Final Fantasy 3 Dual Play of Dualness...duality: Just beat Garuda. And yes, I totally played
this song both times I fought him. I wiped once in the NES version and twice in the DS version though the first was pretty much entirely my fault. Winning run I had insurance and turned Refia into a Dragoon (Luneth was already one), threw away more cash to get more Wind Lances and yeah.
So more analysis nonsense! Not much because short segments:
-Vikings aren't bad on offense as people think they are in the NES version. What really is going on is every enemy in Goldor's Mansion resists Lightning, which is the first dungeon (besides maybe the sewers) you're plausibly trying Viking out, and just about every weapon Viking has in the NES version is Lightning elemental. I tested this outright because at first I thought accuracy was bad then Viking got 4 hits in and did crappy damage to the point where I realized it's damage per hit was way lower than Thief's which made no sense (Thief of course gets more hits, so would do more damage anyway), so tested Bolt vs. Ice and Fire, the former being notably stronger (Level 2 vs. Level 1 spell) and the level 1 spells did more. That said, Viking isn't anything special on offense, and you do have to make sure he only equips 70% Accuracy weapons because the 60% ones suck; to be fair, Morning Star is the strongest weapon for Viking at the moment, and is 70% accuracy. For reference most good fighter weapons are 80%.
-Goldor's Mansion is kind of uneventful in both versions beyond what I said above. The only thing stand out is Back Attacks can be a real bitch in both versions.
-Goldor himself...I wanna say the NES version is better designed, because he's consistent. The DS version has very wildly varying difficulty, because he has so many attacks, many of which are inaccurate status moves, but he sometimes focus his physical for high damage (though I had a low defensive team overall to be fair), and rarely throws a big MT Thundara or some such at you. To be fair again, in the NES version I intelligently turned my Black Mage into a Karateka (because of available equipment mostly)for that fight knowing he has stupid high magic defense. DS version, Arc, my Black Mage, could still do SOME damage with Blizzaga, then he runs out of level 4 charges, and became useless outside of being an Item Boy. When I say useless, I don't mean magic damage sucks, I mean "Anything below Blizzaga cannot break his magic defense."
-One thing to note about Goldor's Mansion that differs notably in both is the potion situation. DS version I used way more potions (though, Red Mage vs. White Mage scenario kicking in here), but Potions are both significantly worse in the DS version, but also actually available in Amur; in NES version, only HI Potions, which are way more expensive, are available there. This is part of why you can get away with lesser MP healers in the DS version this late. I'm not convinced that says the dungeon is harder so much as how my team situations in both were.
-Dragon Spire is changed so much in the DS version, I had forgotten. NES version it almost kind of counts as a full dungeon, with that stupid invisible path gimmick. DS version, you run up a few small rooms, and then the top is finally when stuff might happen. There's still randoms, but significantly less than expected.
-Garuda himself is a bitch in both versions, not shockingly (...no pun intended.) In the NES version, you're very at the mercy of the RNG, for multiple reasons, a big one being that in my first run, I saw at least 5 hits fully miss, in the winning run, I saw 5 connects of 700+ damage, with 3 of them breaking 4 digits, to give you an idea. Also you realistically cannot win without grinding unless you use 4 Dragoons; even if they're not fully equipped, just the whole "forced turn skip" gimmick of the NES version is huge. In the DS version, you don't NEED a Dragoon, but damned if it doesn't make the fight way harder. One thing I had forgotten is Garuda's defense is stupid good; Thief Refia normally does like 500-700 damage against generic enemies; Garuda took 142. Refia with no JLevels AND Job Sickness using Jump? 1900. Though, worth noting while Garuda's defense is massive, his Magic defense is unnoteworthy. Arc's summons did 4 digit damage to him (and Titan, as a reminder, is 100% chance to do damage, albeit, lowest damage of the summons, but still competent), which with his 10k HP, it might be possible to beat Garuda with just a lot of healing, and Summon spam...but hell if I would want to try that!
-Job change time! Both games, I swapped from Black Mage -> Evoker/Conjurer. In the NES version, Black Mage remains useful for status purposes, but I figured why not change things up? Conjurer is less reliable, but makes up for it by having real damage vs. bosses thanks to Titan (who is stupid good for the time in the NES version), and when it comes to Shiva and Ramuh, Conjurer gets either "one enemy dies" or "all enemies are incapacitated." Ifrit...meh, healing isn't worth it due to randomness, and if I want damage, I'll go with Titan. Black Mage in the DS version, by contrast, stops really being worthwhile here, for a few big reasons, notably, Rods make anything Black Mage can do from level 3 and below completely obsolete, and Summons tend to be better damage than agas. To be fair, Evoker's best consistent damage is Hyper which is worse than Blizzaga and Thundaga, which combined they have equal castings of, HOWEVER, the more random summons do higher damage, and while Spark and Icen are inconsistent with their status (unlike the NES version where they're stupid good), Heatra's healing is ludicrously awesome so it's good to use on randoms as it either murders something dead, or helps remove some stress on your healer.
-Remember my rant about Aria's death being awful in the DS version? Yeah, Allus' father's death is handled way better for the exact reasons I laid out. They kept it simple and short. You see him appear, hold the knife, then the knife goes into his stomach and he falls over. There's no forced drama, no attempt to make it look more amazing and serious than the kiddy sprites can make it appear, just simple and straight to the point (...no pun intended.) Now it's not a careworthy scene because seriously, it's some guy we literally met this very scene, there's no emotional impact. Even though yes it's Allus' dad, we met Allus about 5 minutes ago, so we haven't gotten emotionally invested in him either. At least with Desch, he was with our team for a few dungeons. This is a flaw shared with the NES version naturally, and the main point here is serious stuff doesn't look silly in this graphical style if you don't try to make it look more dramatic than this graphical style is capable of.
Last thing I'll say is this replay is reminding me why I thought the DS version of FF3 is actually a decent remake:
While I struggle to say it's the better game, one thing it notably doesn't do is screw up things that the NES version didn't screw up. As in, major flaws the DS version has for the most part are things the original game had, showing it's not a version issue, but either a problem with the game's core (like poor plot/characters), or it's just their refusal to add modern polish that should be there (SAVE POINTS DAMN IT!!!) The things it does worse than the NES version aren't really deal breakers either, like Capacity Points seem better handled incentive to not change jobs like mad compared to Job Sickness.
It really contrasts FF4DS where-in that did explicitly screw things up compared to the 2D version, the most obvious thing is the difficulty, which is wildly inconsistent with major spikes and drops and there's actual fights where you just lose based on the RNG.
