sirsystemerror | FF3: Solo Magus Part II

Bahamut's Cave had more threatening enemies; particularly the Lamia Queens which could cause a softlock situation. The big dragon itself was the first of many enemies that resist everything and anything, just because. A lot of endgame FF3 bosses do that, and hey: it affects physicals apparently, and the endgame ultimate weapons are elemental. Have fun.

Erase came to the forefront in the infamous Cave of Darkness dungeon. This is a long and winding place filled with splitting enemies with magical resistances. It wasn't action economy efficient, but thankfully, FF3 isn't a game that demands that. I actually did have to Warp out once because I ran out, but played a bit more efficiently and used Erase more aggressively the second time.

The boss just uses physicals. Couldn't win the damage race.

Dorga and Unne were annoying, mostly for the former casting Brak2 on the second part of his spell cycle. Luckily, it could both miss or he could fail to use it, and fell in three turns. Unne was the more interesting one: she used Wall as her second spell. This reflects one spell back at the caster. Unfortunately, using one of the cave's Barrier to cast it on yourself and reflect the spell back doesn't work in FF3. Luckily for Jasper's purposes, Quake goes right through that. (Unluckily, so does Brak2, so I couldn't use them on Dorga either). I just needed to Hi-Potion to avoid her follow-ups.

It was time for the final dungeon gauntlet. I knocked off Titan at the Earth Crystal without incident. This is when you would formally unlock Magus. And in a regular playthrough, it would get obsoleted shortly. Yeah, bad job unlock pacing problems.

By the way, probably should've mentioned this sooner, but running is awful in FF3. It has an incredibly low success rate (unless the Thief's Escape is used), and the runner's defense is reduced to 0 for the turn. This means you can't escape problematic enemies, conserve spell charges as a mage, etc. and just trying can be more dangerous than actually fighting. Yet another reason this game sucks for variants.

Bright side, the Ultimate Rod was here. And what a terrifying ultimate weapon it is. For damage? Uh, no, it's a magical job's weapon. For boosting damage? Doesn't have any and they don't work anyway. But it can inflict gradual petrification on a hit. Two procs and an enemy is dead. There's few if any random encounters this doesn't work on. There's many similar weapons in the game, some accessible much earlier. Single target only, but nice for conserving spell charges.

After passing through, I moved onto Forbidden Land Eureka. Technically option, but it has the ultimate weapons, the ultimate jobs, the ultimate magic, and other stuff available. One of these is the Ribbon, guarded by a weak monster. Unfortunately, it has some holes in its defenses in FF3, but the status and elemental resistances it still gives are still very welcome.

Thankfully, there was a healing spring at the end of Eureka. The L8 spells are exactly as you'd expect: Flare deals massive non-elemental damage and will be the offense of choice on bosses who are immune to all elementals because Good Game Design from now on. The debuting Meteo deals massive non-elemental damage to all enemies. And Death is bad. Not for the reason you'd expect, though: instant death is fanastic, it just has to share space on L8 and other instant death spells do the job just as well.

And yes, I wasn't joking. You unlock the Sage job here. The magic jobs you unlock in the Ancient's Labyrinth would be replaced almost as quick as you got them in the NES version. 3D stuck it there and gave it little spell charges and the inability to use stronger summon effects as a balancing measure, and Pixel Remaster just gave them less in comparison with the other jobs but still plenty. Yet in a casual on the NES, there's little reason not to upgrade here.

I tore through the bosses here without incident. The only one of note was Amon, the Hyne palette and AI swap, and only because he was the only one I fought before getting L8 spells. Had to do some weakness searching, but got the job done.

Had to go back and restock on Hi-Potions before heading up Sylx Tower. I wasn't sure if level 65 was going to be enough, but we'll see.

Here's an enemy being petrified by the Ultimate Staff. I would be getting a free heal after the boss at the top, but it still didn't hurt to do this. More important was to save on potions, which I could do so by employing the Drain spell. Healing around 2000 a shot wasn't bad by any means.

Xande at the top is straightforward: he uses Libra on one turn, and a strong spell the next. Gives plenty of breaks to heal if needed, but I damage raced him without incident without having to.

Also, check out the Magus' hilarious dead sprite in the unwinnable fight after. Fun reminder, there was supposed to be a save point up here. But some tester complained it made the game too easy. And the developers obliged them, possibly out of spite. If I could slap anyone in the game industry, it would have to be that person. Because wow.

This sent Jasper to the final dungeon. But now behold the worst boss of the Dark World gauntlet: 2-Head D. All it does is attack. With 255 attack and up to 32 hits. This is ridiculous, especially against a solo. Your only defenses are the Safe spell (including from very limited TurtlShells) or being in the back row.

It has 29000HP, so Jasper was going to run out of HP far sooner than him. This meant using Elixirs. There are only 23 of them in the game; one which can be used in a plot event. To get more, you need to encounter the Dragons, this game's WarMECH equivalent. Actually more like the Iron Giant equivalent, since you're going for a drop off the rare enemy. I'd done it before, but it takes ages and you're not guaranteed. You could even get Onion equipment instead! The problem is doing this with Jasper is that he uses magic. Can't really effectively hunt them, not even with soft resets.

I got by him once, only to die to one of the other bosses trying to be conservative on the Elixirs, which I would need more of for the final boss. Yeah, this is bad.

So with this, I decided to grind, specifically to level 78. That was when Jasper would hit 9999HP. Which is sooner than Monk, believe it or not. As utterly bizarre and backwards as it seems, it's just how NES FF3 was balanced: later jobs have higher stat totals. I did so in the Salonia Catacombs, because some of the enemies there have a tiny chance of dropping TurtlShells. Not as much as they could though, because of more bad coding. I ultimately got none.

Here were Jasper's stats at this point.

I still lost against the dragon the first time I got back when it moved first before I could heal. That's rare at least, but still another reason why this boss is so horrible. I had made a savestate at the beginning of the Dark World though; absolutely nothing to be proven by making the run up Sylx that many times, just tedium.

I successfully beat it the next attempt. The rest was going to be fairly straightforward. Ahriman and Echidna both cast Meteo as part of their routines. It just meant staying well-healed; like in FF1, enemies in FF3 have a clear order in which they cast their spells. So it was predictable, in other words. Cerberus meanwhile just spams a weak Thunder attack repeatedly. Didn't need to use an Elixir against that.

The final boss uses FlareWave every turn. The damage was much more manageable and less volatile than the dragon needless to say. It was a simple matter of attacking and healing as necessary; DarkCloud could sometimes move first, so I just had to be aware of that. I had plenty of Elixirs to spare at this point...

...so it was just a matter of time.

So here's something fun for you. When searching for Japanese sites for the original version of FF3, I failed to find much of anything. Was hoping there would be some hidden documentation on some of those. But I did find this site, literally translated to Masterpieces to Kusoge. FF3 surprisingly passes the test, but there are a lot of issues in there that are very true. To contrast, FF2 passes as well and it basically says that a lot of the perceived problems with it boil down to misinformation, which results in shooting yourself in the foot, which led to even more misinformation. Having played both original versions, I can say this is indeed the case.

Final Fantasy III is a game riddled with problems, and I can say that with nostalgia filters off, because I have nostalgia for it. Some of it is rooted in the game design itself: the freedom of the job system is weakened by the constant demand to use certain jobs. Or not being able to strategy/status your way out of fights. Even FF1 lets you do that sometimes. If there was any game in the series that needed that fix of a remake, it was this one. If you're going to play it, play one of those. Even the 3D versions which have their own set of problems.

But anyway, Solo Magus. It's pretty good. I wasn't really challenged until the very end when FF3's bad game design really started rearing its ugly head. Solo Black Mage which is more kosher is similar, just without the level 8 spells (forcing Bio against bosses) and weaker spells and health.

So why go this far out of spite? Because Onion Knight's stat growths are laughable. They're effectively an anchor for your party unless you either grind to unreasonable levels: contrast, none of my solos have ever reached the levels needed, or get the Onion equipment, which either requires finding and fighting those infamous dragons or using the item upgrade glitch. Add in limited equipment options, and yeah. It'd honestly be better to leave them dead and have your actual characters get more experience, especially on the Pixel Remaster the fiesta is technically designed for where you can't glitch your way out of it. Furthermore, the "later jobs are better" balancing screws you over a lot more than it does elsewhere. While I do like the idea of Onion Risk in a FF3 fiesta as an analog to the infamous Berserker Risk, it should be optional. Not forced. Hence my names of the dead characters. And I willingly did four Berserkers so, yeah. I'd rather subject myself to a FF3 solo than have to use Onion in a party. Solo Onion included, but I'll cross that bridge when and if I get there.

Though, these side-fiestas are always like this, no special options, so. But the one next month (November 2024) is Final Fantasy Tactics, and I'm definitely interested in that one. If I feel like a playthrough of a longer game.

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