The man who designed the jobs in Final Fantasy 3 revealed the reason why he never created any more entries for the series. The first Final Fantasy game used a rudimentary character class system, but Final Fantasy 3 had a customizable job system that led to the creation of several iconic elements from the series.

The four playable characters in Final Fantasy 3 started out as Onion Knights, but they would gain the ability to change their class. The job system in Final Fantasy 3 lets the player switch character classes outside of battle. The group started out with the same six original jobs from Final Fantasy (Fighter, Thief, Monk, Black Mage, Red Mage, and White Mage), but they would unlock more powerful jobs throughout the story.

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2020 marks the 30th anniversary of Final Fantasy 3. Square Enix has been interviewing the creators of the game and uploading them to its website, and a recent interview revealed that the Moogles in Final Fantasy 3 were never meant to be mascots. A new interview with object designer Koichi Ishii has been uploaded, and he has discussed why he never designed any more jobs for the Final Fantasy series after Final Fantasy 3. 

There were so many jobs in FFIII - did you struggle to come up with ways to differentiate between them?

Ishii:

I designed over half of them while inputting the sprites so yes, it was indeed tough to differentiate between them. However, I was doing this work thinking it would be the last time I do pixel art, so the task didn’t feel tiring.

Giving every job a different pose came from my attachment to them, I absolutely didn’t want to reuse anything. When I was really in the zone, I would be constantly comparing each job to all the others and striving to implement clear differences between them, imagining how the job characters’ adventures were going as I continued inputting sprites. Because of that, completing each job sprite had this feeling of accomplishment like finishing a piece of art – every one was packed with these stories I had come up with, and it was a moving experience to finish each of them. That was also the point that I decided I wouldn’t ever design job characters again.

And so, I’d never do another FF character after FFIII. That’s also the reason I didn’t do job character design for FFV despite Mr. Sakaguchi asking me to.

Final Fantasy 3 logo

The job system would reappear in several other Final Fantasy titles over the years. Final Fantasy V was the next entry in the series to use a job system, but it would go on to be refined in the incredible Final Fantasy Tactics. The online Final Fantasy games also use variants of the job system, with more character classes being added to Final Fantasy XIV with each expansion. Despite this, many fans still love the 8-bit sprite designs used in Final Fantasy 3.

It's well-known that the Final Fantasy games were released out of order outside of Japan. It took a long time for Final Fantasy 3 to be localized, as an official English version of the game wasn't released until 2006. Since then, an updated version of the game has been released on numerous platforms. Final Fantasy 3 can be played on PC & mobile phones, making it easier than ever for people to enjoy the game. It's clear that people love Final Fantasy 3 (despite how difficult it is), and many retro fans love the sprite work in the original version of the game. Ishii's job designs have cropped up in later Final Fantasy games as fanservice, which shows how even the people within Square Enix still have a fondness for the Onion Knights and their prototype character class system.

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Source: Square Enix