YMMV / Final Fantasy III

• Accidental Aesop: Before giving a present, you should figure out whether or not the recipient would want it. Failing that, just ask them what they want instead of hoping your gift lands. Noah’s failure to do either led to the game happening, throwing the world into chaos.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Here.
• Angst? What Angst?: Luneth, after Aria dies in his arms. He wakes up at the inn in Amur and says nothing about this for the rest of the game.^note The Dummied Out text reveals that there actually was a scene of Luneth reacting to her death and further mentions of her later in the game, but all of it got scrapped
• Annoying Video Game Helper: The Guest Star Party Members every now and again—go ahead and try stealing Phoenix Downs on Dragon's Peak while Desch is in the party. They can also be annoying by their absence if said party member fails to turn up at all during a boss fight.
• Broken Base:
  • Whether the protagonists are better off being featureless or the characterization given to them by the 3D remake is better. Those who prefer the remake characters think them having distinct personalities is an improvement compared to them not having any even if they are not too fleshed out, while those who prefer the Featureless Protagonists believe the game and its story works better with them as avatars for the player (similarly to those in the online installments in the series) and help them get immersed in the game's world and point out how the characters in the remake don't really add much to the story with their backgrounds and that the Onion Knights without specific backgrounds would still work just as well in their scenes.
  • The treatment of the Sage and Ninja jobs in the remake gets some of this. In the original, they were the Infinity +1 Sword options, being Purposefully Overpowered and undeniably the strongest magic and physical jobs, but in the remake, they were nerfed significantly and put on par with the others. This created either relief ("thank god, now they're just an option rather than broken") or irritation ("dangit, I liked stomping the endgame with a party of Sages and Ninjas!")
• Demonic Spiders: Every enemy that splits when it takes physical damage from a non-katana. They can quickly prove overwhelming if you're not prepared for them. Fortunately, these foes are easier in the DS version, in which these enemies only split on their turns if they're hit with a non-katana instead of immediately after they're hit, and only three of them can be out at a time, making it easier to kill them with a multi-target spell, or with the Dark Knight's Souleater.
• Difficulty Spike: The World of Darkness' random encounters include enemies with double the hit points of bosses from the previous dungeon. The mini-bosses have triple. And the random encounters can ambush you and hit you with Meteor, which will kill at least one party member before you can do anything at all. One of the random encounters is Xande's Soul, which is more powerful than Xande, who you fought just before entering the World of Darkness and who probably gave you a lot of trouble. The World of Darkness isn't messing around: it will kill you.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Crystal Tower is widely loathed for being an extremely long Marathon Level filled with some of the most powerful boss monsters in the game that can wipe your entire party out without a massive amount of grinding. The dungeon also has no save points so you’re forced to weather the entire gauntlet in one sitting with no ability to restore your health and limited spell charges without using your limited supply of elixers.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Aria, mostly for her theme. This is especially strange, as she seems to be treated as the most important NPC party member in the game (technically she is as she frees the rest of the planet, yet she dies practically ten minutes after she joins you); she even has her own scene in the remake's intro which no other NPC party member has, not even Cid who is a playable character in the Theatrhythm games. (Unless you count him piloting the airship shown flying alongside the party members in the beginning, but regardless he isn't actually seen.)
• Even Better Sequel: While III may feel dated in this day and age, it's important to remember how much of what would be Final Fantasy's standard gameplay was actually fleshed out in this installment. While Final Fantasy started the franchise, it had a lot of early JRPG crust^note Lots of spells flat out don't work due to coding bugs, enemies that are defeated in a round but are still targeted by someone end up wasting the characters turn, and the Level Grinding was quite obnoxious at points, and Final Fantasy II switched to a stat grinding system that ultimately wasn't well received. Final Fantasy III, however, went back to a more realized version of Final Fantasy 1's system, introduced a far more balanced level curve, streamlined a lot of the crust of the earlier games out, and introduced many elements of what would become the series iconic staples.
• Fan Nickname: The initial 1999 Fan Translation refers to the Onion Knights as "Onion Kids" to conserve text space. This has been supplanted in every translation since—both official and unofficial—but Onion Kid caught on so quickly that you'll still see the main characters casually referred to as such in certain circles.
• Fanon: Given the Dark Is Not Evil/Light Is Not Good elements, it's a common fan extrapolation that the Final Boss was called the "Cloud of Light" during the first cataclysm.
• Game-Breaker: Here.
• Good Bad Bugs: A bug involving the inventory in the Famicom version allowed the player to acquire the very powerful Onion Equipment at the start of the game. (It takes a huge amount of time to set up, however.) Another one in the DS version allows players to duplicate any consumable item in the game, up to and including the rare and precious Phoenix Downs and the Elixir you're supposed to give away at the beginning of the game.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Gigameth, humanoid form of Garuda, in the remake. An Evil Chancellor with red hair done up into horns, a mustache, and a green outfit? Say, replace the hair horns with actual horns, and that sounds awfully familiar now...
  • In the arranged soundtrack, the narrator refers to God using female pronouns. Fastforward to Dissidia where we have the closest thing Final Fantasy has to God: Cosmos, Goddess of Harmony.
  • The initial class is known as Onion Knights.
• It Was His Sled: Back when the game first released, it was considered a twist that Xande was not the Final Boss, and the game kept going into the World of Darkness and the Cloud of Darkness awaits as the True Final Boss. These days thanks to Pop Culture Osmosis, the Cloud of Darkness's prominent role in Dissidia Final Fantasy, and the heavy usage of III lore for Final Fantasy XIV, nowadays everyone knows this twist, and probably also know that the Crystal Tower is the penultimate dungeon with the World of Darkness afterward.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Several of the jobs fall as this, in both the 8-bit original and the remake. These jobs include:
  • The Scholar, which is unlocked after the Fire Crystal, is woefully underpowered and unimpressive. They get the ability to have a free cast of Libra. However, their stamina is by far the worst in the game, and leveling your characters as this job can cause problems with their HP for the rest of the game. The remake buffs them by giving access to level 3 magic, double effectiveness of items used in battle and giving Enemy Study the ability to remove buffs, but their vitality still remains the worst of all the jobs
  • The Geomancer can cause terrain effects during combat, but they're overshadowed by the other jobs. They were buffed in the 3D remake and earned earlier.
  • The Viking job was intended to be used during a time when the Knight class becomes unusable due to a lack of good equipment. However the Viking is greatly outclassed by the Black Belt, who has a much greater hit percentage.
• Moe:
  • Arc gets a lot of very cutesy, woobish fanart due to his shy and bookish personality, and having freckles.
  • The Onion Knights. The Dissidia version of the character helped a lot, but it still applies to the original 8-bit characters, who more or less look like toddlers in that job class.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The catharsis that comes from defeating a really tough boss in the Famicom version is accompanied by the wonderful sound of the boss breaking apart once it's defeated.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Nepto Dragon's design in the original Famicom version is very unsettling◊.
  • The endgame hypes up the Cloud of Darkness hard, and requires drastic measures to even reach it. And when you finally do? You meet a vaguely humanoid Eldritch Abomination that spams the hell out of Particle Beam, which can obliterate your powerful party in a matter of turns. It's not about strategy and overcoming the odds, as with prior final bosses, it's survival against a being that makes the world shudder with its very existence.
• Nintendo Hard: While there's many debates over which game in the NES trilogy is the absolute hardest of them all, FFIII, like its predecessors, pulls absolutely no punches with its difficulty:
  • Even more so in the DS version, since engine limitations meant that they simply upped the stats of existing monsters rather than make you fight multiple groupings of them. Said monsters can often attack two or even three times per round, making bosses more dangerous. Oh, and one more little detail — THERE ARE NO SAVE POINTS, EVER. The only place to save your game is on the world map. Enjoy traipsing through a three hour dungeon with no save points and dying at the end!
  • Moreover, with one or two exceptions, there are no healing points in the dungeons either. This isn't such a big problem with HP, as you can restore that with potions, but MP restoring items are much rarer. Which means you have to do each dungeon twice — one run to collect all the items and level up your characters, and a second run where you run from every random encounter to make sure you have enough HP and MP to face off against the boss.
  • The game's magic system is also a huge factor in its difficulty: Rather than the "Magic Points" system used in II and in most games from the SNES-era onward, III reuses the Vancian Magic system from the original game where characters are given a limited number of casts of any spell within that tier, with higher tiers having less "charges" compared to the weaker, lower level spells. The spell charges aren't restored when you switch jobs and there are no Ether-like items to restore the spent charges in a pinch, so you had to rest in an inn/tent or use the extremely rare Elixir to recover. The DS version actually reduces the charges you get, especially for low-level spells. This is much worse than it sounds, since Cure and Cura are extremely valuable in the late game because they're not competing with Raise or other high-level White Magic for MP and can be used to patch up your party after fights, and high-end black magic is often overkill against most random encounters.
  • Phoenix Downs cannot be bought in stores in the NES or DS versions of this game (the Pixel Remaster averts this by having shops start selling them as you progress thru the story). You can only find them in treasure chests, by stealing them from rust birds, or in hidden locations. There are about 30 of them to find throughout the entire game -- unless you use a thief to steal an infinite number from the rust birds on the dragon mountain. Moreover, they only revive a fallen character with just a single hitpoint left, making it very risky to use in the middle of a fight.
  • The final room in the World Of Darkness has random encounters with offensive power comparable to the most difficult of the four bosses you just fought — except they're additionally capable of Back Attacking you, attacking three times to wipe out half your party and leave the other half in the red before you get the chance to input commands, then attacking three more times to finish you before any of those commands go off. And you thought Warmech was bad?!?
• Once Original, Now Common: The class system this game introduced to the series has been done better in so many other games by the time it was finally localized it doesn't reach the standards of even V. Never the less, several gamers found it to be a refreshing break from the immense complexity of other titles in the series.
• Polished Port:
  • The Famicom Mini version adds savestates, finally allowing you to save in dungeons and not have to beat the Crystal Tower in one go. Unfortunately, the localized NES Mini replaced FFIII with Final Fantasy.
  • The Mobile and Steam ports use a live orchestral soundtrack and make a single but important change: The Mognet sidequest is now tied to plot progression rather than sending letters to other players.^note With the shutdown of the Nintendo DS' Wi-Fi capabilities, activating the sidequest in the original version is next to impossible nowadays unless you happen to be lucky enough to know someone who also has a copy of the game.
  • The PSP port sharpened the graphics and added a Auto-Battle function to speed-up level grinding. This version also gives the player the option to use the original 8-bit music.
  • The Pixel Remaster version adds a quick save feature (which can be used similarly to savestates), maps and item collection tracking, Auto-Battle, a newly orchestrated soundtrack, new abilities, and the Switch and PS4 versions additionally add Boosters to toggle the encounter rate and EXP/Gil gain. It's widely considered by many to be the best way to play the original 2D version.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Here.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: No really. For all the flak the game gets when it comes to the difficulty, it can be more manageable, if not easier, than the previous two games in a few ways:
  • The fact that you can target another enemy if the previous one died/ran away. It's only for physical attacks, but it's still a plus.
  • While there's the return of the magic charges from the first game, the game has more of a balance than the first game to not make it too wasteful; the charges were made more plentiful.
  • The bugs from the first two games are fixed: magic can be utilized properly, and classes work as intended.
  • Also applies to the Pixel Remaster version compared to prior versions. The Capacity Point and Job Adjustment Phase systems from the previous releases have been dropped, allowing the player to change jobs without repercussions; arrows now have unlimited ammo; a minimap shows all the secret passages in dungeons; several jobs have new abilities, and some already-existing abilities have been buffed; and the final dungeon now contains a few healing points.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Combined with Difficulty Spike for the game itself, the final dungeon is considered to be the most unforgiving part of the game, and it's not only harder than the first two games for this, but it's probably among the hardest final dungeons of the series.
• Sequel Displacement: In Japan, this is absolutely the case for the NES version, as it was the first FF title to truly get "huge" — the first two aren't obscure by any means, but much like Dragon Quest III, many NES-era gamers in Japan considered this to be the first good Final Fantasy and the first to really show Square's burgeoning graphical flair, Uematsu's soundtrack skill, and had (for the time) a very memorable story. As a result, it sold like hotcakes and lodged itself firmly in the Japanese zeitgeist; if a work outside of the gaming sphere (like a TV show or somesuch) references NES-era Final Fantasy, 99% of the time, it will reference this game specifically (with Cloud of Darkness being particularly iconic). Ironically, while the game was going to receive a remake for the WonderSwan Color (that could have been ported to the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance afterwards), it was cancelled an it never got one, unlike the first 2 (less popular) games.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The underwater theme sounds a lot like "Serenade" by Franz Schubert.
  • The Syrcus Tower theme resembles Simon & Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair".
• That One Attack: In the DS remake, Cloud of Darkness will start using an attack called Particle Beam, dealing massive damage to the entire party. In the NES version, this is her only attack, and she does it every turn. She does have one alternative attack in the NES version, but it's arguably worse than Particle Beam, because it's a physical attack that always hits and usually deals 9,999 damage points.
• That One Boss:
  • Salamander. He comes just before you get the Fire Crystal jobs, some of which are upgrades from your first set, so anyone who's a Warrior is on the edge of obsolescence. His physical attacks are also very strong, so anyone he hits twice in a row will probably die. Then there's his full-party Fire Breath, which will likely kill your party members if he decides to use that ability in consecutive turns. And (if playing the remake at least) you didn't pick up Blizzara from the Village of the Ancients? Well...
  • Garuda. The game drops boulder-sized hints about using Dragoons for good reason, because you will die without them and very quickly. It's not just because he's weak to spears—it's because they'll be out of range of his lightning attack when they jump, which he loves to spam and can easily one shot most of the party unless you're ridiculously high leveled. It's quite frequent for even a well-prepared, four-dragoon party to only have one or two alive at the end through the luck of timing, and with turn order being all over the place in boss battles, the entire battle can easily come down to a game of RNG roulette. Luckily, in the NES version, Garuda can be skipped with the item overflow glitch.
• That One Level:
  • Do you like grinding? No? Well, then you better get used to it, because you'll need to do a lot of it in order to get through final dungeon without having to retread it every single time you die. One of the bosses, at least in the remake, has high strength and attacks three times per turn. If he decides to target your dedicated healer, you might as well reload your save and climb back up. The four optional bosses have over 90,000 HP, three times more than the bosses you've faced up until that point. Actually, the bosses aren't so much "optional" as they remove the luck-based element from the upcoming Final Boss. (The Cloud of Darkness has a Total Party Kill attack which can only be countered by beating the four bosses in the area. Unless you're prepared to spend hours Level Grinding you're going to get trapped in a Healing Loop even if your party has Sages) Worse yet, there are zero opportunities to save! It's so notorious that most walkthroughs and people in the Final Fantasy community suggest that you grind your characters up to level 60. For reference, if you've been playing normally with no opportunities for grinding, you ought to be in your late forties. Even Sakaguchi himself called this dungeon horrible! Sadly, the DS remake also failed to curb the infamous final dungeons' difficulty.
    • Fortunately, this is not the case in the 2021 Pixel Remaster version for the most part, which adds quick saves, making the final dungeon gauntlet a lot less grueling, as you can save anywhere and you don't have to do it on a single sitting, and even after you're past the point of no return after triggering the cutscene with the mirror, there's newly added healing points in the shape of the Dark Crystals, overall improving the experience and lessening the perceived pain from the final dungeon.
  • The Cave of Darkness, especially in the 2D versions. All of the enemies in the dungeon split if they're physically attacked by any one not a Dark Knight. So while the obvious solution is to change some of your characters into Dark Knight, the other problem is that the equipment they can use is severely limited, requiring you to go to another town. Except they don't sell much equipment for them to make them worthwhile compared to what other physical attackers you may have. On top of this, the dungeon itself has 11 floors and is filled with hidden passages all over, some of which lead to dead ends or loops. And when you get to the end? You have a fairly challenging boss fight. In an interview in the 3D remake's strategy guide, Hiroaki Yabuta singles out the Cave of Darkness as a particular area they wanted to change because it was that much of a pain to navigate.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The main protagonists of the 3D remake are an interesting case: While the remake was in production, there were quite a few scenes that displayed and expanded on their personalities, to the point that certain sequences would be different from the original ^note such as Luneth's brashness getting the party captured at Castle Hein and having to work with a man named "Falb" to escape or Arc, annoyed at Ingus and Refia treating him like a kid, leaving on his own to find the key to Saronia's Dragon Spire (although Alus decides to follow him anyway).. However, concerns over straying too far from the original and how players, especially veterans, would react to the scenes led to most of them getting scrapped. Thus, outside of a few skits and Orphaned References, the main characters' personalities don't factor much into the plot of the game and, outside of Refia being featured in World of Final Fantasy and a few Record Dungeon moments in Final Fantasy Record Keeper, they have yet to be featured in a story-based spinoff that could explore their personalities more.
  • Despite his Tragic Villain nature, Xande is only ever confronted at the end of the game, where he acts like a Generic Doomsday Villain and has about 2-3 lines; Even the remake could only explore him indirectly. Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia would eventually explore Xande's character, showing him to be a Pragmatic Villain and eventually exploring his thoughts on Noah and his 'gift'.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • At the end of the game, it is revealed that there must be a balance between light and darkness, and the Cloud of Darkness is released when either grows too strong — a thousand years ago, a flood of light nearly destroyed another world when its balance was disrupted, and four Warriors of Darkness had to defeat the Cloud of Darkness and drive the light back. All of this information and these ideas about Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good are relegated entirely to the last hour of the game, which up until that point is a standard story about the Warriors of Light defeating a Dark Lord and driving back the Darkness. Interestingly, this idea would actually go on to be properly examined with the Shadowbringers expansion of Final Fantasy XIV, complete with its own Crystal Tower.
  • Before confronting Xande, the heroes are trapped when they touch a cursed mirror. It's only thanks to Doga who summons five people who are pure of heart to help break the curse and free the heroes. These people are characters the heroes have traveled with like Sara, Cid, Desch, Alus... and one of the four old men from Amur. It would have been more compelling if an important character like Aria had showed up instead of a random, nameless NPC the player will have long since forgotten about. Aria showing up in spirit-form wouldn't have been a stretch since both Doga and Unei already do.
  • The entire element of the main characters being from the Surface. The plotline itself is dropped in the final game after The Reveal and while the Dummied Out text does continue it, the only character whose former life is even implicated is Ingus^note who is heavily implied to have been born in the Dark Knight village of Falgabard, with Luneth having vague memories of the airship crash^note the lone remnant of this in the final in Luneth's sense of Déjà Vu after crashing Cid's airship and Arc and Refia not being involved in that plotline at all. Notably, despite Xande being directly responsible for the main characters being orphans, this is never brought up and the main characters have no dialogue when confronting him.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Xande may be painted as purposely sympathetic in some ways, the fact that he's so distraught over being forced to accept mortality is treated within the game as something he just doesn't appreciate. However, while few players could excuse his methods, most agree that suddenly being "gifted" with the ability to die, especially when your fellow disciples are given gifts such as great magical power or control over a dream realm, is a pretty understandable reason for going off the deep end.
• Values Dissonance: The idea of "mortality" being a gift to Xande seems ludicrous to most Western audiences, but makes much more sense to Japanese players who are deeply familiar with the cultural concept of mono no aware. Viewed from this perspective, Noah believed that making Xande mortal really was a gift, one that would allow him to have a deeper understanding and appreciation for life that Doga and Unei could never have as immortals. However, Xande rejected this philosophy and sought to become immortal again, also meaning he is violating the tenant of filial piety by not respecting his master's gift and going against his wishes.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: It's possible to see someone from time to time who thinks or initially thought Arc was a girl. His initial Shrinking Violet personality and Youthful Freckles do not help. Luneth also gets this reaction from time to time but much less than Arc tends to.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Ur and Canaan are two towns your party visits very early on in the game.

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