Final Fantasy III (1994)

Main FF games in order of preference: 10, 4, 6, 12, 9, 7, 8, 5, 13, 3, 1, 2

I own both the original SNES and playstation version, and this is one of my all time most favourite games, and most played from my youth. I played the SNES version so much that about 75% of the characters are level 99. This is also the ONLY game for which I own a hard copy of the soundtrack.

Edgar, Celes and Terra are among my favourite video game characters of all time. There was an older girl in my high school named Terra Trainer who looked exactly like the game artwork for Terra. I also used to talk like Cyan (and Frog) online when I was a teen.

My dream team is: Edgar, Sabin, Cyan and Shadow because they are overall the most powerful. Terra, Celes and Umaro come in close, and I do not really like the other characters as much (in terms of combat effectiveness). I did beat the PS1 version (though no one was even close to level 99), and as far as I can recall those were the only 2 times I played through the game. My PS1 file does not everything optional done; I am missing some espers and not everyone knows all magic for example. My character status at the final save just before the final boss are:

team 1

Celes 67 with: illumina, excalibur, genji helm, minerva, genji glove, ribbon

Edgar 57 with: atma weapon, regal crown, crystail mail, offering, hero ring

Terra 53 with: graedus, scimitar, crystal gelm, genji armor, genji glove, gem box

Mog 48 with: aura lance, thunder shield, green beret, diamond vest, atlas armlet hero ring

team 2

Cyan 54 with: sky render (in 2 hands), circlet, force armor, gauntlet, hero ring

Shadow 51 with: stunner, force shield, green beret, dark gear, hero ring, safety ring

Setzer 51 with: fixed dice, flame shield, red cap, crystal mail, coin toss, cure ring

Relm 56 with: rainbow brush, aegis shield, cat hood, czarina gown, safety ring, gold hairpin

team 3

Locke 54 with: valiant knife, force shield, red cap, force armor, thief glove, sneak ring

Sabin 52 with: tiger fang, dragon claw, dark hood, red jacket, genji glove, black belt

Strago 52 with: magus rod, mythral shield, circlet, behemoth suit, earrings, zephyr cape

Umaro 41 with: rage ring, blizzard orb

Gogo and Gau are the lowest level and sit on the bench.

Overall 6 has the best story and setting of all the Final Fantasies. The characters are among the best in the series and the set pieces and game mechanics are also amazing. Where the game falls short for me is that it is far too easy which makes it unnecessary to master the game mechanics. There are also way too many characters. Though the game does a good job making sure they all get used and even having multi-party situations, there should have been shared XP among all the characters, the ability to have multiple parties at any time, the ability to swap characters in battle and otherwise make the game feel less like there are 10 characters just sitting on the bench doing nothing.

start throwing rocks. i'm half way through FF6 and its dangerously close to backlog territory. cool game but omg it's grindy and (i'm using a guide) losing fun factor and luster. This has to be longer than some of the other one's i've recently played in recent years (FF4+) And that's not something I was anticipating or prepared for. You could play this in different ways but i'm going the rage/garu route and grinding with garu is a bit clunky and not that much fun tbh... he is however, a really interesting character in this game and introduces a pretty neat idea/mechanic that is fun to play with, still game seems to be well at least two times long. guide tells me i'm halfway in and def over 40 hours maybe almost 55. I feel like i'm doing something wrong, but i'm straight up going off a guide.

i'm kinda afraid of playing the newer games now because i'm realizing that i'm just now getting a taste for the cerebreally complex intracies that new systems are gonna have. (i like the B-button mashing and just getting my gold mindlessly ala FF2) it just gets fatigueing way more faster when you have to farm/grind for XP, and the tactical combat component is something i'm experiencing in FF6. Every area has it's own selection of enemies who have attacks and weaknesses that your very custom party can play with or be trounced by. it's a lot trickier than what i'm used to and hard to comfortably ride out. The premise of this kind of tactical combat is often a bit arbitrary, random and just something by trial and error.

Garu kind of bumps this up a notch. even with a guide it's a ton of stuff to rememeber. Cannot for the life of me imagine playing this game when it was new in mid 1990s... with no guide or emulator. Most experiemental gameplay i've seen in JRPG.

Any FF6/Garu tips for getting a bit more out of it would be welcome. i'll get back to it after XCOM2, probably going to do some stat cheats, boost attack or just pump up one of my characters. Not sure if that'll even help, It's those weird attacks, its easy to just find a party unravel or even get stuck, with infinite HP, maybe that was the idea when designing this game lol. ...Caugthca/Gotcha