In the original Final Fantasy, about 25% through the game, you come across the town of Melmond. The town has been decimated by the elemental fiend, Lich, and there are tombstones and graves scattered all around the place to denote the carnage that he has brought to this continent. Otherwise there is nothing really of importance in the town other than what’s available at the armor shop.
Steel Armor, which doesn’t sound like anything that special, but the reality is that it is one of the highest-rated armors in the entire game, quite literally viable until the very end. Its effectiveness is reflected in its cost, which at 45,000 GP is one of the most expensive items in the entire game.
Its availability as early as Melmond is kind of laughable, because at this point of the game the ramping up of difficulty at its worst, and 45,000 GP would require a massive amount of grinding and effort in order to afford. And if you have any sort of meta or any team with mages on it, acquiring their spells is of higher priority, considering the importance of magic to attack enemies, heal allies, and cast Exit, that you’re looking more like needing 60,000 GP if want to mage up and get Steel Armor before you head to the Earth Cave.
By the time you get to the point of the game where 45,000 GP is no big deal, money is flowing like water. There’s a chest somewhere in the Sky Palace that contains like 68,000 GP, and I remember thinking, wtf is this even needed for at this point in the game, because you already have most of the best equipment in the game at that point, and your white mage can heal more HP than spamming heal potions over and over again outside of battle.
When you have money, money comes easy. When you don’t have money, it’s an agonizing struggle, finding that bridge to where you can get to the land where you can have money.
It’s usually not worth the effort to go back and get Steel Armor, even in spite of having the airship to whisk you back to Melmond without much effort, there are comparable pieces of armor available, found in the natural progression of exploration and advancing the story, that usually also have some degree of bonus protection instead of the base armor stats.
Most teams probably aren’t going to have multiple fighters, given the expense of equipping them, and if you don’t actually have a fighter in your team, it’s a moot point because no other class in the game can utilize Steel Armor, so really Steel Armor is kind of obsolete by the time you get to the end of the game.
The point is, Steel Armor becomes this kind of metaphor of being a reward for those who are capable of putting in the hard work, managing money well, and want to enjoy the fruits of labor at an earlier stage of life, rather than waiting until much later when you have the money, to get something that’s kind of not really needed anymore.
