Final Fantasy Legend 3, Part 2 - Taking Shape

 

Whoa, is that a playground slide? Pretty cool to see a town in a retro RPG have something out of the ordinary like this. You can even go up and slide down it yourself. While the world design/dungeons/combat/classes in this game aren't measuring up to the previous one, the amount of detail in towns and other maps are way beyond it.

Previously on FFL3: I got the Float spell, which summons this... this...

...what the hell is that? Well, whatever it is, it flies, so now I can cross the seas. This is more annoying than anything else, because the world map is tiny, so I'm pretty much just left having to summon this thing to go between the first town and the second town over and over again.

This is a good time to mention that I figured out the deal with meat and parts. If you're a Monster and eat meat from a Beast, it'll turn you into a Beast instead of another Monster. Same on the other end of the spectrum with Cyborg/Robot. When meat or parts drop, it'll say what type it's from, so you don't need to guess. Monsters will want to only eat Monster meat to change forms around. That is, if you're actually trying to get Monster to work. I've tried, dammit!

The second town is the home of Cronos. This one isn't the leader of the Four Horsemen, though. He's just some guy.

Also in this town: A hot springs spa full of women wearing towels.

There's a hidden path here. Let me guess, it leads to...

...more women luxuriously bathing?

Step out of the hot springs and enjoy a beach mai-tai, served by the town bartender.

Think I'm playing the wrong game here, what is this

In any case, Cronos has the Talon module for time travel to the Past. He's gonna go find the module for the Future.

I have no idea what's going on, how all these modules exist / got lost everywhere, or why I need to go to the Past or Future when our heroes ostensibly landed right where they needed to to stop the Pureland Water Entity from taking over. Unless they didn't and we have to go further back.

This is enough to trigger the first boss fight, which is interestingly enough on the overworld map guarding the path to the Talon.

Will it get out of Round 1?

WILL IT SUCCEED WHERE FEW BOSSES HAVE IN THIS TRILOGY?

It's the dastardly Waterhag, right out of Final Fantasy IV. Looks like the Sahagin are really letting themselves go.

And no, the fight didn't get out of round 1.

This game is indeed a poor man's Chrono Trigger in many ways, but it tries. In any case, I warp back to the Past, and...

....it looks just like the Present. Not even a slight color scheme deviation!

Alas, the limitations of the Game Boy occasionally become glaring, and this is one of those times. I remember the lack of difference between the eras being one of the things I didn't like as a kid. Apparently, the Past is a very short time before the Present, like 10 or 20 years at the most. If you're gonna do time travel, go big with it and have really distinct eras. If it's gonna be like 1835 vs 1825, why bother even having separate time periods? It seems like they're just doing the Dragon Quest VII thing and doubling up on the landmasses.

The elder of the first town is a slightly-less old man here, and wants to build a town. So that town got built in a few years?

In response, Arthur calls him a "ho", which is just impolite!

In the next town I get a key item: The Flushex lets you transform a party member back to their default form if you use it back at the ship. This saves the trouble of having to farm battles to transform them back. Just make sure to switch your walking-around sprite to that character before stepping on it, because whoever you're walking around as is going to get reset with no confirmation window. I accidentally flushed Arthur the first time.

Arthur: "Hey...hey Sharon!"

Granny, the local town's... Mayor? Chief? Warlord? took off to rescue some kid from a nearby cave. Our heroes are in hot pursuit!

We're too late. Lara was taken by something called Dogra, and it retreated to the depths of the cave. Alright Granny, time to go home and let the pack of teenagers deal with this menace.

Some pretty decent enemy designs are starting to pop up, though I still question how all of these weird-ass groups of enemies came to be allies to begin with.

Thoth Meat is gigantic. He was a MEATY LAD. What were they feeding him in Atlantis?

We find Lara, but she has rabies and attacks!

She's a monk kid and does martial arts. Our heroes beat her over the head until she regains her senses.

Monk child joins the group! However, my group is so OP already that any guest characters really don't make much of a difference. At best it's like getting half of another character.

Further on, we find the menace that is Dogra. Arthur is all "MAVERICK" like angry late-stage Mega Man.

Boss fight, and for some reason this sandworm-thing is flanked by witches. The fight actually takes several rounds, making this the first real boss in the game. Also, bosses got out of the first round much quicker in this one than they did in the previous two games.

This Talon part allows the ship to fly over land. Not over water, though. That'll take a different part. Should have the ship up and running soon, regardless.

Back at the ranch, Lara is saved and everyone lives happily ever after. This game kinda seems like it follows the same loop as Dragon Quest VII (two worlds, go back and solve problems in one world, then return to the other with what you gained). So it's almost a proto DQVII combined with a proto CT. At least for a short while, before it just turns into a pretty basic RPG for the second half.

Granny gives our heroes the Dive spell, which lets me go under the oceans.

Then she tries to get our heroes to go dip in the springs. Yeah, she really wants them to stick around so she can watch them from around corners like Richie. I'm onto you!

Then again...maybe another trip to the springs isn't the worst idea

Apologies to anyone reading this at work, you'll be able to stand up again in a few minutes.

Granny also runs a secret magic shop. Not sure how I'm even going to dole out spells in this game, or what characters I'll rely on to cast them. They seem to be a non-factor for Robots and Monsters.

Regardless, I just buy a couple of each. No idea which ones I'll even end up needing. The closest thing I have to a "dedicated spellcaster" is Gloria and she'll probably end up being a Beast.

If it isn't clear yet, I have no idea what I'm doing yet and have no real path laid-out for what I'm doing with this party.

Item shop here sells different capsules from the earlier item shops, so I'm able to start cranking up Defense and Agility for the Robot.

And crank them up I do, a lot. Not too sure what Agility does in this game, since it's been de-coupled from Hit% and doesn't seem to affect Evade% either. It might still affect damage done by certain weapons (agility-types). However, since there's no longer a Strength stat, I'm not sure if that division still exists.

Note: After some testing, I can conclude that Agility most likely affects turn order. Arthur is going first on every round now, with 55 Agi vs everyone else's 35 or so.

Next stop: Under the oceans. First thing to do is go to this nook here and Dive (from the shore) to find...

...an underwater town that is apparently inside of a bubble. Wouldn't going in there pop it?

In the town at the bottom of the ocean, people ask me dumb questions. Naw man, I just teleported down here

Lots of new gear is sold here, so I finally splurge and get everyone decked out. So far all the upgrades have been really small/incremental, like 1 defense or 2 defense, so there wasn't much point until now. We're up to about 3 defense per slot now!

Would help a LOT if the equipment slots had the actual icon of what goes in that slot, rather than these circles. Once something is equipped, I have to unequip it to even see what slot it is. Case in point, the 3 Leathers here.

I finally get around to installing the Flushex.

Arthur: "Hey...hey Sharon!"

Sharon: "What IS IT Arthur??"

Back at the Present-day version of the town, our heroes brag about how they saved Lara in the Past.

"It was meee!" says Arthur in a Triple H voice. "I'mmm the one-uh who saved her. Meee! I'm the champion-uh!"

We recieve word that Ashura has appeared in the South Tower, which is the counterpart to the North Tower I did at the beginning of the game. You'd think this would be a huge deal, the return of such a major bad guy from the first two games, but nobody really puts any importance on it. He's just another monster that appeared, basically.

A tower emerges from the ocean at this point. Getting to it requires diving. We also learn here that the Water Entity has four minions. Of course! It's always four!

Chaos and Maitreya are two of the four big bads...don't know who the other two are yet. At last, exciting things are beginning to happen.

Next up: I swim around some more, and battle Ashura for the third time. That's right, he's back!

Before we go, here's more of the Nintendo Power coverage of the game, as promised:

The character artwork is strangely familiar... did they bring back the FFIV artwork guy?

"Beyond 3-D" isn't how I would describe this

Still trying to wrap my head around this elemental stuff. I think it just determines what you turn into, since each level range has four of every creature type (for the most part) that you can become. At the end of the game (or rather, around level 30) they tend to consolidate each creature into two main forms that are the most powerful forms for that "class"

These overworld maps would have been really useful if I'd been referring to this while playing earlier. It's good coverage, and while it doesn't make the game seem magical or anything, it looks like a perfectly decent Game Boy RPG. There's more NP, which'll be on here soon enough.

Well, this game never really grabbed me as a kid and it isn't really grabbing me now. We'll see if it does.

In the meantime, here's Aerith

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