A Long Lost Final Fantasy Game Finally Gets Released on the DS: Final Fantasy III

Author's Rating:

Pros: Interesting character classes, graphics, soundtrack    

Cons: Storyline, difficult at times, no DS perks    

The Bottom Line: 
Pretty good; time flies as you're having fun. I easily put 30 hours into my experience and I'll definitely play this again. 

Author's Review
Final Fantasy III was one of the main reasons why I wanted to get a Nintendo DS. I mean, it's one of those fabled games you read about. It was long unreleased in the United States with Squaresoft actually skipping it entirely and messing up the whole numbering system of the series until Final Fantasy VII onward. 

The story is mostly flat--you are in charge of four characters who must save the world and collect crystals and blah blah blah; it's basically the recycled story that took place in the first two games of the series (all of the stories are unrelated by the way). I was hoping for more of a good story to keep me going, but it was all quite bland and very dramatic in the worst of ways. There was still a problem of not really knowing what to do. I meandered for a while trying to investigate what to do next most of the time and 9 out of 10 times I would just wander around and then figure it out, but there was no real structure to it nor a very good ending of the game.

Like any RPG, the battle system is where the goodness is--or at least that's where it's supposed to be. It's turn-based exactly like the rest of the incarnations, but before the active-time-battle system where you know who acts out in sequence. You give each of your characters job to do such as making one a warrior, one a black mage, one a white mage, and one a monk. Each job has a different flavor to it in terms of abilities and stats to up your character's methods. I loved this part of the game because advancing your characters stats and playing with jobs was actually quite fun. The more you level up, the more powerful your character becomes.

While I stuck with probably about ten classes all in all throughout my whole experience there are over twenty different jobs to choose from. Now, some of these are pretty awesome like the Dragoon class where you can wield lances and use the Jump ability, which does amazing damage and then there's the Black Belt, which is more of a martial arts job. There are some magic jobs that came in handy such as the White Mage for healing, of course, and a few different other Mage jobs that gave different abilities as well.

Picking and choosing what jobs to use was a great strategy and I was constantly changing to see what worked and what didn't. I thought that some were big throwaways like the Ranger and Sage, but others were pretty exceptional and surprised me like the Geomancer job, which was more magic and attack based. I guarantee that on my next play through I'll choose different classes I beat the game with to not only add variety to the experience, but make it much more difficult.

Gameplay is key to a game's success, in my opinion, and Final Fantasy III doesn't disappoint in that arena. Throughout the game you encounter these secondary characters which actually tag along on your journey and help you when you're in need such as attacking whoever you're fighting against and even healing your party. You also have access to different travelling crafts extremely early on in the game such as an airship and a cool little submarine type ship you use to explore underwater caves and such that made the adventure all the more fun for a completist like me who must accomplish everything.

The graphics are very swell for the Nintendo DS with bright colors and very solid polygonal goodness to match a 64-bit look of a console such as the Nintendo 64. That said it's still dated looking, but I was still amazed by how good all of these graphics looked in the palms of my hands. The opening little FMV movie was pretty fantastic and I wished there was more of those types of graphics in the game, but alas there aren't, but you're still left with an amazing overhaul from the original Final Fantasy III, which was actually Final Fantasy II on the NES.

The music is provided by Nobuo Uematsu, of course, who does another fabulous take on the soundtrack--vastly improving the quality of the experience. I was very impressed by the tones through the DS speakers as the music swelled and sounded so pretty with a variety of different songs to aid you on your experience with the game. The other sound effects are pretty average, but doesn't really make or break the game playing. Spritely sounds of magic effects dazzle you through the speakers as you hear some pretty amazing orchestral bits from Uematsu's imagination that livens up the whole premise of the game. It's a shame that the story didn't match the depth of the music. 

The largest disappointment  with Final Fantasy III was the DS functions. Granted, this was one of the earlier games for the unit released in 2006, but you'd think the developers would add some cool little perks to it. Nope. You can play the game using your stylus and the touch screen, but it's extremely clunky and awkward especially if you're playing for a long period of time. The map plays prominent on the top screen when you're on the over world and every now and then the top screen is used to give a better depth to the graphics when you encounter a large object that takes up both screens (I think this happened once or twice), or used as a narrative device for dialogue, which I wasn't really fond of.

IGN has a really amazing review of this game on their website, which helped me get a grasp on what to expect when I bought it and the biggest advice they gave was that this was a blemished Japanese RPG that was updated, but still holding on to the archaic methods from the original NES version. Some parts of the game are very difficult where you'll advance into a dungeon, get completely creamed, have to start over from your last save point, and level grind until you're up to the challenge. There were definitely some long level grinding parts of the game where I wandered around for a few hours at a time to level up my characters and while I enjoy doing that, it didn't help the flow of the narrative any.

This isn't one of the best games I've played on the DS or one of the best RPGs, but I do enjoy the job system as it ushered in a fresh new approach to the scene. Sure, it's been done a lot since this came out, but it's still a fun and deep system to wrap your head around for your gaming pleasure. Final Fantasy III will probably appeal to more hardcore Final Fantasy fans and people who want to play it out of the specific fact that it has just been released stateside for the first time and hasn't been played by many Western audiences so that is really where my recommendation lies.

© Jason Haskins, 2011



Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy Chronicles
Final Fantasy VII Soundtrack