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I made it to where I quit on NESter DC.

First of all, I beat the Jinn, who wasn't difficult (at least not at my level). Cid joined my party -- is this the first Final Fantasy he appeared in? Anyway, he looks like a gnome with a wide straw hat. So, kinda like what I associate as the classic Cid look (which I base on FF4 -- a short little guy with a beard). Before Cid joins your party, Princess Sara joins before you fight Jinn. After Cid leaves your party, some other guy whose name I can't recall but it's something like Dess joins.

So, what effect does having a party member have? As far the battles go, none: Those characters don't participate. They just tag along on the map screens. You can also talk to them in towns. And their image (more detailed than their map sprites) is in your status screen, but you can't do anything with it. So, apparently, it's just a story thing.

Anyway, Cid outfitted the airship with a mythril drill, which I was supposed to use to destroy a rock blocking my path. However, when they collided, the airship was destroyed, too.

Shortly after that, you have to climb a mountain. I had a fairly clear memory of seeing the sprite of Bahamut hovering around the mountain. And, indeed, that's what happens. When you reach the top of the mountain (it's only a short climb), you find a nest of baby dragons (as well as your third travelling companion). Bahamut attacks you, but his attacks are very weak. On the other hand, I believe that you absolutely cannot defeat him, no matter how much damage you deal. If you succeed at running, you'll jump off the mountain and end up in a different area of the overworld map, disconnected from where you were previously (so, hope you've leveled up enough!)

There, you have to turn your party into midgets (the game's -- or at least this translation's -- word) by using Mini. That lets you find a secret mini village, and from there you can go through a short dungeon.

When you're mini, it seems that your attack and defense ratings are automatically 1. So, there's no hope for physical fighting. My two fighters had reached skill level 16. That means that if I switched to any available job, I could switch back to fighter without incurring further charge.

So, there's a little difference between switching jobs in this game as compared to FF5. As I recall, in FF5, you could switch jobs at will, but when you started as a new job, you'd be worthless. This was one reason it was nice to be able to equip a second set of skills, so you could have something useful as you learned a new job. However, as you used your new job, you'd gain skills in it.

In FF3, you have to pay to switch jobs. Right now, the cost of switching to a job in which I have no skill is either 8 or 16 points (I forgot the name of the points), depending on what job you're switching from and to. You generally get 1 or 2 such points at the end of every battle. However, when you switch jobs, it seems you have every ability of that job from the get-go.

So, to summarize, in FF5, it's easier to switch jobs, but harder to make a job useful. In FF3, the jobs are more immediately useful, but they're harder to switch.

Speaking of them being immediately useful, I already have 9 uses for level 1 magic, and something like 4 uses for level 2 magic. I think that magic uses in this game increase much faster than in Final Fantasy 1. There are various other things about this game that make it a little more user friendly. For example, when you buy an item, you can buy either 1, 4, or 10 of them at once. Not only that, but when you buy in bulk, you get a discount.

On the other hand, buying magic can be a bit more "special" in this game. In FF1, you went to a shop, and could buy any level 1 white magic spell. Another one had any level 1 black magic spell. And so on. The only really "special" magic purchases were the two most powerful level 8 spells, which were sold individually in a hidden shop in Lefenin.

In this game, however, you cannot simply buy Cure 1 off the bat. You can find ONE use of it (meaning, you can teach it to one single wizard) in the first town, and you have to earn it. I found another Cure 1 after that.


Okay, picking up a dropped thread, my fighters were at skill level 16, but worthless as fighters when Mini. So, I turned them into Red Mages to have a party of all red mages. That made it fairly easy to get through that Mini dungeon.

I thought I had remembered some base on the edge of the sea, but wondered if I imagined that. Nope, that's what comes next. It's a viking base, but the vikings can't leave dock, because a sea serpent blocks the way out of their lake. I fought it once, but he slaughtered me rather horribly. My characters have about 150 hp, and he can do 200 damage.

On land is the temple that you need to be Mini to get through. So, I'll have to try that next, and hope that having 4 red mages will help get me through. Unfortunately, level 2 magic is expensive -- 700 gold. I only have about 1500 gold now. I think every character has a level 1 attack spell (which are only 100 gold), but I don't know if everyone has level 2 attack spells. A couple have level 3 spells, but so far it seems level 3 spells can only be found, and not yet purchased.

There's some stuff on nearsightedness being caused by eyestrain here.

Even if nothing has been strictly proven, it seems plausible to me that there would be a connection.

In the world of fantasy, some note was made of how far Roland could see in The Drawing of the Three, and also how he was noticed how many people in our world wore glasses. Though that could be intended to mean that Roland has genetically better eyes, and that the people in his world didn't have the technology to make glasses when necessary, I think it could just be that the people in his world had less eye strain. There were also comments about how rare paper was, so they probably didn't read very often.

After you give the statue its eye back, you can't reenter that dungeon. So, I missed a couple of things. Oh, well.

I was briefly stuck after that. There's a bunch of new places you can go with your new ship. But those locations didn't suggest a quest. There was a tree floating above a desert, but I can't reach the tree. There were a couple of villages, but they didn't take me anywhere. I found a village of forest fairies in the living forest. They told me about the floating tree, but otherwise did nothing. I found a castle, but it was empty of people. I found a chocobo forest (is this the first game with Chocobos?), and walked around the world. When you do that, you can see that the world is a floating continent. However, I reached no new areas there. (I COULD see a couple of new towns or caves, but they were blocked by mountains)

I also found a tower. When you enter, you enter to a flooded floor, with a few frogs. In the middle of the floor, your characters say to each other, "Only a frog could fit through there!" My first thought was, "Okay, I need to get a Frog spell to enter there." But after going back and forth between the various areas I mentioned in my previous paragraph and not finding anything, I decided to try something else, maybe more abstract.

My next thought was, "Well, they say only a frog could fit through there, and this floor has frogs. Maybe I could corral a frog into that area?" I succeeded in doing that, somehow, but it wouldn't enter the square where my characters had their dialogue. It acted like there was a wall there. So, that wasn't the trick.

I continued trying to explore, making sure that I went to the edge of every place I could dock my ship. (Unlike in the original Final Fantasy, in this game, you can dock on just about any land bordering the water, unless of course there's a mountain there). And I finally found a small cave (which might not be on the game's built-in map -- in this game, unlike FF1, you can't just "Tceles B sserP", but need to use a spell) where I got the Toad spell.

So, it was back to the Tower.

Sometime before that, I switched my party again. I was getting annoyed with the Black Mages. There were useful for the Mini dungeon, and they might not be a bad class, but they can't attack an infinite number of times, and I wanted a change, anyway. So, I changed NoseUm and Ugy to Monks. That seems to be a useful class -- right now they get 4 hits, for up to about 130 damage total, with no weapons equipped.

I kind of wanted to change my Red Mages to something else, because their skill levels are getting too high, but the Red Mage class is just too useful. I wanted to keep some healing ability. If I'd change them to anything, I'd be tempted to change my party to 4 Monks.

As a side note, unlike in Final Fantasy 5, your characters' HP is purely a function of their level. So, if you change jobs, they keep their maximum HP. So, even jobs like Black Mages can be hardy.

Anyway, it was a good thing I changed to Monks. After you get through that passage as a frog, you can turn back to normal to explore the rest of the tower. And the tower is many floors high, so, like I suggested, you really need a class that can attack infinitely.

I made it through the tower on my first try. The boss (Medusa) didn't even damage me. However, the only attack she tried was Break. I reckon if it was to do anything, it would have caused instant death. I'm glad it didn't do anything, since so far I have not saved after a character death.

After that, the whirlpool that was blocking the inner sea from the rest of the world went away. So, perhaps now I can explore the rest of the floating continent with my ship.

I thought that was a good place to leave off for the night, though, so I won't get around to that until tomorrow.