Final Fantasy Legend 3, Part 3 - Ashura's Last Stand

Today on FFL3: Ashura returns! Again! This guy really is the recurring bad guy for the whole trilogy. However, here it's more of a cameo appearance, like they dragged him out because they needed a recognizable face, and ended up with a bit of a hollow character. Like Cell Max from the one Dragonball movie I didn't review on here. I should get on that.

I swim around some more. Not a lot to do down here, besides behold the great abyssal chasms in the planet.

At this point I get a bit confused. I thought I was supposed to go to the tower that emerged from the ocean. However, after slogging through that place, I eventually hit a locked door. So I ran around some more, looking for a key. Eventually I left, and found a world map:

Looks like the actual tower I need to go to is the one just east of the underwater tower.

Also, this might well be the tiniest overworld I've ever seen in an RPG, even if they do replicate it several times over with other time periods.

Alright, this is definitely the proper South Tower, now I'm back on track.

The good news about such a tiny overworld is that it's really hard to get lost.

The South Tower is similar to the earlier North Tower, just with stronger foes. Like these...dwarves wearing heels and a dress? Wait, are those giant lips? You know what, I don't even want to know anymore. As weird-ass as SaGa gets, this one out-weirds all of them.

All I know is, if I can just get past these Lip Dwarves, I MIGHT have a shot at defeating the Pureland Water Entity.

Ashura is found at the top of the tower, and he's got some bad news. He already moved the Talon units to a different tower. Probably the one I was already trying to go to.

Why are all these guys after the Talon units anyway? Why did Sol scatter the units? What is happening?

Well, it's Ashura. He's a bit beefier and yet somehow less imposing than the other two games. Fairly easy fight, takes several turns. The boss HP skyrocketed fast in this game and we're already over 4000 HP for boss fights, something that didn't happen until the end of the first game.

Winning gets me the Chaos Key, which gets me through the undersea tower. And that's it for Ashura.

Ashura's stock has really fallen over the three games. Here's a brief Ashura History:

Final Fantasy Legend: Ashura functioned as the underboss of the entire game, the devil counterpart to the God you face at the end. He rules over the four elemental fiends that you face throughout the game. Would be the final boss if literal God wasn't an opponent at the end.

Final Fantasy Legend II: Ashura got demoted to basically one of the "four fiends", of sorts. He's the first of four major bosses throughout the game before the finale. Between Ashura, Venus, Odin, and Apollo, he is far and away the weakest of the four in both the story and the gameplay. Functions as a short-term villain rather than a major player.

Final Fantasy Legend III: Pretty much just a basic boss, and not even a tough one. Doesn't make it to the level of the Four Big Bosses. Mainly here to drop a key so you can get into a different dungeon and face a REAL big boss who IS at a "four fiend" level. Which almost demotes him to miniboss status. Isn't difficult at all. Has no story significance and almost no dialogue. Probably sweeps the floors in the dungeons for other bad guys. Is Cell Max.

Back to the underwater tower, NOW I can get all the way through it. At least the time I wasted in there earlier netted me a lot of gold.

This tower is ruled over by Chaos. Curious to see what Chaos looks like, considering that Ashura was more or less a Final Fantasy 1 Chaos stand-in throughout this series.

But first, I must get past the menace that is... Cracker.

"Freeze, Cracker!"

Arthur accidentally de-volves to Cyborg at one point (by consuming Cyborg parts rather than Robot parts), and we see the stat difference without all the Robot boosts. I freaked out and hit reset.

At the end of the dungeon is Chaos. "Look at the Unit on that guy!" says Garth.

This is one of the four generals (or however many big bosses there are) of the Water Entity, so he knows who we are and why we're here. This is the toughest fight so far and it isn't even close.

Chaos...looks more like Titan. Kind of wondering if this is a mistranslation, because he looks just like most variants of Titan in the FF series. He also uses Quake as his main attack, adding to the theory. However, far as I can find, there's no sign that it's a mistranslation.

Here's what I'd expect Chaos to look like. He looks a little more like Ashura.

Arthur proceeds to dish out his best special attack: Vicious kicks to the neussen!

The smoke clears and Chaos is still standing. Not only that, I'm actually losing characters for the first time all game. Luckily, my 'roided-out death-bot carries the fight and saves the day, with some help from Sharon whacking away with a sword.

This is FAR AND AWAY the hardest fight up to this point, and some would say the hardest fight in the game pound for pound. The only reason I won was because of Arthur the ringer. Personally I'd put it at a distant #3 as far as boss fights in this game go, behind the last two bosses.

This gets me both Future and Hover, which means Talon can now fly over seas...and travel to the Future.

Andy: "...The Future, Conan?"

It will be interesting to see what "the ruins of the future" look like. The post-apocalyptic hellscape that our heroes hail from.

But first! Midway through the game here so let's check on the party's stats.

Robot is still way ahead of everyone else, still not sure what to do with the other three. Levels are pretty far along, considering you only "need" to be 30+ to beat the game.

I just have everyone on Autobattle (besides the lead, who has to be manual) and it works decently well. Usually characters use their better attacks, or heal if they need to. However, there's also some "casters swinging their club for meager damage" going on, so it isn't going to be as effective as controlling everyone manually. As the game went on, I used Autobattle less and less because of how inefficient it was, and eventually stopped using it altogether. Beasts repeatedly casting spells that do 100 damage instead of drop-kicking for 500 damage was a bit much and Autobattle had to go.

Arthur stats. Nothing really stopping me from getting 99 Defense and Agility besides money. The game never actually tells you when the stat stops going up. Factoring in equipment, I can go a bit over the caps, but have no idea how much. I guess at some point I can unequip everything and cap all the stats at 99 and then re-equip everything.

Curtis is lagging behind in everything except Defense (armor is getting good) and Magic (the one strength of Mutants)

Gloria is presumably the babe with no pantalones on the game's official art. Sadly, soon she'll be a wolf-man or a weird-ass cyborg or something.

You know, the official art. This one:

That picture is the SaGa 3 Japanese box art. Not sure what's going on here in this chaotic pile. It's safe to say that the guy in front is Arthur. The curvaceous slice of woman next to him is either Gloria or Sharon, not sure, but I'd say probably Gloria in terms of look? Sharon would make more sense though. And then we've got a bunch of monsters behind them. I assume it's a Cyborg, Beastman, Robot, and Monster, so this is essentially showing us the six classes rather than the four characters.

Sharon is a good all-arounder, and presumably Arthur would have similar stats if I had kept him in Human form. I'm really not sure what to do with her as far as class goes. Keeping her Human is sub-optimal, but yeah.

Now that all of that is out of the way, it's finally time to see the Future.

What's it going to look like?

...we'll find out in the next episode.

Here, have another picture of Aerith.

Yeah, I know today's post was pretty short. Here's a quick look at something else I played this month, Princess Peach: Showtime.

It's an interesting game where Peach traverses various levels, using a different outfit/power in each world. Ice Skater Peach was a particularly elegant one.

Also liked Fencer Peach, who swings a sword. Matter of fact, the game was best during these sections. Would like to see an entire game dedicated to Fencer Peach.

This game almost felt like a bunch of demos for other potential games, in a weird way. It's also super easy, like a Kirby game, and has quite a bit of "Kirby vibe" to it.

At one point there's an ALIEN INVASION. Are we sure it isn't just drones?

Mermaid Peach is another good outfit. She can control fish and sic them on her enemies.

Other parts of the game have Peach as a detective, doing stakeouts and investigating things. These were probably my least-liked stages, because you generally just had to memorize the route (which things to investigate).

The Kung-Fu stages were pretty cool, with these martial arts fight minigames.

Here's Superhero Peach, who can PUNCH OUT UFOS.

Another Kung-Fu level has her facing off with a horde of purple guys. These purple dudes are the villains of the game. Yeah, they're kinda lame, and serve Madame Grape (a purple shadow menace that is definitely not Dark Matter from the Kirby series)

Yeah, Ice Skating Peach is definitely my favorite of the bunch, besides Fencer. I liked Kung-Fu as well, though they didn't do enough with it.

For the final battle with Madame Grape, Peach becomes Radiant Peach, a glowing super-woman who can fire magic. The whole thing is a bit Sailor Moon esque.

For the very final form, she can fire Kamehameha beams to finish off Madame Grape. Like the end of Metroid Dread.

Well, good game, though it really did seem like a bunch of demos for other games, and it was over way too quick. Basically it's Kirby Super Star, a group of appetizers that might amount to a main course if you play all of them. At least Peach finally got another game.

Alright, without further ado, here we go. Back to FFL3 for... The Future!

Wait, that isn't it. Did you know you could freeze Ridley's fireballs and then stand on them to pummel him with missiles while he just jumps up and down?

With Nintendo Switch Online, you can load up these "SP" files of various games and it'll put you pretty much right at the end, or right at specific boss fights. Most games get one SP file, Metroid gets two. One at Ridley, one at Tourian.

I went ahead and took on Tourian. The last hallway was WAY harder than I remember. This place is deadly, and the only way I could eke out a win was to stay on the right side of the final pillar so I wouldn't get stuck in the lava in front of Mother Brain. Really intense final battle/area.

Managed to beat Mother Brain on the first try, with like a quarter of one hit remaining. I've still got it! What an intense fight.

Oh yeah, FFL3.

THE FUTURE. ...looks pretty much like the other time periods. Just with less land area because everything has been engulfed by the ocean.

Yep, not a lot to see here. Was hoping it'd be an interesting apocalyptic future world, but it's literally just "smaller overworld with mostly water"... well, that just means more beachfront property for the remaining women to frolic on!

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