Final Fantasy Legend 3 (Game Boy, 1993)

 

SaGa 3 is upon us. This game was made by an entirely different team from the first two. While the SaGa1+2 team graduated to the SNES to make Romancing SaGa, a new and less-experienced team was brought in to do SaGa 3. That team ended up only making two games: This one and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

Looking at the box art here, an 80 page manual is pretty intense for a Game Boy game. I wish I had it. This was the last game I ever bought/played on the original Game Boy before putting it to rest. I think I got the reprint of it because I don't remember it having an 80-page manual.

Most of what I remember about this game is squinting to try and see it on the original Game Boy, and the very weird-ass enemy groupings. I really wasn't a fan of this as a kid, so I'm expecting to like it a lot more by default just playing it on a nice screen. Finally, FFL3 gets a fair shot.

What? There was no DK post here earlier. People are drinking too much Cider.

Back of the box. With the time-travel elements, this is almost like a poor man's Chrono Trigger for folks who didn't have a SNES. The goal seems to be to assemble the pieces of Talon, the time-ship, and take on the masters of Pure Land (no relation to the Seiken Densetsu series' Pure Land).

Map included with the game shows a fairly basic world. This just covers a small portion of the game. It doesn't seem to have the tower system of the first two, opting instead to repeat this small overworld over a number of time periods.

Playing this on Collection of SaGa on Switch, in portable mode, to closely mimic how I played it originally on a portable system with green visuals.

I played FFL2 in B&W on emulator with a bigger picture and more clarity because that's how I played it back in 2000. So I'm just repeating how I remembered both.

THE BACKSTORY: A giant urn has been flooding the planet, drowning cities one by one over time. Also apparently all the world's roaming monsters stem from this urn as well. I mean, don't ask me, I didn't build the damn thing.

This game reminds me a little bit of...

...The Drowned World, a seminal 20th century book and probably J.G. Ballard's best. Wouldn't surprise me at all if this game drew inspiration from it, much the way Xenogears draws so much inspiration from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.

Our heroes for this game are a group of young people who were sent back in time, hailing from the ruins of the future world.

In the present, they must fight... lots and lots of bunny-witches and faeries, who have formed a DEADLY ALLIANCE. Yeah, this is what I remember this game for. Weird-ass packs of enemies that aren't particularly appealing to fight with.

That battle was in a Holodeck-style simulator. I don't know, if I had a Holodeck like this, I wouldn't be using it to fight bizarre foes. I'd be in 2009 having a three-way relationship with Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz in a mountain house in Barcelona or something.

"Hey...hey Sharon" says Arthur as he shows her the mass death he wrought in the Holodeck.

Sharon: "THIS is what you're using the Holodeck for? Not having a three-way with Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz? What's wrong with you?"

Arthur and Sharon are the two human characters, and they love each other, but never consummated it of course.

So they have this thing going on. There's also Curtis and Gloria, two Mutants. They're from the future. So... Arthur is from the future too, right? Right.

I think the Talon (this ship here) is how our heroes arrived here from the future. I mean it's literally Terminator. Arthur/Gloria/Curtis grew up in the future ruins and have come back to save the world in the present, Sharon is Arthur's GF who he convinces that he's from the future, etc. Our goal here is to fix the Talon so we can continue time-traveling and find a way to stop the Pureland Water Entity.

The Talon can fly, and travel through time (so I can go to the future), but right now it's basically disabled until I find various parts that restore these functions.

First up, find Float so I can summon a flying boat.

So...no class choices at the start in this one? That's unfortunate. I remember being disappointed by it back in 2003, realizing it wouldn't be like the first two in that regard. However, instead you can start altering classes fairly quickly by eating meat and installing parts (both dropped by enemies). Rather than your characters simply taking on a new job, instead they COMPLETELY TRANSFORM and become bizarre new creatures.

The flying ship is under a temple, strangely enough. At this point I pumped up the window size for the game and kept it like that. Wish the background art re-sized to accommodate this (i.e. the entire "SaGa" was still visible).

This game has the most weird-ass enemy groupings of possibly any Squaresoft game, and that's saying a lot. What brought this rogue's gallery of weirdoes together to stop Arthur and his mutant friends?

Got some QOL here, you can change your weapon during battles. Between that and weapon durability no longer being a factor, this game is a step up from the first two in QOL. I can use weapons without breaking? What is this sorcery! SaGa as a series would benefit from this going forward.

After upgrading everyone's equipment (gear is super-inexpensive, which is odd) and buying a bunch of cure potions in the first town, it's time to get some grinding on.

You get a LOT of exp from battles and a LOT of gold. This makes up for what a grind it was to get gold in the previous two games. But wait...exp? That's right, this is the SaGa game where characters don't gain power in the SaGa style, they gain power in the normal FF style.

Eating meat moves you towards monster, while installing parts moves you towards robot. So classes are basically a sliding spectrum and your characters just sort of move between them. This system feels very tacked-on compared to the class systems of most games that contain classes. You could stay in everyone's default forms for the entire game and do fine.

Aside from meat and parts changing your "class" around, the particular type of creature you become with a new class is contingent on what enemies you're absorbing and what "tier" of area you're fighting in. I.e. lategame meats and parts will give you better forms of, say, monster or robot.

MONSTER: Has set stats that don't change at level up. Basically you're assuming the form of a monster from the game. Some later monsters can be really powerful. However, no matter what, you're locked at whatever their power level is until you eat more meat (to transform again) or parts (to go back to Beastman). The main benefit here is that they have high natural evade, and don't use equipment since their stats are naturally high. So one can save a lot of funds by toting around Monsters. This class would be a lot more appealing if it didn't switch me back to a beast most of the time when eating meat (I'd like to just cycle monster types, and don't understand why you don't...the same thing happens at the other end with robots)

BEASTMAN: Apparently the best general-purpose race, strong in both physical and magical stats (as opposed to Human/Mutant who get one or the other). Very strong with Martial Arts attacks equipped. Transforms into a different Beast every time you level up, so that could be an issue, as you'll possibly lose forms you like. Less chance of downgrading on a level up, though, compared to monsters eating meat. Apparently a good thing to turn the two mutants into, since they'll retain most of their caster benefits while gaining a lot of physical benefits. I might want to consider that for Curtis and Gloria. Strikes harder than human does, can cast very well (second only to mutant). No downsides here.

HUMAN/MUTANT: The default forms of your four party members (2 of each). Human is a better fighter, Mutant is a better caster. Average to good at everything. Levels up normally. The blandest party one can go with, but it gets the job done without fussing around with the idiosyncrasies of the other classes. However, playing the whole game with the default group is a bit like a secret hard mode in the lategame, because you'll need an extra ten or so levels to finish the game with these classes rather than a party composed of the others (or at least beasts/robots, the good ones). Enemy groups are much smaller than they were in the previous two games, so AOE damage / spells aren't the order of the day anymore. This nerfs mutants a lot.

CYBORG: Derives most of their stats from putting equipment on them (ala FFL2 robots). This makes them pretty expensive, and one could just spend their money on capsules for a robot instead and probably get more bang for it. Plays a similar role to beasts, just stronger physically and a bit weaker on spells. Generally better off using beasts, except in the endgame where you can pile all your extra equipment on one cyborg and make them tough. Maybe I'll do that with Sharon and pump up her stats with all my extra endgame gear.

ROBOT: Has the lowest stats of any class, but gains stats through purchasing stat upgrade capsules (much like the original FFL1). Is completely contingent on how much money you accumulate / have to spend. Consuming more parts can turn them into stronger Robots later on, giving them even more stats. Functions as a really durable tank. Can't use spells at all, though. Going to go with this one for Arthur.

If we're keeping track, that means Robot/Beast/Beast/Cyborg is my likely party as of right now. Course the game is designed around switching things around as you go, but I'd rather just choose forms, stick with them, and work on powering them up.

Eating meat right at the beginning turns me into a weird-ass bunny witch. I'm just going to limit my experimentation to Arthur for a while here and keep the other characters in their reliable default forms for the time being. At some point I'm going to start changing them up, though, before they start getting outgunned.

Now he's a wolf-man! Well, there's a lot of variety in how you can look, at least.

After going full monster, Arthur becomes a Big Eye. Now with lady-pleasing tentacles!

First dungeon is the North Tower. It's short, without much to it.

This place is full of holes, so this is where I realize that the game has a jump button. Yep, you get a built-in Roc's Feather for this one.

Robots start appearing as foes in this dungeon, meaning I can finally start working on turning Arthur into a robot. At this point it'll take four parts to do that, and they're very infrequent drops, so it takes a WHILE.

Had to book it out a couple times to hit the inn. This woman informs me that random monsters are ALSO trying to get Talon repaired. I guess everyone wants to time travel?

Back in town, I hit the spell shop and get Cure 1 on everyone. If anyone can equip spells, why not just put this on everyone? It'll help with longevity if the game hits me with an extended dungeon.

I'm just now realizing that I remember absolutely nothing about the layout of this game compared to the first two. This is almost like a first-time playthrough for me.

Check out how Arthur is falling behind on stats. Despite maintaining levels with the others, his monster form isn't gaining power.

Takes me an age and a half to get the parts I need. It just me or do these look like the ol' twig n' berries?

More weird-ass enemy groups. How did these things come together to form this posse? Did one of them put out an ad for minions, and the rest of this rogue's gallery showed up?

The objective of the tower is obtained, now Talon can fly (in theory). I still haven't found all the parts I need to be a robot, so I have to stick around here and keep grinding.

Arthur's a cyborg now. Doesn't look like any cyborg I've ever seen. He's a "Brigand" and took even more of a stat cut. I guess I need to buy equipment and bolt that onto him to get appreciable gains?

Another Cyborg form. ...what are these bizarre sprites for the various Cyborgs?

The last parts took a really long time to drop. Now Arthur finally becomes a robot (IronLady?) and I can see how they are. Mr. S looks on and nods approvingly like Mr. Miyagi.

IronLady looks like the robot from Day the Eartb Stood Still. So far, his HP is pathetic. Well, this is a letdown.

...alright, I like Mr. S and all but I can't really have him staring me down like this. Shouldn't he be off bedding women? Mr. S has a girlfriend in every port.

Now that I'm a robot, time for me to become ROIDY MAGOO by buying some upgrade capsules, which are specifically for robots.

That's right, with the mountain of gold this game heaps on you, I go ahead and buy TONS of capsules to pump up. I can only conclude that newer robot forms might lose the upgrades? Because otherwise, this is way too much power for the cost. Editor's Note: Nope, other robot forms don't lose the upgrades. Any robot form for Arthur is going to be this strong now.

784 HP. 99 Attack. A roid-belly. Bacne. This is what I got with the money I had. We aren't even on the second dungeon, so I'm going to go ahead and say robots are WAY overpowered. The kicker is that you can keep adding to their stats even after they hit cap. Not sure how much for other stats, but for example HP can go to around 1200.

For comparison, here's poor lame non-Robot guy Curtis, who declined Robot Roids.

Look at his flabby girly-mon stats. 16 Attack, what a puny flabby girly-mon.

Robot just went from "weak as hell" to full-on wrecking machine from me just spending a bunch of money in the first town. Safe to say robots might well be the most powerful class in this game by a mile. Will everyone else have to convert into robots, like the Lin Kuei did before Mortal Kombat 3? Time will tell.

One more thing, I've dug up the Nintendo Power with this particular game. Here's the review it got:

"Don't expect anything new" seems fairly accurate. This is a pretty basic game here. The revised class system (i.e. being able to change classes after the beginning) is the one thing that really sets it apart from the first two.

There's a bunch more to their coverage of the game, so I'll get the rest of the Nintendo Power shots into upcoming episodes.

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