Things Final Fantasy III does not tell you about Final Fantasy III.
When it comes to RPGs, information that the player has is far from a guarantee. Some games will tell players practically everything about their systems and leave it to the player to use that information. Others will leave some mechanics in the background, quietly applying them without the player's knowledge. The Final Fantasy III remake falls into the latter category, as there are some mechanics that the player may not realize even exist unless they look outside of the game. Here are seven of them.
This is based on the Future Press Official Strategy Guide. As far as SGs go, it seems pretty close to the Japanese SE guide (baring at least one case).
Party Member Levels (Life of the Party)
While temporary party aren't directly controllable, they seem to have their own levels and stats. Interestingly the Future Press strategy guide states that they also have stats. Though I should clarify: At this time, I have yet to find these in the Japanese strategy guide, so I am not entirely sure that these are accurate. However, the FP guide in general is close to the Japanese guide in terms of technical information, so I am willing to accept that risk.
The guide notes that the characters stats are usually significantly higher than the main characters' at the same levels. This is especially noticeable with Alus (The party's base stats, by compare, will be: Str/Agi: 24, Vit/Min/Int: 20)
Cid is the only party member to be weaker than the character before him (Sara), presumably due to how little time the party spends with him. He does have an impressively strong hammer, though.
Despite being portrayed as a White Mage, Sara's Int (7) is slightly higher than her Min (6).
It seems that after Desch, the devs kinda gave up with making varied stats, so Aria, Alus, Doga and Unei have the same number for all their stats.
Coincidence or otherwise, Aria's stat number also matches her level.
Doga and Unei share the same levels and stats as each other, a distinction no other party member has. For extra fun, Xande is also level 50, although his actual stats are unfortunately but understandably different.
Alus, a 10 year old boy is somehow twice as strong as Desch, a grown man.
Mognet Details (Stampin' N Stompin')
Most of Mognet's discussion usually begins and ends with it being connected to the sidequests. Because of this, there are a few features of Mognet that go undernoticed.
One particular aspect is the cards: For meeting the Legendary Smith with a mastered job and defeating the Iron Giant, the party can get cards signifying their mastery.
(I have yet to defeat the Iron Giant. I apologize for being a fraud).
In the PSP and Steam versions, these cards are mostly just rewards. In the DS version, however, they can be used as stamps for Mognet. And while the Iron Giant is purely to flaunt your superiority over the beast, the job mastery cards actually allow players to help out other players: If a player holding a signed letter runs into the Legendary Smith, she will give the player the respective job mastery item without having a level 99 job. While it doesn't break the game, due to how late it is before you can encounter the Smith, it does cut down on the grind you'd need if you wanted those items.
Encounter Frequency (Fights in the A.M. P.M. F.M.)
In Octopath Traveler, a later game by Team Asano, entering a new location will usually show you a danger level, giving you a general idea of how strong the enemies in that area are. While the mechanic is visible in OT, it was actually deployed discreetly in Final Fantasy III: Each area has a level that the guides recommend the player be at. However, the game itself uses a more subtle method: If your party is below the recommended level, the encounter rate will be higher than usual. By contrast, the further above the recommended level that the party is (up to six levels), the lower the encounter rate will be.
For example: The Nepto Shrine has a Danger Level of 10. If the party made it to the Shrine at level 7, then they will likely encounter more enemies than they would at level 10. By contrast, at level 16, they will have a chance at encountering the least amount of enemies.
Attack Types (SMASH! SLASH! STAB!)
In Final Fantasy III, elemental weaknesses are clear and easily implied by the fact that Mages have themed spells. However, the game also has a second, subtle weakness system: Attack Types, the physical counterpart.
The four attack types are
Unhanded: Despite the name, Claws are also included
Blow: Weapons that focus on slamming or bludgeoning the foe
Cut: Weapons that actually cut the foe, like Swords
Stab: Weapons that stab or have a stab-like effect, like Arrows
Interestingly, some weapons aren't mutually exclusive: Axes count for both blows and cuts, Knives count for both stabs and cuts and Unarmed counts for both Unhanded and Blow.
Hands (The Hands of Fate)
The Hand stat is a secret stat that the game silently keeps track of for each character. The hand stat represents how many times a physical attack has been made with a particular hand, the hand getting 3 XP for each use. Much like job levels only one hand level can be gained per battle, regardless of how many points are racked up. Theoretically, if you can have hands of different levels, although given how much III encourages dual-wielding, it's unlikely.
The FP guide recommends using the Ranger's barrage if you want to build up the hand stat, as that is a multi-hit attack that nonetheless counts each hit for the hand.
Weight (The Weight of the World)
Weight is not a new mechanic to Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy V, in particular has the stat help to determine who quickly a character acts (i.e. how fast the ATB bar fills up). However, V is the rare game where the game will actively inform the player of its existence. Other games in the series have it, including III (at least, in the remake).
Weight, along with Agility, determines how soon a character will act during the turn, as well as how many hits a character does (alongside the aforementioned Hand stat). This is why a Warrior with an axe will generally hit less than a Warrior with a sword, despite having higher attack. Interestingly magic also has weight to it with spells having a specific weight/cast time to it.
Boss Scripts (Script Write)
Bosses changing strategy mid-fight has been a Final Fantasy staple since at least Final Fantasy IV (Zeromus, for example, only starts to spam Meteo when he's close to dying), so the FF3 remake isn't particularly new or original for using this. Still, it's something to be aware of in case you make a particular fight harder than it needs to be.
A likely candidate for this is actually the final boss: While the Cloud of Darkness uses Particle Beam (and spams it during the last phase), it actually doesn't use the move until it's down to 80% of its HP, using the less threatening standard attack instead. This means that a player willing to take some turns to lower the danger can focus on the tentacles, which are the more immediate threat.
One of the more confusing aspects of the Final Fantasy III is the aspect of time: Whereas the Famicom version didn’t dwell too much on the time stop nature of the flood of darkness, in the remake it is a pivotal aspect of Xande’s character; His motive is to avoid death by freezing time.
So...how does it work?
(Note: My previous post on the Flood of Light is recommended reading).
First, history progress as it does until Noah dies. He gives his proteges gifts, with Xande getting the super special awesome prize of mortality.
Feeling snubbed, Xande goes to the Earth Crystal* and uses its power to trigger a flood of darkness. Y’see, the universe of FFIII is really big on balance, with the sun representing light and the earth representing Darkness (see a prior post I made regarding Desch, Doga, and Flood of Light shenanigans). By cutting off the world from the sun, Xande created an imbalance and basically removed the concept of time.
At the same time, Kraken attacked the Water Crystal, forcing the Water Maidens to seal it. This had the effect of causing the world to flood with water.
* The remake scrubs this down to a slight implication, namely the crystal’s words. It is not clear why this occurred, though it might have to do with the Cloud of Darkness being the one to trigger the floating continent’s earthquake rather than Xande, like in the Famicom game.
Taking Flight
One of the major aspects that gets asked is: How did Cid and the four orphans make it to the Floating Continent and not get frozen in time?
Thinking it over, there are at least two possibilities:
Possibility A: Height
When the orphans reach the surface, it is flooded entirely. To give a sense of scale: The Crystal Tower is generally portrayed as the highest point of the world. During this section, you can find the tip of it peaking out of the water.
Earlier, the party fought Medusa, who sabotaged the Tower of Owen’s reactor in an attempt to make the island fall to the surface. While the Famicom version simply has Desch say that the island will fall out of the sky, Desch says in the remake (and the Japanese seems to agree with this):
At this rate, the floating continent will be
flung away from the sun... The negative effects
on its inhabitants are unimaginable...
So, it would seem that The Floating Continent dodged the time stop by being in the sky when it happened.
There’s also Aria and Gramps, who are encountered on a boat that was wrecked, but still remains above the water. However, they haven’t aged at all. Despite, going off of Unei’s words and the general lack of knowledge of the surface, the world having gone through 1000 years of lost time.
And, of course, Cid’s Airship was in the air when the flood hit. Much like Aria and Gramps, the ship and its passengers, experienced much slower time progression, but did not seem to stop entirely.
Possibility B: The Crystals
The other possibility is simple ‘Chosen One’ logic: The Floating Continent was shielded from the time stop via its crystals, keeping the link between the earth and the sun open. There being two crystals is probably also why the flow of time is normal compared to the people that were on the surface.
As for the Warriors of Light...They’re Warriors of Light. Even Luneth finds it suspicious that all four of them happen to be orphans who end up traveling together.
The only oddity is Aria. Perhaps her status as a maiden to the Water Crystal granted her the same status as the Warriors of Light...?
In any case, both scenarios imply that Aria’s ship and Cid’s airship experienced a slower passage of time compared to the floating continent. Despite being asleep, Unei was in the Dream World and thus was unaffected (technically)
Misc
These are things I’ve mentioned before in other posts, but they kinda contribute to the confusion, so here they are:
- Warriors of Light’s ages: The orphans being 14 is a misconception: Their ages aren’t mentioned in-game and only two whose ages were given out are Arc (14, funnily enough) and Refia (15). Ingus would be 14 based on Cid’s story, but...
- Cid’s Story: Cid in the english version says that the incident happened 10 years ago, but the Japanese is more akin to “10+ years ago), from what I could tell, at least.
- Cid & Saronia: The remake implies Cid once worked for Saronia and is associated with the Nautilus. However, the english version makes a major error: The translator seemingly did not know at the time that the Ancient Ruin was an actual place. Thus, rather than being the genius inventor resurrecting an ancient airship, you get stuff like this:
