What I've Been Playing: Final Fantasy 3

I've been thinking about how to make a post out of my thoughts for what I'm currently playing, but couldn't come up with anything that seemed like it would be a topic worthy of a blog post. So instead I decided that from now on, in lieu of having a podcast or something to discuss my feelings on something, I'm going to make posts on my general feelings or thoughts on things I have played/watched/read/listened to/ate/whatever. The first of these posts is on the game that I am currently about 15 hours into, Final Fantasy 3.

When I first started playing, I had a rant forming in my head. After coming out of the cave in which you start the game, I quickly found that anywhere that I went that wasn't exactly where I should be going, there were monsters there that could slaughter me. So before I could ever head into the next part of the game, I had to grind out some levels. Now, I've had to grind in RPG's before, but having to that early lead me to think that the rest of the game would be ridiculous. Usually games gradually ramp up that kind of stuff throughout the game.

Eventually though I got into a groove with the game though, and stopping before any dungeons to gain a level or 2 usually prevented my immediate death. This game is still extremely unfriendly to anyone who hasn't played a million RPG's before. It's tiny little things that keep adding up. For instance, if one of your party members dies, there is absolutely no way to bring them back without using an item. This may not be an issue if you could buy those items, but you can't, and they aren't found very often. Also, there is no place to save anywhere in the game except for on the world map. This means that you can save before entering a dungeon, but there will be no other place to save until you have completed that dungeon, so if you die fighting the boss, tough shit, you have to start over again.

Things like this are most likely why this game was never released in America until now. Back in the NES days, Japanese people thought Americans couldn't handle difficult games. Thats why we got another game completely as Mario Bros. 2 instead of the real one which had killer mushrooms and other such insanity. My issue with this thought process is that if FF3 had come out back then, I wouldn't have even thought about the difficulty. NES games are notoriously unforgiving. These days I've grown out of that. It's especially annoying on a handheld when I don't want to start a dungeon because I don't know how long it'll take and I might have to stop playing before I can beat it.

Either way, I've been pushing my way through the game partly because I want a handheld game to be playing and partly because I feel some sort of strange sense of commitment to the Final Fantasy series. The storyline is completely throw away though and its not making me want to continue when I have the PSP God of War to still get through. The crystals have called the four warriors of light to save the world from the darkness, yeah yeah, I could be ripping off medusa heads. For the time being it is still drawing me back to it for some strange reason, but I soon might fall away to the siren songs of GoW, Loco Roco 2, or Patapon 2.