The Story
The Story
Not magic as in parlor tricks. Not rabbit-out-of-a-hat type stuff. This magic is a dangerous thing. A thousand years earlier, it almost destroyed the world.
The world came back, and, unfortunately for the world, magic is coming back, too.
In the first half of the game, you have to stop Gestahl and his lieutenant. To do so, you'll need to recruit people you'll find all across the world. And to find them, you'll use your controller to move through a huge surface world, its towns, castles, caves, encampments, and out-of-the-way places (even an Opera House).
There's Locke- a relic hunter who keeps getting mistaken for a common thief, and who's rather sensitive about it. There's Edgar, the young king of Figaro, who has a weakness for women; and his impetuous brother, Sabin, who has a weakness for barbells. Celes is a former imperial general who can't quite escape her past. Cyan, a noble warrior with over-elegant speech and a distaste for machines. Gau, a boy whose crackpot father left him in the wilds, and who has grown up wild. There's Relm, a child artist wise beyond her years; and her grandfather, Strago, who's still haunted by a monster from his youth. There's Shadow, always on the fringe of the party, but with a better heart than he would ever confess to having.
And there is Terra. First among all the characters, there is Terra. When we meet her at the very beginning, her name is just a row of question marks. She's a woman with a secret even she doesn't know.
They're a good bunch of people in a real story, full of twists and turns, and you can put your heart into them. Many of them having something in their past that's holding them back, and you'll have to help them come to grips with their inner demons.
If a game deserved the label of a "voyage of self-discovery," this is it.
While FF3 (which corresponds to FF6 in Japan) is a grand adventure, it's also a role-playing game. Your object is to cover the globe and improve the party's abilities to a point where the good guys can finally confront the treacherous emperor and his evil lieutenant. THis leads up to a magical equivalent of a nuclear holocaust.
And then the story's just half-told. In the second half of the game, the scattered party is slowly reconstituted and the quest is taken up again. But the world has been remade; you'll have to re-learn some of its rules and figure out new ones. And now the target is Kefka, who survived the apocalypse and is playing god atop a tower in the south.
Take your time. Do not rush. There's no need, and a rushed game won't be nearly as much fun. FF3 is too large to be completed in a sitting or two, and death is always lurking close by, so you'll need to save your game frequently. That means telling the game to take a snapshot of your position so you can pick up where you left off.
However, don't be timid about exploring. This will seem like an enormous world to even the most casual player, but a lot of surprises and side roads have been squirreled away inside, and you never know when you're going to find something utterly unexpected."
The Empire is reviving the force of "magic," unseen for over 1,000 years. Terra, a young girl cruelly enslaved for her magical talent, escapes and joins the rebelling Returners. She and her friends struggle against Emperor Gestahl and his demented general Kefka. Meanwhile, Terra's own dual nature (half-man, half-Esper) threatens to unravel the fragile alliance from within. The Empire tries to harness the power of the Goddess Statues to gain the ultimate authority. At the last moment, however, Kefka stabs Gestahl, unaligns the Statues, and brings about the end of the world. The party is scattered to the ends of the earth, and all seems lost. One year later, the world is in ruin: cities have been leveled, continents have sunk, the seas have dried up, and life is barely worth living. Kefka rules (or at least gleefully harasses) with the Light of Judgement from atop his tower. The party struggles to regroup and dethrone the deranged Kefka. After struggling to understand their place in this world, the party launches a final three-pronged assault on his fortress. Kefka falls, his tower crumbles, and peace returns. It's hard to tell from this brief synopsis (or from the regrettably Nintendo-of-America-safe translation), but Final Fantasy III was a dramatic change for the Final Fantasy series. Issues such as suicide, teenage pregnancy, losing loved ones, and more are all addressed in a mature manner unlike any game before. Neither are the characters simply ciphers to be led from one end of the game to another. Instead, they grow and develop, each overcoming his or her own personal demons. Although limited by the space of a cartridge, Square's cinematic aspirations are clear.
Final Fantasy III's cast is unique in that there truly is no main character. Some characters are more developed than others, but the player is almost always free to form a party from whomever they desire. In the World of Ruin, the player can bypass the story altogether and go directly to Kefka's Tower as soon as the airship is acquired. This hurry, however, would cause the player to miss out on several dozen subplots enhancing the characters' backgrounds. The offspring of a human and a near-deity, Terra Branford can barely relate to other people. She strives to understand her emotions and reconcile her inner nature. One of the game's more touching moments is late in the game when Terra refuses to join the party, choosing instead to remain caretaker of a village of orphaned children. She finally has found somewhere she belongs. Locke Cole, the world's greatest thief (excuse me, treasure hunter), is tormented by losing his Rachel in an accident years ago. Born and bred in a laboratory, the enigmatic General Celes Chere also has never known emotion or love. The brothers Figaro have a typical fraternal relationship; deep down, you know they love each other, but all others ever see is the surface-squabbling. Sabin is the muscle-bound bruiser, while Edgar is the rebelling and womanizing king. The feral child Gau was abandoned on the Veldt years ago to be raised by wild animals. The chivalrous and proper Cyan Garamonde is a retainer to the King of Doma. He lost his family to Kefka's poisoning and is haunted by their memory. Setzer Gabianni is the world's greatest gambler and sole proprietor of the world's single airship. He's always willing to take a chance on life. Strago Magus is the ancient wizard of Thamasa village. Slightly forgetful at times, he has the uncanny ability to remember enemy attacks. His young granddaughter is painter Relm Arrowny, an artistically precocious girl with wit and talent beyond her years. The reclusive wandering Shadow would "slit his mama's throat for a nickel," as one of the game's townsfolk says. His only friend is his dog Interceptor. Want to flood your enemies with the power of El Niņo? Then slam-dancing Mog is your man (or is that moogle?). Kupo! Umaro and Gogo are the taciturn "hidden" characters. The former is a berserker Sasquatch; the latter, a motley-robed mimic. The summoned monsters, known as Espers in this game, have slightly more personality than before. And no list of heroes would be complete without the honorable General Leo. The player only controls him long enough to lose a battle to Kefka, but putting the player in the middle of the action drives his death home in a way that merely observing would not.
Emperor Gestahl is bland and uninteresting. Yes, he's interested in complete and total world domination, but what self-respecting RPG emperor isn't? His motives and character development are unimportant. He is a plot device designed to lead the player from point to point in the beginning of his quest. General Kefka, on the other hand, is a fascinating case study. No matter what the player thinks of him, there's no denying that Kefka is one of the most personality-filled villains in RPG history. Before Kefka, RPG villains had been shrouded in mystery; townspeople would whisper hints of the Evil One's existence, but the Evil One himself would only fly in at the eleventh hour via Deus Ex Machina Airlines. Kefka, instead, is onstage from act one, scene two. His mind is not merely warped, but is seriously bent. He has an arsenal of one-liners most Hollywood villains would kill for. He is like a little boy frying ants with a magnifying glass, gleefully amoral; not only uncaring but also unaware his cruelty has any moral implications. It has been said that the audience will hate a good villain ... but love a great one. Kefka achieves the greatest honor a villain can receive: he is well liked.
The graphics in Final Fantasy III are some of the greatest 2D graphics ever. Many players consider Final Fantasy III's score to be the greatest videogame soundtrack of all time. Final Fantasy III offers the "Relic System," letting each player equip themselves with two accessories. Judicious combinations (such as the "2-blade" Genji Glove and the "4-hit" offering) can create powerful characters. Magic spells are learned by fighting battles with certain Espers equipped. Otherwise, battles are similar to those of the previous games.
Final Fantasy III was a massive success in Japan, of course. In the US, Final Fantasy III was the most successful RPG to date. Falling somewhere between cult hit and mainstream success, it appealed to both longtime fans of the series and those who had never played an RPG before. Nevertheless, the game could not overcome the fact that RPGs remained trapped as a niche genre, played by only a very devout few.
The game of Final Fantasy 3 is the best simply because it has become more than just that... a game. The game has spawned endless websites, was the descendant of other FF games, and was the father of others. But within that game was a whole other world. The characters from the game brought out the ideals of a storyline so complex and so thrilling that many have spent more than their fair share of time looking for the smaller world within the great world of FF3.
Many games have found their success because of superior graphics and amazing screenshots, but FF3 came before all of that. While the graphics were space-age at their time, they were quick surpassed by more capable gaming systems. But the reason that FF3 began almost a cult following is because of the story contained within. The hopes of Terra to find love, the desperation to escape the Magitek research center, the warmth Relm felt for her grandfather, all these were amazingly conveyed. The simple message of hope was a constant theme throughout the game, and the ending certainly did it justice. After the defeat of Kefka and the escape from his tower, the turnaround that the world took was stunning. From the birth of Duane and Katurin's son to the seedling sprouting in Kohlingen, small examples of the life that still exists in a dark world abounded, almost enough to bring a tear to the eye. Just because things looked dark, there would constantly be a small spark of light to keep things going. Just like in the story that Banon tells Terra outside the Returner's Hideout.
So what if it's just a game? Maybe that's how it should be, some say. But whizzing across the landscape in SNES's "Mode 7" graphics or making witness to the love of Lola to her husband in Maranda shows that FF3 is one of the best games to ever be made. Not because of graphics, not because of character development, but because everything about it was a labor of hope and a positive message of life.
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