History VideoGame / FinalfantasyIII

* HealingHands: The White Mage and Devout classes.

* [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Equipment]]: Onion equipment.

** Due to the nature of how job level points are distributed, the [[NoobCave Altar Cave]] ends up being one of the best locations to grind job levels. Considering that job levels effect the potentcy of skills or attacks of numerous jobs (and, in the remake, maxing them out is part of the requirements to get the [[InfinityPlusOneSword job mastery items]]...

* CosmicHorrorReveal: Most of the game simply has the party fighting off monsters sent by a vaguely alluded to evil mage to corrupt the crystals. Then Xande's doings bring the Cloud of Darkness around and the stakes get much higher.

* DifficultButAwesome: Some of the jobs qualify. Special mention goes to the Scholar which can use [[ItemCaddy Item Lore/Alchemy]] to double the effectiveness of attack items, but as a trade off ''requires'' attack items and has possibly the worst vitality stat in the game.

* OneTimeDungeon: The floating Hein Castle, which after finishing, gets planted into a forest you're not allowed to get back to.

** Falgabard is likewise the home of Dark Knights. The nearby Cave of Shadows contains an optional boss who will grant a powerful katana if defeated.

* CosmicHorrorReveal: Xande's doings bring the Cloud of Darkness around.

* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: You didn't really think Xande was going to be the final boss, did you?

* {{Leitmotif}}: One four-man group has one, called simply "The Four Old Men."

** In the remake, the main characters' [[ColorCordinatedCharacter color associates]] are in a reverse order from the Famicom version[[note]]Ingus: Red, Refia: Blue, Arc: Green, Luneth is the only one to break the pattern, although the second red Onion Knight had a purple-tint on the overworld.[[/note]].
** Arc and Ingus are [[CompositeCharacter a combination]] of their respective Onion Knights and NPCs in the places where they join the party: Arc inherits his fear of ghosts from the man outside of Kazus while Ingus is based on a soldier who escaped the Djinn's curse by being away at the time.

* NeverMessWithGranny: Unei is this in spades.

* OptionalBoss: This game was the first in the series to have optional-bosses, and they make up a third of the boss bestiary. You can fight Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut for their respective summons; the six foes in Eureka that guard the best weapons and the final jobs; and four clones of Xande that guard chests in the World of Darkness.

* ContrivedCoincidence: It ''just so happens'' that a guy who fell down a hole one day, his best friend in town, a girl they meet on a ship, and a guard who greets them at a gate are all ''the chosen ones.''

* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the DS version.

** The Cloud of Darkness will kill most parties in the first round the first time you fight her.

** If you unlock the special Onion Knight class in the DS version, it starts with Luneth rescuing a group of four Onion Knights who ''also'' fell into the cavern you did. In other words, the four Onion Knights from the original game.

* PowerOfTheVoid: The Cloud of Darkness.

* SocializationBonus: In the DS version of the game, sending a sufficient number of mail messages to other owners of that game via the Platform/NintendoDS e-mailer unlocks the LethalJokeCharacter class and extra dungeon.

** Also Phoenix Downs and Elixirs, as they're rare finds and can't be purchased anywhere in the game.

* TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: The World of Darkness, which infamously comes directly after the Crystal Tower.

* NintendoHard: While there's many debates over which game in the NES trilogy is the ''absolute'' hardest of them all, [=FFIII=], like its predecessors, pulls absolutely no punches with its difficulty:
** Even more so in the DS version, since engine limitations meant that they simply upped the stats of existing monsters rather than make you fight multiple groupings of them. Said monsters can often attack two or even three times per round, making bosses more dangerous. Oh, and one more little detail -- ''THERE ARE NO SAVE POINTS, EVER.'' The only place to save your game is on the world map. Enjoy traipsing through a three hour dungeon with no save points and dying at the end!
** Moreover, with one or two exceptions, there are no healing points in the dungeons either. This isn't such a big problem with HP, as you can restore that with potions, but MP restoring items are much rarer. Which means you have to do each dungeon ''twice'' -- one run to collect all the items and level up your characters, and a second run where you run from every random encounter to make sure you have enough HP and MP to face off against the boss.
** The game's magic system is also a huge factor in its difficulty: Rather than the "Magic Points" system used in II and in most games from the SNES-era onward, III reuses the VancianMagic system from the original game where characters are given a limited number of casts of any spell within that tier, with higher tiers having less "charges" compared to the weaker, lower level spells. The spell charges aren't restored when you switch jobs and there are no Ether-like items to restore the spent charges in a pinch, so you had to rest in an inn/tent or use the extremely rare Elixir to recover. The DS version actually ''reduces'' the charges you get, especially for low-level spells. This is much worse than it sounds, since Cure and Cura are extremely valuable in the late game because they're not competing with Raise or other high-level White Magic for MP and can be used to patch up your party after fights, and high-end black magic is often overkill against most random encounters.
** Phoenix Downs cannot be bought in stores in the NES or DS versions of this game (the Pixel Remaster averts this by having shops start selling them as you progress thru the story). You can only find them in treasure chests, by stealing them from rust birds, or in hidden locations. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck There are about 30 of them to find throughout the entire game -- unless you use a thief to steal an infinite number from the rust birds on the dragon mountain.]] Moreover, they only revive a fallen character with just a single hitpoint left, making it very risky to use in the middle of a fight.
** The final room in the World Of Darkness has ''random encounters'' with offensive power comparable to the most difficult of the four bosses you just fought -- except they're additionally capable of Back Attacking you, attacking three times to wipe out half your party and leave the other half in the red before you get the chance to input commands, then attacking three more times to finish you [[{{Unwinnable}} before any of those commands go off.]] And you thought [[BossInMookClothing War]][[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI mech]] was bad?!?

* AlwaysCheckBehindTheChair: The [[UsefulNotes/NintendoDS DS]] [[VideoGameRemake remake]] lets you zoom-in using L/R, with spots hiding objects giving off a [[EverythingsBetterWithSparkles yellow-gold sparkle.]]

* LostInTranslation: Western players are very unlikely to fall for the RedHerring of the Gold Crystal; after all, even though gold is an element, it isn't a [[NaturalElement ''classical'' element]]. In the Chinese system, however, Gold—or more broadly "[[ExtraOreDinary Metal]]"—''is'' one of their classical Natural, so a player might be excused if they believe one of the elemental crystals was just destroyed. They might also expect there to be a [[GreenThumb Wood Crystal]] in the game somewhere.

For a long time this game was considered one of the 'lost' ''Final Fantasy'' games, as it was [[NoExportForYou not released outside of Japan]] for many years; after ''II'' and ''V'' were finally released in English (in 2003 and 1999, respectively), ''III'' stood as the last Japan-only mainline entry. In 2006, it was finally remade for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, with 3D graphics, more plot, and extended characterization, thus exposing the game to a wider audience. The DS remake was again tweaked to improve some gameplay issues and has been ported to the [[UsefulNotes/IOSGames iOS]], [[UsefulNotes/AndroidGames Android]], and [[UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable PSP]], as well as PC via UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}. In 2021, a TruerToTheText remaster of the original Famicom game was released on mobile devices and Steam as part of the ''Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster'' line, making it the first time that version has been translated into English. 2023 saw the ''Pixel Remaster'' version brought over to the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch and UsefulNotes/PlayStation4.

* SocializationBonus: In the DS version of the game, sending a sufficient number of mail messages to other owners of that game via the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS e-mailer unlocks the LethalJokeCharacter class and extra dungeon.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: One of the final bosses, Zande (straight romanization) / Xande (official localization).

'''Not to be confused with ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI,'' which was originally released in North America on [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem SNES]] as ''Final Fantasy III.'''''

The third entry in the [[RunningGag brain-freezingly]] popular ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series. It was originally released for the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] in 1990.