[Ginkasa]

Whoo! Beat III. Having now beaten the Cloud of Darkness I am actually wondering what all the hype was about. I beat her on my first try (thank goodness; I don't think I would want to marathon through the Crystal Tower and the World of Darkness more than once). Granted, I had also planned ahead and started training Ingus as a Ninja as soon as it was available. I also accumulated tons of gil whilst training and had about 35 Shurkiens going into the battle.

I did lose Luneth, but everyone else withstood Particle Beam like a champ. My final party had Luneth as a Knight, Arc as a Summoner, Refia as a Devout, and Ingus as a Ninja. Levels were 56-57. Battle only lasted around 5 rounds.

Anyway, as for the game as whole... I doubt I'll be revisiting it anytime soon. It had its charm, but Job system has always annoyed me and the story is way too inconsistent to really be enjoyable. It seems to say that light and dark are equal with neither being inherently good or evil, but then its the Cloud of Darkness being fought in the World of Darkness because everybody's trying to cover the world in darkness. I wish they had just gone for something simpler if they couldn't handle the concept yet.

Anyway, I really don't have many thoughts on III. Its apparently held in really high regard in Japan - it was voted one of the best games ever, supposedly. I think they're crazy. The Job system is just way too clunky and abused by the game to be that great. When I get to V we'll see if Square improved on the concept.

IV's post coming up shortly.