On day 20 of my Final Fantasy Marathon, I left off my second playthrough of Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster after obtaining the Earth Crystal jobs. Today, I’m headed into the maze for the final push to the end.

End game

This party had a significantly easier time with pretty much all of the endgame content than my first one. I had to repeat a couple of battles where the boss spammed meteor and quake at me faster than I could heal, but other than that, most of the fights were one and done, including the final boss.

Eureka party

Once I got the final two jobs, I switched my party to Ninja, Ninja, Black Belt, Sage. My reasoning was that the first time around, I didn’t find having two sages that beneficial, so this time I decided to go with one Sage to use primarily for healing.

However, I also gave her the most useful of the black magic and summoning spells, so she could add some attack power when her healing wasn’t needed. I opted for two ninjas instead of three, because the Black Belt does a lot of damage at this point and that allows me to have two ninjas dual-wielding forbidden weapons, instead of using a single weapon or having a third ninja with lower-power weapons.

Final boss

For this fight, I had my sage cast haste on herself to give her a better chance of healing the party before the next particle beam. Then, I just threw shurikens with the ninjas, attacked with the black belt, and healed with the sage.

It ended up being a pretty easy fight. My completion time was 11 hours and one minute.

Final thoughts on jobs

All of the jobs are usable to some extent, with even the most maligned having their roles. However, some are definitely more useful than others.

Wind Crystal

I think it’s always easier to have a dedicated healer than not, so White Mage is the job I’d probably always pick. There are pluses and minuses to the rest, but in general, I’d choose Warrior, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, because I think it offers the most balance.

You could make an argument for going with two monks, but the warrior has better defense. Having one tanky party member can sometimes be the difference between the entire party being wiped and having one fighter left to finish off a boss or revive other party members.

Fire Crystal

The Scholar’s main use is for the Hein fight. However, his alchemy ability can come in handy in the early game before your healers have access to the more powerful healing spells. Still, I’d probably only use him for Hein in a normal playthrough.

The Ranger can hit for decent damage, but there’s no real compelling reason to use it, unless you just want to. The thief becomes a very powerful fighter at higher job levels, particularly once you get access to the more powerful knives.

However, he’s not really endgame material because there are no weapon upgrades for him in Eureka or Syrcus Tower. The Knight is basically a tankier warrior.

Nothing special, but he has access to more equipment upgrades than the warrior. If you want a tank, it’s worth upgrading to the Knight.

Water Crystal

The Geomancer is handy for dungeons where you have to cast mini on your party and for the dungeon with splitting enemies you have to do before you get access to the Dark Knight equipment. Not as powerful as the black mage or magus, but you don’t have to worry about MP.

This also makes it a good choice if you’re deep in a dungeon and find you need a magic user, because if you switch from a non-magic user to a mage, you won’t have any MP, unless you use an elixir. Like the scholar, the Dragoon is mostly useful in one particular fight.

A party of dragoons is almost essential to beat Garuda without spending a lot of time overleveling your party. After that, it’s not a horrible job, but once you get to the end game material, his weapon upgrades don’t keep pace with other jobs.

The Viking is basically a Knight alternative. He’s very tanky, but doesn’t do a ton of damage and he doesn’t get much in the way of upgrades in the endgame.

He can be useful if you want to run a party of mostly low defense characters and use the Viking to draw enemy attacks, but most of the time I’d skip him.

The Dark Knight is seriously hampered by how long it takes to get access to any equipment he can use. The job is practically unusable until the Cave of Shadows.

However, he can use the first two Forbidden weapons, which makes him a decent fighter in the Eureka phase of the game. Evoker is an OK black mage alternative, but is hampered by the randomness of the summon spells.

Sometimes you get the good one, and sometimes you get a version that usually doesn’t do much. This actually works in your favor in the Doga and Unei fight though, because Catastro will often result in the version that casts reflect on your entire party.

The bard job has some OK support functions, but overall, this class isn’t very useful. I can’t think of any scenario where I’d use it other than to make the game more challenging.

The Black Belt is one of the best classes in the game. He has weak defense, but hits for a ton of damage, particularly at higher job levels.

Because his unarmed damage is better than his damage with weapons, the fact that he doesn’t get access to any of the end-game weapons doesn’t hurt him as an end-game fighter.

Eureka

The Ninja and the Sage are kind of the ultimate fighting and magic classes. The ninja can use any weapons and armor, which allows them to use all of the best gear from Eureka and Syrcus tower.

Additionally, it has the throw command, which makes the final boss much easier, as long as you buy enough shurikens in Eureka. Unless I’m doing a challenge party, I always take two or three of these guys to the final fight.

The Sage can cast any type of magic, including the summon spells. However, black magic isn’t as useful in the end game as you’d think it would be.

Bahamut can hit for some decent damage, but you’re limited in how many times you can cast it. Flare and meteor are mostly disappointing and any spells below that aren’t that effective.

I like to use one Sage in the endgame and give them the handful of black magic spells I sometimes use, plus all the healing spells. However, I think you can make a case for using the Devout instead, because the main use for a mage is healing, and the Devout gets more spell slots and is somewhat more effective, at least at the job levels you will be at with the Sage if you don’t grind.

I thought about doing one more playthrough and using all my favorite jobs, but decided it wouldn’t be different enough from my last playthrough to be worthwhile. That means, next up is Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster.