In addition to the six and seven most well-known "Final Fantasy" two works, and the old players mentioned the first six FF, asked them from which generation began to pay attention to this series, I believe that the answer everyone got is mostly "FF III". As for why? The answer is actually quite simple, because this is the first work in the Final Fantasy series to sell more than one million copies in the original version.
Developed by Squaresoft and released on April 27, 1990, the game was developed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hiromichi Tanaka, Kiyotaka Amano, Kenji Terada, and Nobuo Uematsu, who was also the last Final Fantasy to be developed by legendary programmer Nasser Giberly.
Such a god-level development lineup, even if it is put thirty years later, is extremely amazing. My first exposure to the Final Fantasy series was in the eighth generation of the PS1 platform, and my childhood was perfectly staggered with the old six generations of Final Fantasy, and I still haven't played them until now. In recent years, I have been exposed to Final Fantasy XIV, and after completing the crystal tower story line, stepping through the ancient maze, crystal tower, and going to the dark world to fight the dark clouds, after being familiar with the "Final Fantasy" works, I found that these contents are from "FF III".
The new expansion pack "Shadow Of The Flame" launched in 2019 allows players to play the role of dark warrior to stop the flood of light, which makes the author more interested in the plot of the three generations, it seems to have heard my heart's small wish, "FF III" remake was officially released on the Steam platform on February 28, 2020, and finally you can play this classic
Receive the blessing of the Crystal of Light and become a Warrior of Light to save the world
There are two worlds in the "FF III" world view, namely the world of light and the world of darkness, the two worlds are in charge of eight crystals, since ancient times, light and darkness have been in a state of balance, but a thousand years ago in this story, the advanced civilizations of the ancient period overused the power of the crystal of light, and the power of light was out of balance, which led to a disaster called "Flood of Light", at this time the four dark warriors who obtained the power of the dark crystal sacrificed themselves, which prevented the flood of light, and the two worlds once again ushered in an era of peace of balance.
After a thousand people, the young Runess who lives in the remote village of Uru accidentally stumbled and fell to the ground cave, after a short exploration, he encountered the only remaining Crystal of Light, the Crystal of Light gave the power to the young man, and informed them that the threat of the Dark Force was about to sweep the whole world, and Runess, who became the Warrior of Light, set out to explore the unknown world together with three other partners who were also The Warriors of Light in order to regain the balance of the world. After a series of adventures, large and small, Runess and his party discover that the world they live in is a floating continent, leaving the floating continent in an airship, and there is a wider world outside, which is known as the "Dark Continent".
After meeting the Witch of Light, we learn that the Dark Continent suffered from the dark force that caused time to stand still, and finally under the sacrifice of the Light Witch, the Dark Continent finally ushered in the light, and time began to run again. Subsequently, after solving the big and small tasks in various parts of the Dark Continent, the Light Warriors meet a magician named Doga, who explains the story of the past to everyone, the Great Magician Noah has three apprentices, namely Doga, Une, and Zander, and the three are assigned different powers after Noah's death, Duojia gets powerful magic power, Une gets the power of the Dream World, and Zander has the lifespan of humans.
The mentally unbalanced Zander felt that Noah was eccentric and gave other lands more powerful powers, only giving himself things that had no value, so he vainly tried to control the power of the Crystal of Light, trying to cause the imbalance of the light and dark world again, so that the world returned to nothingness and chaos, and knowing that the unsatisfied Zam was not good at the motives of others, the Light Warriors and his party accepted the assistance of Doga and Unai, inheriting the will of the two old people to pour the crystal tower.
After the ancient labyrinth, the forbidden land of Eureka, and many difficult challenges, the Light Warrior finally defeated the lustful Zander, and we found that the black hand behind the curtain was actually the Dark Cloud instead of Zander, due to the strength of the Dark Cloud, the Light Warrior was defeated, but they did not give up lightly, fortunately, the joint efforts of the four Dark Warriors who stopped the flood of light a thousand years ago, the four Light Warriors led by Runess finally defeated the Dark Cloud, and the game story of FF III also came to an end at the same time.
The maze design is oversimplified, and the difficulty of the game is focused on the strength of the enemy
The labyrinth design of role-playing games often has a relationship with the difficulty, but the game difficulty shown in "FF III" is definitely not in the maze design, because the maze design of this work is very simple, although it is not a road design that goes all the way to the end, but in addition to the crystal tower, the big late maze, the rest of the maze can only be described monotonously, when the player finds two forks in the road, the shorter road usually stores a treasure chest at the bottom, and moves in the opposite direction after taking the treasure chest. Usually you can find the right path and then go to the bottom of the level to challenge the leader.
First of all, the author does not think that the simple maze design is the wrong design, the design of too complex mazes may make the player have a strong sense of frustration, which is not a good thing for the game itself, I want to say that the "FF III" maze design is very boring, only the early two mazes need the player to use the shrinking magic and frog magic to solve the puzzle, always feel that similar design can be used, for example, in the Cave of Fire can use ice attribute magic to set up a shield for their own side to safely cross the magma ground, Obviously, there was a maze gameplay combined with magic puzzle solving in the early stage of the game, but it was abandoned in the later stage, which is a pity.
Since the maze in the game can be successfully passed without using your brain, what makes most people think that FF III is a difficult Final Fantasy? The answer is the strength of the monsters that appear on the maze, ugly words are in front, this game is a game that takes a lot of time to upgrade the liver monster, if you are a player who goes straight to the main line, it is likely that after passing two or three mazes, you will be killed by a punch from the mobs that appear on the side of the road, because of this, choosing a maze suitable for the current level of practice is a very important thing in the game process.
Thankfully, the times are progressing, the game design concept is also progressing, this game supports the [automatic combat] system, after the automatic battle system is turned on, the battle screen will be carried out at a double speed, and the character will repeat the instructions previously selected to carry out the action, this design reduces the player's tiredness under the repetitive work, greatly improving the game experience, after all, it is now the twenty-first century, busy modern people should have no patience to spawn monsters, right?
A deep-rooted, in-exhaustible traditional turn-based combat system
The ATB system, which is widely used by many RPG games, was first developed and used in Final Fantasy IV, so the previous game "FF III" is still supporting the ATB system, this game uses traditional turn-based combat, a single turn of the enemy and us according to the agile to determine the order of action, the agile unit can launch the command first, the low agility unit can only act after a round of beating. This design actually has a drawback, that is, no matter how fast your team moves, the next turn will definitely withstand enemy attacks, it can not be said that before the enemy action round begins, rely on fire output to destroy the enemy, which is the status of the White Devil Mentor is very important.
Because in most cases, the mazes with similar levels to the raiders and the team are often injured by enemy attacks, and the recovery effect given by the medicines sold in the store is not high, and the White Magician immediately becomes a super battery that allows the team to continue to explore the maze. Character values are closely related to the combat system, FF III has a total of five basic values, namely strength, agility, physical strength, intelligence, spirit, strength will affect physical attack power, agility will affect the number of attack combos and battle order, physical strength will affect health and defense, intelligence will affect magic attack, spirit will affect magic recovery and magic defense.
Each upgrade of the Warrior of Light will give a numerical bonus according to the current class difference, so the choice of class will indirectly determine the direction of character cultivation, after all, you can't expect a Dark Mage to increase his strength value after upgrading, and become a universal class that can be eaten near and far, right? FF III has a queue system, the physical damage of the characters in the front row is not affected by the queue, suitable for all physical output characters; the physical damage of the characters in the back row will be reduced, the defense will be increased, but the magic damage will not be affected by the queue, this design is very straightforward to let the player set the physical output class to the front row, the legal output class set to the back row.
In this way, the strengths of each class can be maximized, the physical output will not be affected by the queue to reduce damage, and the legal class with low defense will not easily fall down, achieving a win-win situation. To explore the maze, it should be noted that encountering enemies will occasionally be attacked by enemies, then the queue will be reversed, that is, when the attack is attacked, the back row will be switched to the front row, the front row will be switched to the back row, and then the enemy will have the first attack round, the skinny and bloody law class is easy to be killed by a turn, by the way, the sneak attack is a random situation, there is no way to avoid.
Exploring the world cannot be done on your own feet, but on the importance of transportation
Chocobo is the signature mascot of the "Final Fantasy" series, but also a convenient means of transportation, the game world map has a number of chocobo forest, as long as you talk to the chocobo wandering inside the forest, you can take the chocobo in the world map to move quickly, when the player takes the chocobo, the speed of movement will be several times faster than the general state, and you will never encounter enemies in the wild before the bird. However, it should be noted that when the player gets off the bird, the chocobo will leave directly, and if you want to ride the chocobo again, you can only return to the Chocobo Forest to talk to the chocobo again.
Chocobo saves a lot of time traveling on the world map early in the game, but unfortunately, after the player unlocks the airship, it is not likely to go with chocobo. As the plot progresses, the Light Warriors and their party will obtain a variety of vehicles, FF III is an unprecedented design of four airships for players to drive, and the airships donated by West Germany at the beginning of the game allow players to experience the feeling of traveling around the world map for the first time, although they are quickly used to crash into large rocks and are destroyed, but they still impress players.
The second was the Enterprise that helped the Vikings solve the Sea Monster Rebellion, which was modified to unlock the ability to fly and was knocked down by the cannon fire of the Saronia Kingdom, but fortunately after helping the Kingdom of Salonia solve the civil war problem, we obtained a third airship, the Nautilus with high-speed operation and diving function. The last airship is the Invincible excavated from the ruins of the ancients, the Invincible not only supports the shop function, but also provides a place for the Warriors of Light to rest, after obtaining the Airship Invincible, the story plot officially ushered in the endgame, hurry to the Crystal Tower to stop Zander's plot!
For the first time, the free transfer setting was adopted, and twenty-three occupations were chosen
From today's point of view, the "FF III" class system is a very yangchun design, if we go back thirty years, a Japanese role-playing game appears [freely convertible class] design, it can be said to be amazing! The game supports a total of twenty-three classes, each with its own unique abilities, such as the Dragon Knight can use jumping attacks to severely damage flying enemies, scholars can see the enemy's weakness attributes, the Magic Swordsman's Dark Slash can prevent the splitting monsters from being injured and split, and the knight can resist attacks for dying partners.
Some people who see this may think: "It is not so much an individual independent profession as it is to transform the form to acquire the ability and skills that are suitable for this profession." In fact, it is not wrong to say so, the class system in the game is indeed not perfect, the difference between the Dragon Knight and the Viking Warrior is only that one can jump and kill the flying monster with a spear, the other has a special attack on the enemy at sea, there is no individual and independent talent tree or skill tree, but this design also has an advantage, that is, the player does not have to focus on cultivating a single class to enjoy the uniqueness and fun of the class, after all, in the later stages of the game, everyone has transferred to the upper class raider game, There is really no need to design a complete tree of skills and talents for transitional mid-to-middle careers.
This game will be the character level and class level to make a distinction, the class level in the game is called class proficiency, class proficiency will affect the character value, if the player wants to improve the character's [strength value], then you have to transfer to warrior, knight, magic swordsman and other melee classes to fight, when the class proficiency increases, the character ability value will increase, and vice versa, want to improve the character's [intelligence value] to transfer to the legal class.
In addition, for a specific class, professional proficiency will affect the ability and effect, the most direct example is the thief, the thief's professional proficiency will determine the success rate of [stealing], the higher the proficiency, the higher the probability of stealing props from the enemy, similar settings also have the feng shui master class, the higher the feng shui master's professional proficiency, then the more powerful the magic damage according to the [terrain] instructions, in short, if you want to make the team stronger, it is useless to increase the character level, and the class proficiency is also an important part.
The black of destruction, the white of healing, the type of magic that polarizes the effect
"FF III" magic system is based on the first two works of the basic settings of the adjustment, before the introduction of the magic system of this work, let us start from the opportunity to create magic, since the beginning of people's knowledge of magic in ancient times, according to different positions, human research magic is divided into two factions, one of which believes that the use of magic is to destroy the enemy's weapons of war, the other faction believes that magic can be used to benefit the people's medical resources, so with two distinct types of magic [black magic] and [white magic] That's how it was born.
In terms of core uses, black magic has a large number of elemental damage magic and poison hypnosis and other effects, while white magic has the effect of healing the wounded and dispelling toxic curses, and the profession that is good at casting black magic is called the black magic guide, and so on, the white magic caster is called the white magic guide, but there are exceptions to everything, the red magic mentor is an emerging class that can master the primary black and white magic at the same time, in addition to the feng shui master who casts spells according to changes in terrain, the illusionist who can use the power of summoning beasts and other alternative legal professions. But that's all a story.
Let's go back to the introduction of the magic system, except for some specific classes, the law class needs to consume MP to cast magic, and in the game, except for the Holy Spirit Potion, there are no other items that can restore MP, when the MP is consumed, only some of the legal classes that are not too bad in physical attack ability have the ability to counterattack, and the rest of the law class is only left with the role of standing and being beaten, of course, you can also choose to pause the maze and return to the hotel to rest and replenish MP.
However, it should be noted that there are no teleportation points or record points inside the maze, and once you leave, you have to start starting again, and players who do not want to spend too much time in a single maze are recommended to break through in one go. In view of this design, when exploring the maze, how to effectively use MP resources in each battle when exploring the maze, so that the team can successfully attack the maze master by relying on the advantages of magic skills, which will test everyone's resource control ability.
In addition, the summoning magic that debuted in FF III is also a very interesting setting, when the Light Warrior is transformed into an illusionist, you can learn and use summoning magic, summoning magic has a random effect, black and white, for example, when you learn Odin's summoning magic, each time you summon Odin there will be two different results, the effect of white magic is to set up a shield for the team to reflect magic once; the effect of black magic is to cause a lot of damage to the enemy.
If you want to be more proficient in summoning spells, you must transfer to the upper class of the illusionist [Magic Illusionist], the summoning magic of the Magic Illusionist is no longer a random effect, the player can choose the desired effect to launch, and the MP ceiling is also much higher than the illusionist, becoming the first choice for the upper class that players who want to improve the summoning spell must cultivate.
Thirty years later, it's still a role-playing game worth playing
Thirty years have passed since the original release of "FF III", and the version introduced this time is based on the 2006 NDS version remastered based on the original version, and in 2014 it was re-ported to the PC version for the second time, and the game has corrected a lot of original content, which is a sincere remake. From a modern point of view, the overall performance level of this game can only be regarded as an independent game level.
That said, it inherits the memories of the old generation of players, and perhaps FF III will not be the most fun Final Fantasy in everyone's mind, but its status will not be replaced. Classics are classics because they stand the test of time, and it turns out that FF III is a classic that has not been eliminated by time.