Final Fantasy III Part #48 - Part Forty-Eight: Magic Circle Shitheads

Part 48: Part Forty-Eight: Magic Circle Shitheads

Part Forty-Eight: Magic Circle Shitheads

Here we are, back in the Nautilus. If you've been paying attention, you know where I'm going with it.

On my way, though, I stopped to grab a full set of White Magic for Jecht. Except for levels 1 and 8, which aren't available in Doga's Village. There's no particular point to this, I just kind of wanted Aeroga and happened to be rolling in gil, so I went ahead and bought everything.

Now we're back at Doga's Place, where the game told us to go way back when we got the Earth Fang. Since we've exhausted the game's supply of useful sidequests, we may as well get around to it.

You get to walk in the door and take one step.

Then the game takes over and shows you the kids walking in the door and taking one step. Cutscenes are important, see, you have to develop the story.

Aw dammit, Doga's talking to us.

Apparently Sephy is the only one confused by this, and the rest of the kids just take disembodied voices from beyond the grave as regular.

: Step on the circle, and make your way through the tunnels...we shall await at the end.

Why not just teleport the kids straight to ya, jackass? I know you can teleport kids.

Nope, Doga's gotta jerk us around one last time, which means we get to play magic circle shitheads.

Let's get to it.

On the other side of the teleportation circle is Doga's Grotto. It's the next dungeon in the game!

It also shares a theme with Doga's Manor. I didn't link this track earlier because I feel it's a bit more appropriate here, just title-wise.

Doga's Grotto is one path, no branches or secrets or shortcuts, spiralling around the edge of a giant hole. We're going towards the bottom.

As you can see, it's very colourful and interesting to look at.

Wow, more gil! I did just spend most of mine buying useless spells I don't need, so this is, like, super helpful.

It doesn't come across super well here, but the way this cave is laid out is actually kind of interesting - whenever you can see the path ahead of you, you can see how it really slopes down into the abyss. It would have been cool to just run around the edge and see whatever was at the bottom come into view, but I think they would have needed a more powerful system than the DS to do that.

You know what the DS is powerful enough to handle? Goofy-looking monsters! These are Nemesis...es...Nemeses.

In random encounters, having Aeroga makes Jecht very slightly less useless.

Aeroga, for example, has almost as much power as this spell, but it's penalised for multi-targeting and attack magic uses Intellect, which Jecht is lacking in.

Try not to piss yourselves too much when you see this. Remember, it's just a game.

This picture sort of shows what I was talking about earlier, where you can see how the path is going deeper, especially because that chest is really small.

And it's really full of crap, too. Who even puts ten thousand gil in a chest? Do a bunch of people just take fortunes and bury them in caves for fun in Final Fantasy III world, like some kind of one-percenter fantasy geocaching?

It's weird, is what it is.

The next floor has some treasures. The Lust Dagger here is good, as it's an upgrade for the Thief. The Rising Sun, though, is kind of weak and doesn't have any stat bonuses, which kind of negates the whole "full damage from the back row" thing.

I replace the Air Knife, even though it's the stronger weapon. I do this because the Behemoth Knife is adding 8 to Sephy's Strength and wow, 8 is a number greater than 0.

At least, I think I keep the Behemoth Knife. In the grand scheme of things, more Attack is going to be the slightly better choice than more Strength, but they both make a pretty small difference, probably like 20 damage a hit (so 640, total, if he hits 32 times), and that's also the difference between good and bad rolls on the RNG (AKA, the king of Final Fantasy III). The shit you really want is Agility. Between any two physical classes in the game, the one with more Agility is going to be more powerful. Agility is why Sephy is the powerhouse even though Kuja has 30 extra Attack power.

ANYWAY.

Chocobo's Wrath over here. These kinds of items would only be useful against bosses (unless you duped them), but at the same time, physicals are going to be more effective against bosses than magic, so if you have to rely on them, you're probably fucked anyway. Unless you're building a strategy specifically around throwing items, which means you're using Scholars, which means you either really know what the shit is or you're totally fucked anyway.

MOVING ON.

I remember using more of these my first time through the game, but that's probably because I didn't know some of the tricks, like trying never to change jobs or use Black Mages (for reference, my first time through the game I used a Sage as soon as they were unlocked, and no other healer - this is so bad to do).

Cyclopses. A recolour of Kyklopses, which we saw earlier.

Enemies in this game are damn unremarkable.

Sephy is dealing about 228 damage per hit here, by the way.

Kuja is hitting for 284. She's has 235 Attack to Sephy's 199 max, so you can see how higher agility makes up for that. In the NES version, Dragoons and Thieves are pretty much even in Agility, which made the Dragoon a better class.

We're getting near the end of the cave now, but there's no way you'd know that if you were playing.

Hey, some new enemies!

The flying bull is Humbaba, and it shows me that I've left the Air Knife on, because I wouldn't hit like this without hitting a weakness.

And over here, we have the majestic Ogre, which I'm sure hits you and can maybe cast a spell or something...actually, nope, according to the wiki, the Ogre can literally just attack you regularly, who gives a fuck?

A fun fact is that there are far more encounters than I show you, and they're all dull as hell and you can't just run from them like in the games with the ATB system.

At least I get this Phoenix Down. Now I can die happy.

Once I go up those stairs in that last pic, I arrive here.

Hey, it's Doga and Unei! Were you two jerkoffs just standing around here the whole time?

: Good! You have come. We must now make the key to Eureka whole once more.

I don't know what that means!

: That's right. Put 'em up!

I do know what that means, though, and Doga/Unei, I will be happy to murder you. Go go, mystic weapon child murder squad!

Wait, no, what I meant was that I will gladly watch the kids freak out about it.

: In ancient times, there were weapons too powerful for mankind to use. Those weapons were sealed in Eureka...but now their time has come.

: And the Eureka key needs the energy from Doga and myself to be complete. Understand?

I understand what all of those words mean, but can't quite suss out how that would work, it just sounds dumb and weird when I try to do that.

: No! You can't ask us to... Doga, Unei... We can't fight you!

: It must be done! Have it your way... If you do not defeat us, you will die!

Why do the kids have to kill these two, anyway?

(In the original, there's a line about the Eureka Key needing the energy from a fierce battle or something, but here it just sounds like Doga and Unei need to be dead to make the thing. Suicide is painless, assholes.)

Yeah, now we have to fight Doga and Unei to make a key. Doga casts his spell and...

...

Yup, that's Doga's monster form. I suppose it's a fairly good interpretation of his NES boss sprite:

But neither of them makes either sense, so there you go.

Doga's got 22,800 HP, so yes, due to a lucky critical, I've basically done him half in in the first round.

Same basic physical as everything else. I would expect a sage to attack exclusively with magic, but hey, what do I know?

Drain is pretty high-level in this game. Usually it's kind of trash in Final Fantasy.

It's not nearly enough to deal with a combination punch from Leviathan and Sephy, though. Doga's less dangerous than Leviathan or Odin, and slightly more than Bahamut just because he doesn't have a ridiculous weakness to wind.

Fairly low magic defences, too, because this game is just a mess.

So yeah.

I killed Doga before Kuja got a chance to land. A powerful sage of the world, killed by four kids in one and a half rounds.

This is the exact kind of EXP you earn from random encounters here. It's somehow a shittier reward than just having bosses offer 0 EXP.

Back to the drama!

: It's my turn now! Let's see what you're made of!

: Unei! Don't make us do this!

: Be quiet! There's a time for talk, but this isn't one of them! Now have at you! But don't worry; even if our bodies are lost, our souls will remain... Now, take this!

Wait, what? If your souls aren't being destroyed, you're not really dying! Couldn't you have said that earlier!?

I'm going to kill you just for that!

Here's Unei. Again, fairly faithful to the 8-bit:

And with the added bonus of at least looking like some kind of monster.

Only 21,800 HP, though. These two are pretty weak, with the "challenge" mainly being that you fight them back-to-back.

Unei uses magic, which can hit fairly hard, just like Doga's Drain.

Her physicals are also fairly heavy. Reminder: I didn't get a chance to heal the damage Doga did in the first round because he died so quickly.

Unless Kuja really fucks up or things go completely to shit because of an unlucky attack pattern, this fight isn't lasting any longer than Doga's. 20,000 HP really isn't much at this point, and their attacks aren't too dangerous either. If Jecht actually got a turn, he'd be able to heal everybody to full no problem.

My biggest issue is that I only have 1 MP for Bahamut.

LP-wise, my biggest issue is that I lost a couple images there, like what happened to Golbez or what actually killed Unei. Probably looked away from the game and missed it.

Now they're both going to die.

: The Eureka Key is now complete... Take it...

Wow, thanks. I'm beside myself.

...Is toast, but not really because only the body is dead and the soul lives on. Try to keep up.

: Spare yourselves the distress... Our souls will still remain, even if our bodies are lost.

Oh, you old piece of shit, do not do this to me. Do not make a death speech.

: You must go forth, and stop Xande... He is in Syrcus Tower, whose entrace is guarded by four ancient statues.

Double don't make a death speech out of shit I already know. I already know that shit, hence "shit I already know"!

: You must banish the darkness from this world. I know you can do it--I can see the light within you, each bright and strong...

You know this shit doesn't happen in the original.

: Your hopes and desires turn all into light, and give you strength. Banish the darkness from this world, Warriors of the Light.

Wait, what? Syrcus Tower, the place we really need to go? The place where Xande is? There was a locked door there and you told us about fucking Eureka instead? What, did it fuckin' slip your mind that we might need the keys to Syrcus Tower.

I swear to god, if the two of you weren't already dead.

: We will be watching over you. Please... You must save Xande!