There are few stories as poorly told as the one in Final Fantasy III. There are few characters as shallow as the protagonists, villains and secondary characters that are in this game.
But I love them all. I love this game and its story and its themes deeply. And I’m going to talk about Final Fantasy III and the perspective I have on this game and also my history with it.
I’m sorry, this article won’t be as interesting to the audience as my previous ones were, I imagine. Here there won’t be any relevant data for the game industry as a whole. Nor will they have so many curiosities, not even a deep analysis about the game.
I took the liberty of writing this article anyway because 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of the release of this game. And I want to celebrate it, even if alone. So I somewhat hijacked the spotlight that this wonderful Compass platform has to bring some love to Final Fantasy III, as I feel it’s not as well known, nor recognized, as it could be.
But wait! Before we dive deeper into this game (I swear it has depth! Seriously! Hahahahaha), I bring here some facts for us to situate ourselves in time and space so that we can better understand the impact, the legacy and the fact that happened with Final Fantasy III.
On the fateful April 27, 1990, Final Fantasy III made the air of grace in Japanese territory and didn’t officially leave there until 16 years later – I’ll talk more about that later. – and, for its time, was one of the most ambitious JRPGs, making the most of the processing and storage power of the Famicom.
Reception of the game was overwhelmingly positive by Japanese media for the 1990 release and generally positive by world media for its 2006 Nintendo DS remake.
So why did it take so long for this game to leave Japan and officially see the world?
There is a clear answer to this. Final Fantasy III was even planned for a worldwide release, however, the Super Famicom would also be released in 1990 and Squaresoft at the time simply didn’t have the arm to work on the new hardware and prepare a game localization effort.
According to Hiromichi Tanaka (YES! Same Hiromichi Tanaka from the Mana series! Don’t you know who he is? You can read my article talking about my history with the Mana series by clicking here), when the Super Famicom came out, some barriers had to be surpassed by both Square and other developers, as it was the first time they had dealt with a hardware upgrade (the famous “go to next generation consoles”), which is extremely normal nowadays… There is a lot of things we take for granted, right? I find these stories amazing… Anyway, due to this effort needed to prepare the company for the next generation of consoles, it was not possible to allocate enough resources to localize the game to the West.
Phew, how much! Well… Now that we have the necessary context to understand what happened with the game, let’s go to the part that really matters; Let’s talk about Final Fantasy III and why I think this game is awesome (both the original and its remake)!
I’ll be the first to admit that Final Fantasy III isn’t a game with very broad appeal. And this is noticeable to the eye due to the game’s own structure. It’s an old-fashioned JRPG, with turn-based battles, dense and relatively difficult dungeons, sick bosses to defeat, and a story that has more qualities in the tones it brings and the taunts it does to the player than in the script itself, than in the script itself in its development. The music is wonderful, at least. If you couldn’t identify the quality of the Final Fantasy III soundtrack…. My friend… I don’t know what to say to you other than “Go listen to Boundless Ocean again, or any other song”.
The legacy of this game, through the improvement of the Job System – a system of classes and talents where characters can play any role in a team, switching classes between them – is felt to this day in JRPGs like Bravely Default and Final Fantasy Tactics and even in games of other genres.
If it wasn’t already clear from my posts on social media or in these articles for Compass, this class system is what attracts me the most to the JRPG genre, I just love the customization and seeming freedom it brings.
But no, my fellas, that’s not all that makes Final Fantasy III special to me. No way. It is a game that offers its players more… Much more!
Now I’m going to ask permission to talk a little bit about the history of the game itself. I know… I’m going to give very slight spoilers from a 30-year-old game, but I know that very few people followed the game. So if you care about spoilers I strongly recommend you to play it before you finish reading this article, seriously… I’ll wait for you here for the next 15 or 20 hours it takes to finish the game. I swear I will not leave here.
… Finished Final Fantasy III? Don’t care about mild spoilers from such an old game? Okay, so let’s get on with this conversation, or rather let’s get on with this monologue.
The themes that the story addresses is one of the most incredible points of Final Fantasy III and is what makes it so dear to me, my brothers. Certainly the game is a product of its time, where even a JRPG had an undeveloped story and for someone to delve into it it was necessary to go after background material, talk about it with people who played the game – or are kind enough to you hear about it – and draw your own conclusions from what the story brings, as the game’s story doesn’t give you necessary elements of cohesion. (thanks Final Fantasy Ultimania ♥, thank you friends for putting up with me talking so much about Final Fantasy III ♥, thank you Stefane for the infinite patience of listening 10x the same thing ♥).
The story of Final Fantasy III brings themes like balance, resentment, grief and heroism in a more or less competent way. I say this because the themes are clearly there, but they just aren’t explored enough during the game.
The story of Noah and his apprentices – Doga, Unei and Xande – is definitely my favorite thing about this game and perhaps the entire Final Fantasy series. No wonder these three characters are among my favorite minor characters from all of these games.
Official artwork of the coolest old people – Doga e Unei, respectively – for Final Fantasy III, by Yoshitaka Amano
What makes me so fond of this particular story, which, by the way, is so little commented on due to its lack of depth in the game, is precisely because of the themes it addresses and I’ll talk a little about them in the following. And have I already talked about the Doga and Unei theme song? It’s too good, you should listen!
The entire story that serves as the background for Final Fantasy III comes from the interaction between the wizard Noah and his three apprentices. When the light became too strong in the world to the point that it leaked into the dark side – a phenomenon known as light flooding – threatening to extinguish it completely through the actions of a civilization known as the Ancients, the wizard Noah used his last forces to put an end to this threat and bring the world back into balance.
On his deathbed, the magician gave a gift to each disciple, so that they would become responsible for maintaining the tenuous balance between light and darkness in the world, they were cool gifts, so let’s go to them:
• For Doga, the wizard Noah left vast knowledge of magic, which made the apprentice’s spells even more powerful. It was possible for Doga, thanks to this gift, to create spells instead of just channeling forces to use them.
• Unei was granted power over the dreamland and people’s subconscious, bringing with it a strong power of suggestion and influence over the dreams of the population of both the light and dark worlds and the ability to enter the dreamland when she wanted.
• For Xande, the wizard Noah’s favorite apprentice, the gift was mortality. Yes, a kind of crappy gift compared to the others. Even more crappy when you realize they were all immortal when it happened.
Xande got mad, my fellas.
Really.
I mean… who wouldn’t be mad with a scum like that? I would be mad for sure.
As a matter of fact, looking at this scene from a distant perspective – being just one player following the story – I understand how this was a gift to him. A lot of people I’ve talked to about this story see it differently. Was Noah an asshole or wasn’t he an asshole to Xande in giving him the gift of mortality?
The arguments for both points of view are valid. Perhaps Noah wanted Xande to live a normal life, without the shackles of immortality tied to hard work. Maybe Noah should give Xande the option to choose mortality whenever he wanted and just taking his immortality that way was a mistake. And that’s the magic that makes Final Fantasy III so memorable to me and, consequently, my favorite. Inability to bring all the necessary elements for the player to follow the story, the game invites us to draw our own conclusions with the little it offers us in this regard.
Of course, some players will just think it sucks that the last boss came out of nowhere and stole some of the story’s brilliance and simply never replayed thinking about Final Fantasy III – it happens a lot – but that kind of player you’re probably not even reading this article so far so let’s focus on the positives of the game.
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Questions about the one we raised earlier, about Noah and his disciples, the question about the flood of light and the cyclicality of such events – this time, during the game’s official history, with the forces of darkness threatening to overwhelm the light of the world – the question about fearing one’s own mortality instead of using it as a driving force to produce positive things in the world, the question about balance (Here it is worth remembering that it is not a balance between good and evil… This balance between dark and light in Final Fantasy III is an allegory about opposites necessary to sustain one’s life and it’s not about a fight of good against evil, it was never about that). The question of sacrifice to a greater cause, the question of the grief that the protagonists feel at each farewell, the question of the decisions taken by the Doga and by Unei…
Okay, let’s talk now about Doga and Unei, because they are probably my favorite secondary characters from the entire Final Fantasy series. They are two very poor old men who have been given a huge responsibility by their master and have become, more or less, the ones responsible for keeping things in order in the world.
I believe they didn’t ask for it, but they accepted the burden anyway and I can only imagine the fortitude and mental strength required for an immortal not to succumb to the boredom and all the sadness that comes with being forced to experience all the events in the world and to see so many dear ones leave with no choice but to live, even more so with the burden carried by both of them.
Yes, the four warriors of the light manage to defeat them (even if they are immortal… Yeah…. It’s kind of messy hahaha), but for those who experienced this scene in the game, whether in the remake or in the original, realize that before the battle against both, the protagonists express a deep regret, because bro… The guys were good mates and they sacrificed for a cause bigger than even their responsibilities to the world.
Okay, maybe I got a little longer talking about these characters, but that’s what happens to me. When I really like something, whether it’s a story or a product or an event in our lives or whatever, it’s hard for me to stop talking about it. I talk and talk and talk and talk until I feel like I’ve managed to convey the positivity that it brings to my life.
And that happens to me when I talk about Final Fantasy III, I never feel like I can do justice to what this game means to me.When I play a JRPG or a strategy game where the characters have interchangeable classes and are highly customizable I think of Final Fantasy III. Without this game we would probably never have games that use this characterization system that I love so much in the molds that I like so much.
When I play Final Fantasy V, I remember Final Fantasy III. When I’m customizing my Final Fantasy VI characters through Magicites, I think of Final Fantasy III. When I select which subjects to give to which characters in Final Fantasy VII, I think of Final Fantasy III. When I play Final Fantasy Tactics I think of Final Fantasy III. When I play the Bravely Default series ditto. When I play Octopath Traveler too.
30 years later and what has changed?
A little over 30 years ago this game was released and it changed everything for me when it comes to JRPGs. He brought my favorite customization system and a story that, despite being poorly executed, reverberates in me through the topics covered and that remains alive in me because of the discussions generated around the central points it presents.
The impact of Final Fantasy III tends to go unnoticed next to the giants of the genre – including within the umbrella of the Final Fantasy brand – and that’s okay. I don’t expect the industry to die of love for the game or that it will always appear on lists of best games of all time – I don’t think that’s necessary or even relevant – but Final Fantasy III will always top my list of games from the Final Fantasy Favorite series. Be it for its characters, be it for its story, be it for its wonderful soundtrack, be it for its interchangeable class system, be it for the themes covered in the game.
So… happy 30 years, Final Fantasy III. Thank you for everything you’ve given me and may your influence continue to make amazing new games possible. I will continue to celebrate your next 30, 60, 90 years, even as your influence in the industry turns to dust over time.
It’s not a matter of stopping time for the impact of Final Fantasy III to remain relevant forever. Never was. This article – like the Final Fantasy III theme – is also about taking the time we’re allotted and giving back our best to the world, no matter what the world gives us, however difficult it may seem. I hope that we can find a balance between all the things in our lives and that it becomes good things for our world.
Thanks to anyone who’s read this far, I hope I managed to keep your attention long enough as I talked about these things of mine. I think I can finally settle down from talking about Final Fantasy III after all…
