So, I might be late on the boat for finishing/reviewing this game, but I thought I would (review it) anyway, because I have Thoughts about it. The first of them being that it's a dirty great bitch of a game. If you've got adequate levels, you go along thinking everything's easy... and then you hit the last two areas, in which you cannot save while you go through a succession of bosses and tough random encounters on the way to said bosses. (If you found the end of the game easy without party modification and extra levelling up, let me know your levels and class types for future reference, 'kay?)
I thought the characters/character designs were good. Arc was just pure, unrelenting cute. Especially his freckles. As was Alus. I thought some of the outfits were crazy (Dragoon and Devout, I'm looking at you) but actually got quite fond of them. I guess I'm too used to characters wearing one suitable outfit throughout the whole game. I thought Desch was, well, pure unrelenting awesome, although I wonder what's up with Desch's
hair. I mean, did he start trying for Seymour's hairstyle and then decide to give up, only the hair gel had glued solid forevermore? And Aria was another cute one. I mean,
look. I wish we could've seen more of her -- and I swear it's not just 'cause I like pretty ladies. Speaking of which -- I cheered for Sara and Ingus... pretty much every time they were in the same building and some when they weren't.
For the most part I enjoyed the class system. It annoyed me when I had to change all characters to one class for one battle or one area or whatever. What's the point in that? I resisted doing that as much as possible, but sometimes you had to. I didn't like the way you level a character up in one mage type class and then along comes a better class in the same type (e.g. White Mage -> Devout) and you have to start again with pathetic MP. I did think it was neat the way Devouts had most MP for the level with Curaga, though: that was pretty helpful at first when I didn't have much MP for Curaja, and then I used Curagas during ordinary battles and saved my Curajas for boss battles.
I pretty much ignored the mognet features. They might've been kind of neat if I had anyone to communicate with on it, but I didn't, and I wasn't interested enough to really go looking. There were sidequests even without that -- Odin, Leviathan and Bahamut -- but since I didn't do those until the end of the game, they were pretty easy and took me about five minutes each. xD
My final stats were level 63 all round, with Ingus as a Dragoon (level 99), Refia as a Devout (level 39), Arc as a Magus (level 26) and Luneth as a knight (level 65). For the last battle I had Refia casting Curaja every turn, Ingus attacking, Arc casting Flare and Luneth attacking. When Ingus died I kept up the same strategy, apart from Luneth who tried to revive Ingus. When Arc ran out of MP, I used an elixir, but I only needed one. It was easier once I got past level 60, I must admit, but at level 57 which I was the first thirteen times I tried it, it was a case of "so close, and yet so far".
The ending... it wasn't a spectacular FMV sequence with sparkles out the wazoo, but I still thought it was worth it. And I hooted with laughter at parts of it -- I know at least one person on this flist hasn't finished FFIII yet, so I'll leave it at that.
Thank you to
feywood's brother for suggesting I made Arc (who was a Dark Knight) a Magus instead. That was probably partially why I won this time around. xD