Final Fantasy III: - The Last Light of the Crystals Is Calling To You!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Graphics, Improved Storyline, Job System, Sountrack

Cons: Reduced Difficulty From the Original Game, Some Jerky Animations

The Bottom Line: 
The DS RPG of 2006.

Author's Review
Throughout the years North America (and Europe also) has gotten the raw end of the stick in the world of video games. I'm speaking specifically of the Final Fantasy series, which the developer didn't see fit to release them all over here. Now that it's more of a mainstream series, we RPG fans haven't missed a beat. Previously the only Final Fantasy game that never saw the light of day outside of Japan was Final Fantasy III, but thanks to a remake on Nintendo's new handheld, we've finally been blessed with it. Does the game ultimately live up to the series' reputation? Read on to find out.

Final Fantasy III was the game which invented the job system as we know it, at least for this particular series. Though the system isn't as polished as it is in Final Fantasy V, or X-2, it's still very well done in this case. Most people will agree that this is the best Final Fantasy on the original NES, and actually, I'd agree with them.

Final Fantasy III

The main character of the story is a silver haired youth named Luneth. After falling into a hole in a cave near his hometown, Luneth eventually finds himself face to face with the crystal of wind, a magical stone which has immense powers. A voice offers him said power, except he must gather three more which are worthy of it's abilities. With the world in a dire situation, Luneth sets out to find these companions to ultimately save the world from an evil power which is trying to escape it's prison.

There are a couple of things which should be noted here. First off, in the original NES version, none of the characters had any story to them. They were all clones of each other, and none had any character or even dialogue after the first few moments of the game. The fact that they changed this for the remake is actually a good thing, because it makes the storyline more interesting.

The next thing worth noting is that for an 8-bit RPG, the storyline and world are actually very imaginitive You'll travel to a multitude of kingdoms, meet a lot of new characters, gather the other crystals from their respective resting places, and even travel to another world via airship. For those of you unimpressed with the storytelling aspects of most early RPGs you'll find this element improved quite a bit in this remake.

Final Fantasy III, in it's most basic form, is a turn based random encounter role playing game. That's a traditional RPG to you and me, but to others, it may seem like an archaic borefest. If you grew up with RPGs than FFIII will suit you well, but I see how others could be turned off, especially because of it's focus on gameplay rather than storyline which is unorthodox in this day and age. Final Fantasy III is at heart, a classic staple of the genre and an unforgettable entry in the series.

The job system, the game's call to fame, works well to give you a ton of control over your characters. Basically jobs award your character specialties. For example you can make any of your characters a mage, and while their attack and defense will be low, they'll be able to cast magic. There are a ton of options here to allow you to specialize your party for specific areas of the game. The jobs not only award your characters with different stats and abilities, but they also determine which equipment he/she can use. Jobs completely dictate how useful a character will be in battle, and there's a ton of room to experiment to find just the right combination.

Some of the available jobs are just completely useless. There's absolutely no use for a scholar in this game, while the Geomancer class loses almost all of it's usefulness just a few hours after you get it. Furthermore, why use the Knight when you unlock the Dark Knight a few dungeons later? The last set of jobs serve the only purpose of replacing your old mage classes, which is a disappointment. Many of the other jobs just seem like filler.

One of the more strategic aspects of the game concerns your magic points. Magic spells are all put into specific levels, depending on how strong they are. Characters that can make use of magic have a specific number of times they can use each level of magic, and the numbers will increase as you gain more levels. The strategic aspect to this is that you can only learn three spells for each level. This means that you're going to have to carefully manage what magic your characters learn. Thankfully, if you accidently teach them a spell, you can have them forget it, freeing up a slot for something better.

Final Fantasy III holds the record in the series for having the most useable vehichles. While you can always travel across the land on the back of a chocobo (captured from the forest), the game will require you to take to the air in one of five airships your party will come in command with throughout the adventure. Eventually you'll be travelling by land, sky, and one of your ships can even transform into a submarine.

One of the many complaints I see for this game is that it's random encounter rate is too high. To be completely honest, at no point did I feel this held true. The encounter rate to me, feels highly improved from the original game, and it's completely acceptable now. It's comfortable, and no longer will enemies attack your party after less than three steps like they tended to do in the original.

The major complaint that I've heard though, concerns the difficulty of this game. To be fair, it has been toned down from the original, but it's still not a very easy RPG. What's really cool is that if you get stuck you can usually find the solution being to mess around with your party's jobs, until you find a more effective team given the circumstances. Using this method not only requires you to think strategically, but it can cut out a majority of the level grinding.

Final Fantasy III oddly enough, makes use of the Nintendo Wifi Connection. This is limited only to sending messages to other people who own this game though, and it's more than a little lame. Square-Enix could have included options to trade items, or fight against someone elses' party, but they took the lazy route here.

The graphics are among the best that I've seen on the DS. Everything in the game is generated 3D and is polygonal. Final Fantasy III is a perfect showcase of just what the DS is capable of, even if most of the action is shown from an overhead perspective, it still looks very nice on such a small screen. The battles look absolutely wonderful, with a lot of small details on the characters and enemies, and I'm shocked that they were able to fit so much on-screen at once. The only problem is that the character animations are a bit jerky, but it's not a huge problem. Final Fantasy III even features a few full motion videos, which take up both screens, and are breathtaking to watch.

The music is very faithful to the original game, only much higher quality. Instead of simple bleeps and blips we're now treated to a mix of synth and high quality compositions. It's a really pleasant mix, and it's especially fun to compare the original's music to this remake. The soundtrack is fairly catchy, with the boss battle theme being my favorite song by far. The sound effects are also improved, and are slightly more realistic, with sword clashes and other appropriate effects.

Control is pretty decent, although I still complain about the DS Lite's directional pad hurting my fingers after extended playtime. FFIII thankfully features the option to play using the touch screen, and while this may not seem very useful, it certainly feels more comfortable even if it is a bit awkward. Basically if you have basic reading ability you should be able to jump right in with no problem. The menus are pretty self explanatory, but you'll have to learn for yourself through trial and error all the quirks of the job system. While the game does feature a tutorial on this, it fails to outline absolutely everything about it.

Final Recommendation
If you're a fan of RPGs and happen to own a DS, than FFIII is right up your alley. Heck, even if you don't already own the handheld, this is reason enough to take the plunge. FFIII is a classic RPG that's got a lot of heart, a decent storyline, fun battle system, and a very imaginitive setting. No RPG fan should go without this one.