confuse and Aero.

He has more role in the Mognet quests apparently, but again, I haven’t done them yet, so...

*Doga is a decent party member, but he is more important because his optional dialogue reveals much lore of the game. His characterization is very good I think, and fits in nicely with Xande and Unei. You definitely feel they are a found family of sorts, much like your party members’ families.

*Unei is also decent, but since she is more talkative, she reveals much more about the world’s mechanics. Apparently dream world items work like antimatter against real objects, for example. Her parrot is supposed to be exposition before you wake her up, but I didn’t go to her Shrine before Noah’s Lute, so the parrot segment didn’t surprise me as much (not to mention you encounter her in the dream world with her parrot beforehand).

While Doga and Unei are both party members for a short dungeon (for Doga) and a rather long one (for Unei) they serve much more than exposition and guides, you truly feel they are perceived as mentors by the Warriors (Orphans?) of Light.

Among the cast, I would say Desch takes the cake, with Unei and Doga being distant second and thirds respectively, Sara being the middle, and Aria being the bottom, for obvious reasons.

I wonder if the intended guest party member for Castle Hein was here, would we get a guest party member for each major mandatory dungeon. Like, what would be the guest member for Goldor Manor? Or Cave of Shadows? Or the Gutsco mini arc?

Questions, speculations. Early FF games used to allow this sort of stuff, even in their remakes. Oh how mighty have fallen.

Next post will be on game mechanics as promised. But that’s for another day now.

Edit: Note: Apparently Alus and Cid are the only FF3 guest party members who don’t appear in Brave Exvius. Rest do.

[magpiejay1234]

Returning to FF3 posts, since I finished my grinding run for now (I’ll restart it after Invincible). So I said I would talk about antagonists, and both Doga and Unei made big revelations that flew over my head, so we’ll discuss them.

**Antagonists of this game can be listed in following groups:

**Entities corrupted by darkness (aka Cloud of Darkness): Djinn, Hein

**Greedy assholes: Gustco, Goldor

**Xande’s minions: Medusa, Kraken

**Independent evil: So far only Gigameth (Garuda)

Beings corrupted by darkness obviously work for Cloud of Darkness unintentionally, serving to cause more darkness in hearts of men. Very Kingdom Hearts-y.

Xande’s minions are your regular mooks.

Greedy assholes serve as pseudo-Four Fiends/Four Heavenly Kings alongside Medusa and Kraken, since each of them are associated by a certain crystal except Medusa, though she is the first real boss, since Djinn is kind of a entry boss.

And Gigameth is here because Kingdom of Saronia is the big innovation of the original NES game, and it serves to introduce you to Dragoons, if you didn’t play Ricard in FF2.

**The initial antagonist, Djinn, is your traditional first FF boss. Even though apparently it has a unique sprite so far, he is only here to teach you the game, and serve as foreshadowing for Cloud of Darkness and to lesser extent Gigameth, since he is a random magical being that was apparently evil before CoD’s manipulation. He gets captured by Sara’s ring, which is of course is a reference to Djinn of the Ring from Aladdin (the fairy tale, not the Disney movies).

**Medusa is your introduction to Xande, of course. She is influential on Desch’s death, which will be reused with Kraken, but otherwise you don’t get involved much with her. Her plan is to apparently crash the Floating Continent into the Surface World by destroying the Tower, but of course, due to Desch’s sacrifice it doesn’t happen. Fire Crystal isn’t even in the Tower (though the Tower uses its power) so Medusa’s goal seems more petty than anything.

I wonder if she was inspired by original Megami Tensei’s Medusa boss though, or Castlevania.

**Gutsco is the first major antagonist you encounter and he gets a full arc to himself involing the Dwarves. He first steals the elemental Fangs, gets defeated, disguises himself as your shadow (which makes him a honorary guest I guess), and then becomes Salamander, presumably fusing with his pet snake by using Fire Crystal.

He is a very stereotypical Noh-threatre thief, so he is very enjoyable, if a bit annoying. He fits into the whole “power corrupts” vibe of the antagonists, without being related to CoD.

**Kraken is kind of significant since he not only kills Aria, he also directly seeks Water Crystal for Xande. Much like Medusa, his initial 3D overworld model shows him in a cloak, but his battle model is obviously naked. His model is reused for later enemies, but he is significant as the first true Elemental Fiend and a reference to FF1′s Kraken.

*Goldor is a weird one, since his presence is present throughout Amur, but his actual appearance is kind of a “jobber” as kids call it. Goldor is shown to be this powerful rich person that can antagonize the poor people of Surface World, but for the purposes of the game, he serves as the pseudo-Earth Fiend. Apparently, my earlier posts were partially wrong, as Goldor’s Earth Crystal was apparently a fake one created by Doga to create gold, making Goldor a homage to Midas.

*Gigameth is also interesting, since like Djinn he is fiend that was evil before CoD’s influence, and while he apparently gained more power because of them, it doesn’t seem they significantly changed his role. He is a very nice irredemably evil character, despite his short screentime.

*Hein, however, takes the big slice. He is the final boss of Floating Continent, and despite being empowered by CoD, he is very clearly a big scope villain. After winning power through a coup in Kingdom of Argus, he commits several raids to Tokkul, being border-genocidal, manipulates his comrades into doing his bidding, corrupting the Elder Tree to become his castle, and more importantly, successfully capturing your gang.

I can probably write an entire post about Hein but he is a favourite minor antagonist of FF fandom and developers, and clearly more fondly remembered than Xande. Most important thing about Hein is of course, he is the first true Necromancer of the series, which would later inspire Enuo and Seymour. Hein’s coup against Argus also clearly inspired Kefka, so you can see a lot of FF villains taking inspiration from him.

Hein’s arc was apparently going to be longer in DS version with a new guest member as a new character, but that was scrapped to be more in-line with the original version. This makes me wonder if we get a FF7R style remake of FF3 whether that plotline will be reinserted.

****

Now for the main antagonists:

*Xande is apparently the reason for time stopping on the Surface World for a thousand years, not sure how that works though. I thought Aria’s commentary implied the Water Priestesses stopped the time but that was apparently not the case, and apparently Cid and the orphans have been running around for a thousand years, I also don’t know how that works.

I wonder if this is a issue cause by the remake script, or something grandfathered by the original script.

Anyway, Doga and Unei clearly consider Xande as a brother, and feel his gift of mortality was the best gift Noah could give to him. Both seem to be shocked by his evil, but Unei suggests somebody else is manipulating the events, which further expands CoD’s role in the remake. I haven’t fought Xande yet, but I find him quite the tragic character, and the remake expands on him as much as it can, but.

*Cloud of Darkness’s presence in the remake seems much more expanded. You see them as a cloud of darkness (literally!) in Cid’s flashback, and their presence is shown by Hein’s speech and Djinn IIRC where their essence is shown as a Kingdom Hearts-y purple smoke.

This is clearly done to combat criticisms against them since Cloud of Darkness has been parodied by various future games as the ultimate Diablos ex Machina, so the remake tries to foreshadow their presence much, much earlier, right from the first boss. And I think it works.

However, events of the game suggest Xande stopped time right after their initial form as Cloud of Light was defeated a thousand years ago. I don’t know how this will be expanded upon, but it creates various implications.

I may talk about guest party members and game mechanics later.

[magpiejay1234]

So, let’s talk about the worldbuilding in FF3.

*The world of FF3 is divided between three maps. Floating Continent, Surface World (Pre-Time restart and post-time restart), and World of Darkness.

Floating Contient is the initial and most attention grabbing part of the game. This is especially true in DS version, since prologue is expanded to introduce the party members and game mechanics.

Floating Continent houses two of the crystals, Fire and Wind. Fire Crystal gets a dedicated arc for itself with Desch and Gutsco, and the finale of the segment, battle with Hein, is truly memorable.

Surface World starts off really weird because of Aria’s timestop, but after timestop is reversed, the actual region is very barren. Unlike Galuf’s world in FF5 however, there isn’t a lot of varied monsters here. The shops in this segment are not all that interesting, even if DS version mostly improves on them, as each city is dedicated to a specific later-game job. Amur is dedicated to Vikings and Thieves. Duster is dedicated to Bards and Geomancers, Replito is dedicated to Evokers and Summoners (which I currently don’t have), and Saronia is dedicated to Rangers and Dragoons.

The region also doesn’t have a lot of unique dungeons, except Goldor’s Manor, which is probably the prettiest DS dungeon in any JRPG ever, and my primary grinding spot (largely because the emulator works fastest here for some reason).

Amur and Saronia are the most interesting settlements so far, but I hope I will get more when I see Noah’s apprentices’ domains. Don’t dissapoint me Doga and Xande.

*Crystals and Elder Tree talk a lot, but you don’t feel the destruction or corruption of the crystals causing havoc, as it was the case in later FFs, and arguably FF2 (even though all crystals get screwed near the end of that game). So their role feels rather worthless besides providing commentary and jobs.

*Part of this is because FF3 is different from other FFs when it comes to magic. This world, unlike other FFs, is a world of true magic, as all bosses and major enemies require magical characters to defeat them. The sole exceptions for this so far are Goldor and Garuda, Goldor just requires you to punch him really hard, and Garuda is designed to be beaten by Dragoons (like Barbaricia in FF4).

While apparently Monks can get over physical resistence (and I presume all melee jobs can provided they are sufficiently leveled up), game wants you to magicians, and part of how it does this by forcing certain dungeons to be explored by Mini or Toad in Floating Contient.

As such, magic is not seen as an external force here, but part of the nature, so even if Earth Crystal is destroyed by Goldor for example, the life will clearly continue on, because individuals have sufficient amount of magic to survive.

This magic as lifeforce aspect is obviously getting rarer, since the inherent association of magic with organized religion, but this classic trope feels like a breath of fresh air compared to modern JRPGs with their obsessions with physical strength.

Of course, this is still a FF game, so Monks and other physical jobs are still technically the strongest, and can generally move around physical resistences (yes, apparently even against Hein, so keep grinding your Monk), but game is designed in a way to ensure you won’t figure this out.

*Second good aspect of this remake version of the game is all the orphan kids’ families are shown to be proper families... even though only Luneth and Refia have real adoptive parents. Again, considering how big later post-Enix merger FF games are super into eugenics and pure royal or noble family lines like rest of JRPGs, this feels like a breath of fresh air again.