And Finally... Victory (FFIII, Days 44-45)

Once I picked back up with my quest, I determined that a reasonable grinding goal would be level 55 across the board. So that's just what I did - I wasn't going to bother with the end game content until I was there. I'm nothing if not persistent though, so the grinding went reasonably well and quickly enough.

Now that I was at my goal level, I made sure to save and heal back at the airship and make what I hoped was my final trip through the Ancient's Maze and subsequently the Crystal Tower. I got into a nice rhythm of having my mages prepare to run away while my melee attackers went for the kill. It didn't matter who succeeded, as long as one of the sets of actions occurred, because at that point I just wanted the battles to be over as quickly as possible.

I managed to basically sprint through the maze with no loss of HP or MP. A quick save on the world map, and I dove in to get the tower done as well. This went a bit more slowly as I had to make careful decisions about whether to flee or fight on some of the enemies, but it went smoothly enough.

I was lucky enough to avoid running into any more dragons on the 7th floor, and made sure to have my casters each chug one of the 22 elixirs I had saved up. MP restored, I went right back into the ring with Xande for round two. My strategy hardly changed for this battle and I found it over more quickly than last time. Of course once he was dead, the Cloud of Darkness was waiting.

And whose fault is that, Xantac?

If for no other reason than the music is awesome, I was able to enjoy the scripted battle this time around. It's a new arrangement of the 8 bit NES version, but I appreciate that they kept a decidedly chip-tune inspired sound to it. I just like it. Have a listen and decide for yourself.

 

This time around, now that I knew the first encounter with Miss Cloud of Darkness was unwinnable, I decided to speed things along and have all my characters attack themselves instead of her. This had the desired effect, and of course the five members of the pure heart brigade were suitably shocked and dismayed when my party was barbecued by a plasma beam.

Extra Crispy

Which meant it was time for another Deus Ex Doga maneuver, and a proper recap of what happens next. Doga and Unei reappear over the fallen heroes and subsequently resurrect them by giving them each a part of their immortal souls. This made about 9 people pretty pleased, and was generally good news for existence as a whole.  Afterwards the duo disappear to 'join the great soul beyond' or whatever. Now our heroes can finish the job and take down the terrible and powerful COD.

"Have fun storming the Dark World!"

A quick dive into a foreboding swirl of of purple and the party appeared in the Dark World. My next mission was to free the Warriors of the Dark so they would help weaken COD for me. This involved visiting each of four portals. Another thing that would make the battle easier was to ensure that all my party members had a Ribbon equipped to protect from COD's Bad Breath ability. If you know anything about Final Fantasy, you know that Bad Breath is pretty much one of the worst things ever.

It's sort of dark here...

Each of the Ribbons I was after was in a chest guarded by a clone of Xanax. By this point it wasn't a difficult battle, just an annoying one. I had to repeat it three times to get three more of those coveted items. Thankfully, I didn't have to do it a fourth time because Po'Ang already had one. So right off the bat, that's three mini-bosses I had to take out.

There are also four dark crystals here and each one is guarded by a boss. That brings the boss battle total to 7 in the dark world. One by one, I had to defeat Ahriman, Echidna, Cerberus, and a literal two headed dragon, who is not in fact related to Hiram McDaniels in any way. In some guides, each of these are supposedly optional bosses, but for every warrior of the dark freed, it drops COD's defense and attack a little. Definitely not optional as far as I'm concerned.

ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD

Having taken a deep breath, I went to the final showdown. Cloudy lady was none too pleased when each of the four Dark Warriors threw themselves into weakening her.

Existence is better than non-existence, ya know?

The battle was nerve-wracking, but I kept a decent handle on things. Po'Ang was entirely dedicated to healing for the entire time, Hemnes was a Flare-casting machine, and Ektorp and Lack just had to melee the heck out of her. I focused on the right tentacle first, to stop it's annoying habit of casting lightning on the party. Once it was down, the rest of the battle was just a stamina test. When Hemnes and Po'Ang ran out of the particular spell level I was using, they got an Elixir, and it was all downhill from there.

Cloud of Darkness Status: PWND!

 I defeated the cloud of darkness, and can officially count Final Fantasy III among my completed games. In my experience. this is probably one of, if not THE most difficult in the series. The final crawl through 7 floors of tower and 5 portals of darkness is BRUTAL. 


There you have it, Folks. I'll be starting Final Fantasy IV now. The naming poll results are in: Disney Princesses in 5th place with 1 vote, Superheroes was 4th with 2 votes, Famous Scientists had 3 votes in 3rd place, EDM Artists were in 2nd with 4 votes, and Coding Languages took first with 6 votes. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Tune in tomorrow when Coding Languages save the world from evil.

Now for some closing life advice from Final Fantasy III:

Hope is generally pretty awesome. (FFXIII Excluded)