Final Fantasy Legend 3, Part 4 - The First Bodhisattva

 

Today on FFL3: The Future. There isn't much left here because the Water Entity has engulfed most of the already-tiny overworld.

Float and Dive are required to get anywhere here. Despite the much larger underwater area, there isn't a whole lot to find underwater in this world.

The battles in The Future take MUCH longer than previous worlds, with a lot more HP on the enemies. Also status effects are now rampant.

Basically, Sol is the ruler of the world of FFL3, the most powerful being, etc. Basically a deity compared to the normal folk. He built the Talon timeship, then for whatever reason, took apart all of the units that powered it and scattered it throughout time. Then he went to sleep because he didn't have much energy left. Now he's the only one who can stop the Pureland Water Entity, so whoever is controlling the Entity had him kidnapped and brought to Pureland.

...at least, I think I'm getting all of this right. Not sure why he took Talon apart, or went to sleep, or why the forces of evil kidnapped him instead of just killing him in his sleep.

I feel like a cop showing up to a domestic disturbance at a 7-11 and trying to figure out what the hell is going on while a bunch of bunch of idiots all yell about it at the same time.

There's also a town named after "The Viper! Randy Orton!"

Granny is here, but she's even older due to it being 20 years after the Present. So she promptly keels over after giving our heroes the Morph spell.

Traveling to the sunken land of Mu means getting attacked by the Sahagin denizens. That is, until you use the Morph spell:

Now the Sahagins are no longer hostile, because I am one. OUR time has come!

The head honcho behind the Water Entity consuming the world is something called Xagor, which is also responsible for the kidnapping of Sol. I bet it turns out they're the same person and Sol is just using Xagor as plausible deniability to the people for why he can't save the world from things he put into motion himself. Now that would be interesting. Create a big boogeyman opponent and fight it to keep the people on your side, as worked for numerous leaders throughout human history (and most of the time, for some reason, it's Russia).

That said, I don't think this game is that complex, and more likely Xagor really is just a big monster that kidnapped Sol.

Hey...Hey Sharon!

...we're gonna need you to claim this Mystic Sword.

I was planning to make Sharon a Cyborg, so I went ahead and finally did it. This was kinda a mistake though. She did get a bit more powerful, but just a bit, and at the cost of becoming a freakish machine.

It's also time to turn the Mutants into Beasts, the best class. Beasts have the magic power of Mutants, along with a lot of physical power (though it's important to equip them with martial arts attacks, as Beasts thrive with those, just like the Seiken Densetsu series).

Yeah, I don't know about freakish Cyborg Sharon. Unlike Beasts, they don't change form as they level up either. Think I'll turn Sharon back into a Human for now until I figure out what to do with her. I've got two Beasts, so I'm thinking either a second Robot, or I give Monster a try (supposedly Monster is much better in this game).

Sharon takes a trip to the Flushex and gets reset. Hey...Hey Sharon!

New spells from Mu. Quake is the highlight here, an extremely good AOE spell that targets everything on screen. It does miss a lot, though.

They took Sol, and now they've taken Faye!

::Who?.gif::

Gloria now Becomes Merman. Her and Curtis have completed a full gender swap, though not in a hot way.

What a motley crew. Alright, I think I'll try experimenting a bit with Sharon here by having her eat meat and turn into a Monster:

After cycling through a few Beasts (wish it'd just cycle through Monsters), I ended up turning her into Valvalis' tornado form. This LOOKS cool at least so I'll roll with this for now.

The next section is one of those "where the hell do I go" kind of sections, where you have to examine this one specific gravestone in the graveyard to continue.

We've got our next goal laid out: Defeat Maitreya, the second of the Big Bads after Chaos.

Chaos was Earth-element, and Maitreya is Wind-element, so I'm guessing there'll probably be two more for the other two elements. ...or not, who knows.

Next, our heroes head to the flying city of Viper. This place is heavily-armed. No actual relation to "The Viper! Randy Orton!"

It's a city that isn't as big as it looks, using conveyor belts to get around (a super early version of Esthar from Final Fantasy 8, weirdly enough).

I missed a bit here, and suffice to say not much really happened. Had to talk to a few folks to get the part I needed to jump to Floatland, home of Maitreya.

Disaster strikes as Arthur accidentally ate meat, turning back into a Cyborg. I ended up going all the way back to the first world and hunting low-level mobs to try and get parts to turn him back into a robot.

It took forever and the first couple parts I installed turned him into other versions of Cyborgs. Really not a fan of the class system in this game...

Finally, I succeeded in turning him back into a robot. No longer is he The Day The Earth Stood Still, now he's... a literal sentient artillery cannon.

Once that nightmare is dealt with, I continue with the story, taking the leap to Floatland. This is the small continent that has been flying around overhead for the whole game so far. Basically it's a reversal of Final Fantasy 3 for the Famicom, where you start on that game's Floatland and have to get down from it.

Floatland item shops have some interesting stuff. X-Plane (...weird name) is a solid upgrade for any sword-users (which at this point is basically just Arthur...not sure if a Robot should be using swords, but that's what I've got him doing).

Star and TearGas are both single-use big boom type items. Small versions of the NukeBomb from previous games. I generally avoid these ridiculously overpriced weapons. The two Beasts are shredding everything with X-Kick and Quake, regardless, so damage output isn't a problem. Meanwhile Arthur brings the defensiveness and survivability. Still not sure what Sharon is doing yet.

Floatland is just a pit stop on the way to Pureland, which is where the bastardly Xagor lurks and is keeping Sol asleep. Is this a metaphor for how destructive ideologies can easily spring up when the rest of the population is asleep / unaware of their growing presence? Probably not.

Next stop: Northern Ruins. The cloudy parts of this dungeon serve as conveyor belts, and you can't tell what direction they'll go in. As a result, this place is the worst pain in the ass so far in this game.

This dungeon is more or less a matter of stumbling around until you end up at one of these warps that leads to the next floor.

This also involves fending off lots of...Thanoses??

This one part had me stuck for a while. The cloud-conveyors just move you around in circles to the various platforms, no matter what direction you go. Eventually I found the solution: Leap to the left here while holding left and it'll push you onto the platform with the warp.

Here's the main goal of the dungeon, which summons the flying ship version of the Talon. Still need to get the X-Plane unit to actually move forward in the story though.

Maitreya's Tower is next, and atop a mountain which is pretty cool. Sorta like a mini-dungeon before the tower itself. X-Plane is in here, along with the next big boss.

It's one of the simplest dungeons in the game, maybe THE simplest, with every floor basically identical all the way up.

The mobs are getting a little more malevolent at this point, like these creepy cloaked owls that escaped from the Bohemian Grove.

At the top is Maitreya, and he's really cocky. He quickly and easily dispatches Dion, the latest ally character.

Getting to him with the rest of the party requires finding this hidden door on the second to last floor. Otherwise you're running in circles forever, which is hell.

Maitreya is like "lolol" about this whole thing. Chaos wasn't this mouthy!

Maitreya is an Indian nobleman sourced from Buddhism. And he isn't just anybody in Buddhism, he's the successor to Buddha himself. He usually wields a kamandalu (bottle of immortality), but surprisingly not here. He's also the first documented bodhisattva, somebody who reincarnates repeatedly on Earth instead of continuing onto heaven/nirvana, presumably to keep trying to help people on Earth. So basically an old soul with great intelligence who can't let go. In this game he's just another bad guy though.

So while SaGa 1 gave us the four directional beasts of Chinese legend and SaGa 2 gave us a number of European deities, SaGa 3 has gone in a slightly new direction.

While Chaos was Earth-element (still think he was supposed to be Titan), this guy is Air-element and dishes out some vicious AOEs. For whatever reason, Gloria is super-weak against Air and takes upwards of 800 (!!!) damage from his AOEs.

That's it for Floatland. Very short world, even shorter than the others. With Remote and X-Plane, I'm able to summon the flying Talon and warp to Pureland.

Before we go, now I can put up the rest of Nintendo Power's coverage, which went all the way up to this point:

This is one of the uncommon "serious" Nintendo Power articles, with maps and rundowns of what's going on. I like how the sidebar is called "The Saga"

This game used the idea of "changing history" before Chrono Trigger did and they emphasized it here, even if the actual game doesn't do a whole lot with it.

Weird how the ocean depths in The Future have less and less mountains in them (reflecting the smaller and smaller landmasses above). In theory, the undersea landmasses should stay the same size, since they're still there, just engulfed at the surface level.

Here's Maitreya. A cool and unsung bad guy that I wish Square would have done more with throughout their works. Could say something similar for Sol (still to come).

Talon looks like a B2. Are we about to launch a tactical strike on Xagor's nuclear sites?

Kind of excited for Pureland, given how awesome it was in Secret of Mana. However I already got let down once with the Future world of this game being fairly boring, and thus I'm not really expecting Pureland to be very different from everything so far.

Current state of the party going into Pureland. The status quo is pretty much maintained here, with Curtis and Gloria doing tons of damage while Arthur is the tankiest of the lot. Sharon is just here to look good when she comes out of tornado form and we're forced to behold her sweaty, glistening, naked body. Kain! Jump!

Monster isn't doing me any favors here and even as a tornado she's not really carrying her weight as the fourth party member. Cyborg also seemed subpar when I tried that (my initial plan for her). So it seems I'll either need to have a third Beast, or a second Robot. I could also turn one of the center two back into a Mutant and have Sharon be the second Beast.

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