Part 37: Part Thirty-Seven: Bards and Bullshit

Part Thirty-Seven: Bards and Bullshit


Well, now that we've seen Doga, we know where we need to head to get the MacGuffin to get a new ship.


Here's the Nautilus's theme, by the way. I didn't include it before because it wasn't technically a submarine.


There are sky stingrays in Final Fantasy III. Why not?


Enemies in the air can be pretty annoying. This is a fairly heavy hit.


Anyway, this is our destination.


"Cape Twin Horn" is just the south end of the Saronian continent. You, uh, would know this because


But first, I head to Duster. You see, I need something.


I need...11,000 gil.



Okay, let's try again.




I need harps.



Here's my angle on this one: I'm turning Jecht into a Bard.


Fun fact: Bards can equip things that aren't harps.

Also a fun fact: it's stupid to give Bards things that aren't harps.


Harps have decent Attack, I suppose, but that's not why you need them.


While I'm here, I also grab Jecht a new set of duds.


Let's rock 'n' roll.


Here is the Nautilus diving. I bet you're all falling over yourselves to see under the sea.


Under the sea...could be worse. But there are random encounters down here, so it's a good idea to keep your undersea escapades to a minimum.


Anyway, the Temple of Time.

Let me tell you about the Temple of Time. The Temple of Time is a dirty fucker. The Temple of Time can straight slurp a turd, I hate this fuckin' place. Everyone makes a fuss about a couple of other dungeons in the game, but this was my major sticking point the first time through.


Here's our first encounter.


Now, the more astute reader may notice I don't have a White Mage. This is definitely on purpose, and it's double definitely a good idea. I'm a pro.


Bards Sing. Bards never don't Sing.


Sing is always the first command to go off in a round, which is nice.


Requiem is a song that does out-and-out percentage damage to enemies. At job level 1, it's 10%.


Sephy is going to be the character to pay attention to, damage-wise, in the next few updates.


Golbez is really starting to lag behind.


The gil is okay in this place.


So is the EXP. There are a lot of encounters here, too, so you'll probably gain a level or two.


Now, allow me to introduce you to the true villain of this plot arc, the Chimera Mage.


Chimera Mages have 1,540 HP and will fuck your shit up relentlessly. Sometimes Chimera Mages will kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it.


They have low defence, so they die pretty easily, but they do have a couple tricks. You'll see what I mean.


Golbez fuckin' loves casting Whirlpool while I'm underwater. Wastes my time more than half the time, I'd say.


I hate how soft the kids can be in this game. Damage numbers are definitely inflated from the NES version, and so are enemies' HP values, but I think the kids get the same basic HP growth, which makes random encounters a lot worse. This is because of good game design.


Here's the one other thing Bards do: they switch harps. See, each harp has a unique song when used with Sing. You can switch harps and use Sing in the same turn, so it's just busywork.



Paeon is a healing song. Again, it puts up a percentage, starting at 10. It's pretty useless by itself, since enemies do a lot more than that, so you still need a White Mage.


Either way, I managed to deal with those Chimera Mages and run into a new enemy. Take note, there are treasures and shit in this place, I just haven't gotten to any. Like I said, high encounter rate.


Golbez is fucked.




I pull it out, though. As fliers, these enemies are weak to wind, which is why Kuja's looking so impressive tonight.



The rewards are a joke.


Besides random battles, the Temple of Time's only remarkable feature is the number of locked doors. You might have Magic Keys on you, but I always forget they exist. Just run a Thief.

Note: there's a treasure behind this door, but we'll be back later. I'm just showing stuff off right now.




Well, this is auspicious.


Whoops. Eh, he'll mend.


Wait, no, he's fucked, because Chimera Mages can petrify you with regular attacks. Normally this isn't much of a problem, because you just need to use a Gold Needle and whatever.


No, see, the real problem with Chimera Mages is that they sling Lightning.


Yeah, the same shit Garuda rocked the town with. They might be a little weaker, but Lightning is still a killer.


My only healing is from Sing or Hi-Potions right now.


Now, I don't mind games reusing unique attacks for regular enemies, theoretically, but to do it in the next dungeon, that's BS.


Lightning is way beyond what you're equipped to deal with right now.



Here's me fucking up and casting Haste on Jecht instead of doing something useful.


You know how this ends.


So, yes, that was fun, n'est-ce pas? Let's do something else.


Like check out this little village.


If it weren't for the wall between the two places, we could just surface on that lake and explore.



We have to follow this little inlet to get there, see? The submarine in Final Fantasy games is pretty much always a gimmick thing that just lets you get to a few small areas.


I think that's supposed to be...a seahorse? Drawn by someone who'd never seen a seahorse?

Makes more sense than a sky ray, at least.


I made my save state after I switched Jecht to Bard.


Before I played this part of the game, I didn't mind Whirlpool. Now I fucking hate Whirlpool.



This is an obstacle that's only possible in this one game. I'm very happy that no other Final Fantasy has had airships be blocked by mountains.


Here's our destination, Doga's Village.



In Doga's Village, you can buy spells. There are different "shops" for different levels of magic, from 1 to 7.


There's also a moogle, since this is technically a town.


Here's the most notable part, though: you can buy Summon Magic here. This will be useful eventually, but not right now. I don't have the gil or the job for it right now.


Back to the open skies!


Remember this island, in the south part of the ocean? I think I remarked on its pointlessness?


Well.


There is an optional dungeon here! It's a really good idea to tackle this one before going to the Temple of Time.





The enemies are weaker, for one.



But the rewards are also shitting amazing. This is a great cave to gain some levels in.


Also a great cave to check out, bridge-wise. Some nice bridges here.


Most enemies in this place are weak to lightning damage.


I don't know why this happened. Sephy can usually clean shit up.


Jecht's almost respectable, damage-wise, when he hits a weakness. If he pairs off with Kuja on a target, they can usually deal with it.




Sephy is something like 3,000 EXP out of sync because of his dumb dying bullshit. What a punk.



A Black Hole is an instant-death attack item. I don't think I've ever used one.



Onto the next floor!


And here's our first treasure!


It's a pretty solid boost for Sephy.


To add to that, it lets him move to the back row and still hit for full damage. You can also see the kind of levels I'm bringing into this cave - I haven't grown a lot since I did that pre-Goldor grinding.


Wow, giant snails!





Sephy's going to be my main physical dude for a while, starting in this cave.


Nice!


This place has a fairly high encounter rate, like the Temple of Time.



Here are some enemy names. Nothing in this place is really remarkable. Most random encounters in this game aren't.


Another treasure! Claws continue to be crap, if you were wondering.




Aegirs manage to take Jecht out because I was complacent. That's interesting, right? That's what you're here to see?


If I remember right, this is right on par with the best experience values in the game, unless you're running a single character. In fact, if you're trying to get 9,999 HP, this cave might fuck that up for you because you'll level up too much.






Something around here dropped a Turtle Shell, which casts Protect in battle. Like the Black Hole, it'll probably just collect dust.


Dual Tomahawk is an axe. If I were using a Warrior, this might be nice.


At this point, I decided to switch Kuja over to Thunder Spears.


It doesn't really work out for me.



Now we're getting close to the good stuff!


Aw yeah.


Aw.


Blah.


This is good for Kuja.


Hahaha, a book for a Scholar.


It's also around now that I remembered Jecht had no armour on.


When was the last time I used a sword in this game? The Water Temple?



Here's Whirlpool actually working.



Enemies are still slinging second-tier Black Magic, but it's becoming a lot less threatening to us now.



Here's a giant boost for Sephy, it's great, I love it.



Kuja's also putting some very nice defence together with that Diamond equipment.


I'm probably not going to use Bards again.


These are a nice boost for my less physical characters.


2,700 isn't shit compared to what's coming up.


Phoenix Downs will never stop being good loot in this game.


Elixirs are solid, too.


Now Kuja has a full set. Her Defense is up at 76.


Sephy gets her old Power Bracers, which raise Strength and Vitality by 2 (Diamond Gloves give +3).


This area is down an invisible hall. Each of these four chests also has a monster in a box.


The Triton Hammer has the easiest guard.


This guy, the Eater.


Eater only has 2,700 or so HP, and he's not very strong.


However, he can do this.


There are some enemies that will split into two copies when they're hit with physicals, up to a maximum of three on-screen (on the NES, this was 8, which is much worse). There is one exception to this, weapon-wise, but magic damage can also be used to avoid division.


Or you can hit them hard enough to kill them. HP is not restored when they divide, so you could wear dividers down with physicals, if you really wanted to.



The rewards for dividing enemies are shit. I mean, technically you can farm a lot of them in one battle, but it takes a long damn time and you'd be better off doing something else.


Next chest!


Here's Death Claw.



Scintillating, no?



These fights are a huge letdown after the rest of this cave.


Never gonna get used! Let's rock!


This is the Zombie Dragon. It has a lot of HP (11,000).


I thought it might be dangerous, so I used Jump.


I was pretty disappointed by the damage she brought down.


Also, the fight took long enough and the dragon hits hard enough that I felt casting Curaga was actually necessary.


It worked pretty well. (PS, you can see that everybody's broken 1,000 HP by this point.)



This is a straight-up slugfest, but I come out on top.


According to the walkthrough I reference, this is the "hardest" chest.


I swear to god, I don't make this LP with my cellphone.


This is Peryton.


This is half of Peryton's HP.


I jumped Kuja, then ended the fight in two rounds.






The Trident I got from that chest is a nice new spear for Kuja.





Here are my stats once I finish the walk out of the cave. As you can see, Sephy is really rocking this town. Things are finally coming together for the Thief.