We finally confront the Cloud of Darkness, which is an evil teal woman-shaped cloud who wants to devour all light and also her tits are out. Still not the sexiest cloud in the series, somehow.
This week, we made it through the enormous dungeon gauntlet: the Labyrinth of the Ancients, Eureka, the Crystal Tower, and the World of Darkness, defeated the Cloud of Darkness, saved the world, and entered a poly relationship with Princess Sara of Sasune. Quite the capstone to the NES Final Fantasy games. To make all this really stand you, you need some really good music and luckily, Square was very much up to the challenge.
For this game, I listened to the FINAL FANTASY III (Original Soundtrack), here are the relevant links:
FINAL FANTASY III (Original Soundtrack):
The Ranking
Good Morning!
Kind of undercuts the beauty of "Lute of Noah" by immediately turning Unei into a bit of a silly joke–though at the time this probably read a bit more as a trope subversion. The upbeat melody and quick rhythm matches Unei’s celebration at finally waking up from her 1,000 year slumber and running around on the cave ceiling with her parrot. FF3 really has far too many silly songs.
Ranking: 70/81
The Invincible
Another good airship theme! We’re taking off to unseal the final gate leading to the Crystal Tower, and we need a new ship to do it. The final ship in this game, the music starts off with a staccato rhythm section that almost sounds like a propeller spinning up. The lead melody starts with some long, sinuous notes that evoke the sense of reaching greater heights. Afterwards, there’s a whirling, looping section that’s reminiscent of the FF1 airship theme in representing the chaos of this great ship floating above the clouds.
Ranking: 19/82
Forbidden Land
We step into Eureka before the final dungeon gauntlet to gear up the party and get the best weapons and armour in the game, and the dungeon theme is alright. A driving march, with some fast arpeggiation in the background, the melody is simple, but it fits. Could have maybe used a softer instrumentation, but that’s more of an NES soundchip complaint.
Ranking: 23/83
The Crystal Tower
A beautiful song, and so different from what one might expect of a typical final dungeon theme. There’s no darkness here, we are in a construction of pure beauty, and that’s what we’re hearing at the same time. A beautiful violin-like melody takes us into the song only to be interrupted with a slight rest and some tumbling strings&emdash;we’re falling once again. The rhythm remains upbeat, like this is a triumph and not a slog–despite the fact that this the third dungeon in the gauntlet that ends this game.
Ranking: 3/84
The Dark Crystals
God this is easily my favourite dungeon song in the NES games. It’s almost a reversal of the Crystal Tower theme, which is appropriate as we enter the world of Darkness. The opening notes sliding upwards are just perfect to set the tone of this place. Still marching in triumphantly as our Onion Knights are finally going to put an end to this, but with a tinge of uncertainty. I don’t know, I can see this song’s shortcomings. It’s straightforward, and it’s a pretty short loop, but that opening phrase sounds so good I can’t help but adore it. This is my new favourite song.
Ranking: 1/85
This is the Last Battle
... But not for long.
The music in FF3 has been so impressive throughout my dive into it. The size of the soundtrack, as well as the variety really stands out, but so too do the technical limitations of only having four audio channels to work with. Uematsu, however, proves to be a wizard at hiding and composing around those flaws so that you hardly notice them. Nowhere is that more true than in this final boss theme for the Cloud of Darkness.
When talking about the NES sound chip, this track is my go-to example of what can be accomplished with it. It really feels like every single possible tone has been squeezed out of the thing to create this masterpiece, and the song is just so full and complex as a result.
Starting with the repetition of some eerie, falling waves as we succumb to the darkness (once again, our motif of descent that is everywhere in this game), they repeat again in double time and then you’re suddenly slammed into a wall of vibrato strings and unique drum samples that were saved solely for this song. The drum fill deserves special attention here, it’s so slow and deliberate, like a sense of dread as something truly dangerous is approaching.
Moving into the main melody, we have this high-pitched whine that sounds like it’s begging for an electric guitar sample, and you have to take a minute to listen to the strings underneath here that are going absolutely fucking hog wild in accompaniment. Then we hit the climax of the song as things break down and the drums syncopate like crazy and we restart the loop again.
A crowning achievement of a maximalist composition that fills every single square inch of space available to it, and easily the best track in the NES oeuvre. It’s good that we’re moving to the SNES after this because I don’t think there was any more room for growth.
Ranking: 1/86
The Everlasting World
By far the longest track we’ve had so far at nearly 7 minutes long, our ending theme this time is… kinda mid, unfortunately. We have a very calm and restrained reprise of My Home Town to ease us into this one and allow us to relax after the intensity of the final boss battle. Then, as our Onion Knights are rescued out of the world of Darkness and onto an airship, the song transforms into a long and perfectly serviceable rearrangement of “The Invincible” as the party says farewell to each of their friends in turn and then Princess Sara confesses her feelings for… all four of them? Okay, sure, that’s cool.
Next we have a faster version of “The Prelude” with some beating drums in support transitioning into “My Home Town” again, a song that I don’t particularly love, but I suppose fits with tradition in that every NES FF game takes up the town theme for the ending track. The driving rhythm is nice, and we add a few variations to the melody into a crescendo and one last sense of falling down as the song finally settles into “Opening Theme” as THE END appears on the screen.
Not a very memorable song, and it drags a lot because of its length. Luckily, we’ll hear some better ending themes in the next few games.
Ranking: 50/87
That's it! We did it! We ran through all the NES Final Fantasy games! I'll save some thoughts for next time, where I want to do a bit of a reflection on running this blog for a whole month now, as well as a discussion of the NES era. After that, we'll be jumping into the SNES era with Final Fantasy IV.