Product

Final Fantasy III

Platform

Nintendo DS

Publisher

Square Enix

Rating

★★★☆☆

Summary

As a remake of a NES game, Final Fantasy III is only for fans of classic console RPGs.

Review

In 1990, Final Fantasy III was released for the Famicom, as the Japanese version of the NES is known. It, like Final Fantasy II, was never brought to the English speaking world, eventually resulting in Final Fantasy IV and VI being brought to America as II and III respectively. There were unofficial translations made, but until recently no official translations made.

The basic story is thus: Four orphan children are chosen by the elemental crystals to save the world by restoring the balance between the powers of light and darkness. Although they naturally do this by championing the force of light, it’s interesting to note that the world was nearly destroyed by excessive light a thousand years ago. Nevertheless, the story is rather poor by today’s standard. The player characters have little personality, and none of the NPCs really hang around long enough for you to really care about them.

While the PCs are nearly indistinguishable, they are highly customizable, with more than twenty different jobs that they can be assigned to. Although these classes are gained gradually, over four events in the game, none of them can be considered strictly better than older classes, which is a departure of the NES original. For example, although the fourth tier-class ‘Devout’ has access to better spells and more high-level spells than the first-tier ‘White Mage’, the White Mage’s massive number of low-level spells makes the White Mage more useful for general dungeon-crawling, while the Devout is better for boss fights. While remaining in a job makes you more adept at it, you get no advantage from other classes a character might have been in the past, unlike from newer versions of the job system.

The game is generally challenging, but not impossible, without going out of your way to level up. There are a couple of exceptions, but overall the difficulty is well-balanced.

The graphics are nothing special, simple 3d graphics that break up into pixels when you zoom. With the fixed camera angles the graphics are very reminiscent of those of the Golden Sun games on the GBA.

There are many extras than can be unlocked in the game. Ultimate weapons for each class, secret quests. Unfortunately, the method of unlocking them involves linking up with other players over wireless connections. As there is no other reason for the connectivity to exist, this seems to just be an extra annoyance that will stop most people from seeing the extra content.

Overall, Final Fantasy is a classic console RPG that will appeal to fans of classic console RPGs. If the Final Fantasy Series starts at VII for you, you probably wont enjoy this game. If you’ve played and loved the Final Fantasy ports on the GBA, then this one is as good as FFIV.

★★★☆☆

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