Thursday, October 20, 2011

Final Fantasy III: Wind Crystal Jobs

I've put a few hours into the game over the last couple days and have obtained the first set of jobs. (You start the game with only the 'freelancer' job which is like a bad red mage. It can use all the early gear and cast level 1 white and black magic spells.) I died a few times in the process as I ended up skipping a room with the only early copy of the cure spell which made surviving in the early couple fights rough. I had to grind up a couple levels in order to press on without it but that's pretty reasonable I think. At least I was getting better by fighting!

The wind crystal granted 6 jobs which should be very familiar to anyone who played the initial Final Fantasy. They are warrior, monk, thief, white mage, black mage, and red mage. These jobs are very similar to the classes from FFI but the balance is shifted pretty drastically in comparison. Warriors scaled in a ludicrous fashion in that game, thieves were truly terrible, and red mages couldn't even cast all of the spells that white and black mages could. Quite a few things have changed here...

  • You're not stuck in a given job for the whole game. Even if one of the jobs scaled a lot better in the end game it wouldn't matter since you're probably not going to be that job anymore.
  • Red mages can cast all of the spells that the other mages can cast though they get to cast them less frequently. They cast the spells at the same power level as the other mages.
  • I got an item already which can be used to cast fire which is the best action any of my characters can take.
  • Warriors actually have the strictly worst stats at level 10, though not by all that much.
  • I've found one item thus far that a warrior could use that a red mage couldn't.
  • Monks have the highest strength, thieves have the highest agility, all jobs have the same vitality.
  • Warriors get a unique ability which isn't terribly useful unless you hit max job level.
  • Monks get a unique ability which isn't terribly useful ever.
  • Thieves get a unique ability which lets you steal stuff. What you can steal is based on job level and there are very few items worth stealing. 
Right around when you get the ability to change jobs you also find a magic shop willing to sell you level 1 healing and damage spells. Since red mages looked to do the most auto-attack damage, and had the ability to do the most damage to bosses, and had the ability to have the best healing throughput I figured I should use some red mages. I went with red mage, red mage, white mage, monk. The white mage heals for the same amount as a red mage but gets more casts per rest so it seemed like a reasonable way to go. Having a fire staff so she can just cast fire every round is pretty sweet, and seems like a reason to auto-include a white mage in the party. I went with a monk to punch things because punching things is awesome though I did have to switch him into a black mage at one point when I was minied.

Maybe I should have a warrior to use the viking axe I found but since it hurts to switch jobs and there's no way I'm going to be a warrior for the whole game (pretty sure there are paladins and ninjas to come) it's just going to get to sit in my inventory and rot. 

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