Final Fantasy III Part #38 - Part Thirty-Eight: Shitty Temple at the Bottom of the Ocean

Part 38: Part Thirty-Eight: Shitty Temple at the Bottom of the Ocean

Part Thirty-Eight: Shitty Temple at the Bottom of the Ocean

Alright, you know where we're going.

Here's hoping I don't get killed because of dumb bullshit this time.

You can listen to this if you want the "authentic Temple of Time experience" or whatever.

I've mentioned that literally every door in this place is locked, right? Because if I haven't, I'm mentioning it now.

Behind door number one, a Diamond Helm! Wow! This is going straight in my bag because I only have one character with heavy armour.

Door number two, which is identical to door number one but twenty feet over, has another pair of Diamond Bracers!

Rumour has it that Diamond equipment lowers damage from electric attacks, but there's no indication of this in item descriptions or anything, nor can you check your characters' resistances &c. There is no excuse for this except bad design. Now, Final Fantasy games have had some horrendous interfaces over the years, but checking resistances and knowing exactly what equipment does is beyond basic.

Now that I'm mad about this game's shoddy presentation, let's look at this pretty water over here and not think too hard about why this place isn't flooded or falling apart if it's at the bottom of the ocean.

Here's Sephy murdering a lizard man. I love it.

And here's some reward numbers for that battle. For whatever reason, the bottom of the sea is apparently good for EXP. There are better places out there, but this still isn't anything to sneeze at.

Ooh, look at this shot. Ooh, look at those tiles. That water, wow.

We have to go into the water to continue.

Thankfully, that doesn't involve turning into toads or any other dumb bullshit, you just get to run over to the north side of the hall.

Oh, this comes up pretty much every battle. Geomancers have a 38% chance of using Whirlpool in this place.

Golbez's bad decisions aside, let's move on!

This floor isn't very long if you're just running through.

It's also not very long if you're collecting all the treasure, because this is the only thing here. It's a sword, so you know, I probably won't ever use it.

Next floor!

You know this is the exciting floor because of that double staircase. Are you excited? I'm excited.

But first...

An enemy! Wow!

These things are called Dira and they have 5,000 HP. They're also weak to wind, so this fight ended before it even really got started.

Shitty EXP, though.

The treasure I was headed to was just another Diamond Mail.

But that's not exciting. What's exciting is being in this water!

Thinking about running through water reminds me that I hate wet shoes. Also, I went the wrong way.

When I turned around, though, I ran into this fucker, the Behemoth.

I'll deal with a Behemoth later. They're a big waste of time.

I'm starting to run out of Phoenix Downs because Jecht keeps getting his shit knocked in like a moron.

Over to the left of the big puddle is another treasure room! What's inside?

Meh.

:rkad:

The Diamond Gloves give Sephy a bit of a defensive boost, and they also boost Strength and Vitality by 3.

The real haul, though, is the Behemoth Knife. Besides its 70 Attack, this thing boosts Strength by a full 8 points. It doesn't come with an Agility bonus, but the Thief has Agility to spare anyway.

Now, onward!

Wait, did I just go upstairs to run back downstairs in a different place? Who fuckin' designed that? Whoever built this temple at the bottom of the ocean is a mega asshole, let me tell you.

We're almost at the end now.

You should check out behind this waterfall before you head downstairs, though.

In the NES version, being under the waterfall deals damage! The lava in the cave with the Fire Crystal does not deal damage, though.

If you go behind the waterfall and head all the way to the right, you can find this long-ass staircase.

And a Chimera Mage (with buddy)!

Sephy doesn't even give a fuck, he'll straight shank a Chimera.

Chimera Mages take high damage, so this isn't typical, but damn if it's not nice to see.

That's really the only thing punctuating these stairs.

This is why we came here. I love treasure, it's great.

A decent spear for Kuja, and it drains HP off the enemy to boot.

This halves all elemental damage. It's going to Jecht.

Harp.

Kuja has 40 more Attack than Sephy, but she can't match him for damage. She's not fast enough, nor is her Strength high enough.

Jecht really needs this.

You know what happens to me as soon as I fucking turn around, though? I get goddamn ambushed by these assholes.

Everyone gets dropped except Jecht.

This probably isn't the technical "best" way to handle the situation, but it's all pissing up the same rope.

Yeah.

I'm not short on levels, my equipment is up to date, and my party is well-constructed. The game just decided to kill me. The only possible way I could have dealt with this is to have been a higher level, and that's not really a strategy. Game design!

Here's a shot of Sephy getting some sweet revenge.

And here's another one of Sephy landing a spectacular hit. This wasn't exactly 9,999 damage, and may even have been as high as 15,000.

There are a bunch of "powerful" (read: uninteresting, high-HP) enemies in this temple, like this Dragon.

This ain't exactly a battle of attrition.

Good gil, though. It's worth it for me to fight Dragons, just for the easy 9k.

The only problem is that I have to cast Cura after the fight. I always make sure to have one level 3 MP left, in case I need to cast Teleport. There's no way in hell I'm walking back out of this place.

Yes, so, anyway, here we were.

On my way back to the main part of the temple, I find another Behemoth.

Here's a Behemoth's gimmick: high stats, one powerful spell.

Just imagine a few rounds of this picture, basically.

Oh, and here's Kuja's damage, so you can see her absorbing HP. She takes one-sixth of what she hands out, rounded down. I should probably also go grind her some job levels so that she can pick up some extra hits, the girl could use them.

Behemoths act twice in a turn, just like a real serious enemy. This would be a whole lot worse if I hadn't done the Undersea Cave before I really got deep into this place.

Behemoths: boring to fight, lacklustre rewards. Stick to running.

Now, let's go down these stairs!

Whee!

Yay!

Woohoo!

One last treasure for the road.

And a shot of Sephy's stats, for good measure. All of those green numbers are the highest in the party right now (the green actually just means they're being boosted by equipment).