Final Fantasy III
is a 1990 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Family Computer. The third installment in the Final Fantasy series, it follows four orphans from the village of Ur who are chosen by the world's crystals to defeat a great evil and return balance to the world. The gameplay returns to the traditional combat system of the original game, and adds a job system allowing players to switch between character classes with unique abilities.
Development of Final Fantasy III was handled by multiple series veterans including director Hironobu Sakaguchi, designers Hiromichi Tanaka and Kazuhiko Aoki, writer Kenji Terada, composer Nobuo Uematsu, and programmer Nasir Gebelli in his final contribution to the series. Production was a struggle due to data management, and new elements were added to encourage player experimentation. The artwork was a collaborative effort between Koichi Ishii as character and job designer, Yoshitaka Amano as monster designer, and Kazuko Shibuya as main sprite artist. When it completed development, it was described as one of the largest games on the system.
Upon its release in Japan, the game sold 1.4 million copies, and saw generally positive reviews, with most of the praise going to its job system. While ported to multiple platforms in later years, the original was not released outside Japan until 2021. A remake for the WonderSwan Color was planned but ultimately cancelled, while a 3D remake for the Nintendo DS was released internationally in 2006. The game saw the introduction of several recurring elements including a job system, summoned monsters and the Moogle. Terada also adapted it into a manga, and its characters and settings made appearances in later Final Fantasy titles.
Gameplay
Final Fantasy III is a role-playing video game in which the player takes on the role of four unnamed warriors embarking on a mission to save their world from darkness. The party explores the world on foot, using a chocobo, by boat, and eventually by airship. Towns are visited to progress the main quest through interactions with characters, resting at inns to recover health, and buy weapons, items and equipment from dedicated shops using gil, the in-game currency. The overworld map opens up based on the player's progress through the story.While exploring the overworld and dungeon environments, the player is pulled into random encounters with enemies; the display is split between the players on one side of the battle field and enemies on the other. The combat system uses a turn-based design carried over from earlier games; the party members can attack, defend, perform a special action, or use an item which can heal or remove negative status effects. Once all characters' actions have been selected, combat plays out between them and the enemy. If the same enemy is targeted with two attacks and the first kills it, the next attack defaults to the next living enemy. The party gains currency and experience points, which adds to a character's experience level and raises their health and attack power. If the party is defeated, the game must be reloaded from a previous save point.
A notable part of combat is a character class-based job system, which unlock dedicated abilities when equipped. The party starts out with the default Onion Knight job, but can gain and change jobs. Jobs include warriors, monks, black and white mages, ninjas, dragoon and summoners. Each job has a specific actions; summoners can call summoned monsters into battle to deal heavy damage, ninjas can steal, and dragoons can perform a jump attack. What job a character has equipped also changes what weapons and equipment they can use, and how the character levels up. Both changing jobs and unlocking job abilities are controlled with "capacity points" which are awarded to the party after battle, allowing the player to switch jobs at any time outside combat.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Final Fantasy III is set in an unnamed fantasy world protected by four elemental crystals. A millennium in the world's past, an ancient civilization based on a network of floating continents overused the power of light and triggered a disaster by upsetting the balance between light and darkness. This imbalance summoned the Cloud of Darkness, an entity which would return the world to nothingness. This threat was ended by two groups; the Warriors of Light and Warriors of Darkness. Balance was restored to the world, and the ancient civilization was destroyed. In the present, darkness is overtaking the world and spawning monsters, disrupting the balance again. The story opens in a region dubbed the Floating Continent, a land hovering above the rest of the planet.The main characters of Final Fantasy III are four orphans from the village of Ur, chosen by the dying crystals to restore balance to the world as Warriors of Light; they begin using a default class dubbed the "Onion Knight", but can switch to any job role. The Warriors of Light meet several characters on their journey including Sara, a strong-willed princess; Desch, the last survivor of the ancient civilization; the elderly engineer Cid; Alus, prince of the surface kingdom of Saronia; and Doga and Unei, students of the ancient Magus Noah. The main antagonist is Xande, another student of Magus Noah who is creating the flood of darkness to achieve immortality. The Cloud of Darkness makes a brief appearance during the game's ending.
Plot
An earthquake opens up a previously hidden cavern in Altar Cave near the village of Ur on the Floating Continent. Four young orphans explore the new cave, fighting a monster which turns out to be a test of strength from the dying Wind Crystal. Dubbing them the Warriors of Light, the crystal grants them the last of its power and instructs them to restore balance to the world. The Warriors set out to explore the Floating Continent, which has seen increased attacks from monsters. On their journey they aid the princess Sara in pacifying a rogue djinn, find Desch during a quest to destroy a tower threatening the region, and gain access to the airship Invincible from Cid. The Warriors also receive power from the Fire Crystal, which is under attack from servants of the mage Xande.After gaining the Invincible, they go beyond the Floating Continent for the first time in their lives, finding the surface world almost entirely flooded. On the surface, they complete further trials, receive the blessing of the Water Crystal, and help Alus reclaim his kingdom from his possessed father. The warriors then meet with Doga and Unei, who reveal Xande resents the gift of mortality their master gave and attacked the Crystals to halt time's flow, an attack which caused the Wind Crystal to raise the Floating Continent to safety. Gaining the final blessing from the Earth Crystal, and taking keys from Xande's most powerful servants, the Warriors and their allies break into his stronghold the Crystal Tower.
The Warriors of Light defeat Xande, but are too late to stop the imbalance he started, which summons the Cloud of Darkness who absorbs Xande and states its intent to return existence to the void. The Cloud of Darkness kills the Warriors, but Doga and Unei sacrifice themselves to revive them, allowing the Warriors to enter the world of darkness where the Dark Crystals reside and ally with the original Warriors of Darkness. The Warriors of Darkness sacrifice themselves to weaken the Cloud of Darkness, allowing the Warriors of Light to defeat and drive it back. The Crystals are revived and the world's balance restored, and the Warriors and their allies return to their old lives.
Development
Final Fantasy III was developed and published by series creator Square. Returning staff included series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi as director, and designers Hiromichi Tanaka and Kazuhiko Aoki. The producer was Masafumi Miyamoto, founder and former president of Square. It was the last Final Fantasy produced for Nintendo's Family Computer console, and was reportedly one of the largest games released for the platform as it required a 512 KB cartridge, the console's second-highest capacity. Tanaka described the game's development as "a struggle" due to how to properly use the game's limited data. The project was also the last original Final Fantasy to be programmed by Iranian-American programmer Nasir Gebelli, who had worked on the series since the first game. Midway through the development of the game, Gebelli was forced to return to Sacramento, California from Japan due to an expired work visa. The rest of the development staff followed him to Sacramento with necessary materials and equipment and finished production of the game there.The battle system reverted to the traditional turn-based design of the original game following negative player feedback of Final Fantasy II design being difficult to understand. The character class-based job system was suggested by Sakaguchi, who wanted to give players freedom to customize the party members; early in production it was dubbed the "Crystal" system. To differentiate character jobs within the game's limited combat options, each job was given a unique action such as the Dragoon's Jump ability. For Final Fantasy III, the team developed a dedicated script engine to manage character movements within environments later dubbed "Ether", which would be carried forward into future titles. The final dungeon was notably difficult due to the lack of save points, which was attributed to Sakaguchi removing them in annoyance when a play tester complained that the final area was too easy. Several concepts originally planned for Final Fantasy II were implemented, including summoned monsters, and the Moogle creatures that were originally designed for Final Fantasy II. Some of the technical aspects of handling battle animations, such as with the first completed summon Odin's signature attack, drew from the team's experience with creating scrolling environments in Rad Racer.
Tanaka commented later that the story was given less focus due to the absence of Akitoshi Kawazu, and cited the world building as a collaborative process across the whole team. The scenario was written by Kenji Terada, who had worked on the previous two Final Fantasy titles; it would be his last contribution to the series, and he later felt it had disproportionately impacted his public image. As with previous titles due to hardware limits, the story was described by Sakaguchi as a series of connected events without strong characters. While Sakaguchi had previously not seen narrative as important, the death of his mother Aki in an accident during production of Final Fantasy III changed his outlook for future titles. As part of his feelings at the time, he incorporated a number of character death scenes into Final Fantasy III.
The monsters and summons were designed by Yoshitaka Amano, while the characters were designed by Koichi Ishii. Amano described the work schedule for the game as "tight". While designs for earlier games used black and white line art, for Final Fantasy III he drew in color first. The jobs were also were designed by Ishii, who was brought on by Sakaguchi after finishing work on Makai Toushi SaGa. Ishii remembered feeling dissatisfied with the in-game character sprites he created due to the Famicom's limited color palette, but was intrigued that aspects of those limited designs were carried forward into later games such as the White Mage's robe design. The in-game sprite art was handled by Kazuko Shibuya, who remembered that the design team expanded for the first time for Final Fantasy III. She had trouble translating Amano's monster designs into the game and needed to make some compromises, such as changing the Cloud of Darkness's originally-upright pose into a horizontal one to fit the battle arena. The in-game airship Invincible was the largest asset in the game, taking up sixteen blocks of sprite art.