New Class Idea

[TouchandFeel]

No. Dark Knights were not in FF3 until the DS release, 16 years after the original. In the original, they were "Demon Swordsman" or "Magic Swordsman" (the actual Japanese name being Makenshi, as opposed to the Japanese name for Dark Knights, Ankoku Kishi), though the most popular fan translation called them Mystic Knights, and they used level 1-3 white magic (which is why you can't really consider them Dark Knights). Their weapons are all katana, with the exception of the Moonring Blade and Ragnarok sword.

Cecil uses the same types of swords (curved and single-bladed; you can tell because of the slight extension at the top of the combat sword sprite) as FFIII Mystic Knights, which makes sense because FFIV is basically FFIII fanfic. However, they've never been given Japanese names like other katana in the series in any English translation, and Edge wields the swords with those typical names.

Pretty much all of this has been retconned into what you said, but I prefer to study the originals. :P

I'm going to simply agree to disagree here.

To me Makenshi are closer to and in my opinion, the precursor to, Dark Knight. For starters, the original name Makenshi translates closer to Dark Swordsman/Cursed Swordsman/etc., being a combination of maken (evil/cursed sword) and shi (person), similar to kenshi (ken/sword+shi/person --> swordsman), which conceptually is closer to Dark Knight than what the series has defined as Mystic Knight. Their specialized weapons, dark swords, were also darkness aspected. Yes, they had white magic but that fits with neither Dark Knight nor Mystic Knight, so you can't say that it steers them exactly in either direction. In my opinion (and Squeenix's apparently since that is what they changed it to) Makenshi's closest iconic job equivalent is Dark Knight.

It is true that Cecil is the first appearance of a class/job that fits what became the iconic form of Dark Knight with the ability Darkness/Soul Eater and psuedo black magic, however he is not the first reference to a Dark Swordsman/ Dark Knight due to the FF3 class and Leon from 2. Semantic argument really. I just don't consider Cecil the "original".

As for the swords, yes the Makenshi from 3 used what were most likely katana. Cecil, as far as I can tell, did not. I base this off all the original concept art for Cecil done by Amano which shows him to be using a sword most akin to a Western longsword based on the fact the sword has a cross-guard.

Anyhoo, I mainly was opposed to your usage of Mystic Knight as I feel it is incorrect since that is a different iconic FF job and it doesn't fit with the class from FF3. If you want to classify Makenshi as it's own unique job, I can get behind that. Cecil being the "original" is based on opinion and where you feel dark knight first truly appeared in the series.