Final Fantasy III (DS) Review
Posted by Jordan Williams on 12.19.2006
It's the only Final Fantasy game never to hit the stores in the U.S. Was the almost two decade long wait and the complete facelift actually worth it?
Final Fantasy has been one of the most successful franchises in the world today. Not to mention what many people consider to be the benchmark of RPG games. Despite its fairly well track record, there are some parts that have been skipped over. Well, only for those in the western world.
Enter Final Fantasy III.
Way back in 1990, Final Fantasy III burst out onto the Famicom. Notice I didn't say NES. Why? Because the game was never released here. American gamers never got to play Final Fantasy III unless they imported a Famicom, because the oh-so-nefarious ways to play old games we have NOW didn't quite exist back then. Thus, Final Fantasy III was lost in the shuffle in America, spurring the wacky renumbering we had to deal with in the late 90s. You know which one I am talking about, how Final Fantasy IV became II, VI became III, and V was non-existent. Anyway, Square-Enix has set out to fix that by re-releasing Final Fantasy III on the Nintendo DS.
Now, this isn't by any means just a simple buffed up port like the newer re-released (does that even make sense?) Final Fantasy games nowadays. They decided to make good use of the Nintendo DS by giving the game a complete facelift, story, design, and graphic wise. They completely enhanced the story, giving each of the four heroes (and supporting cast) personalities and speaking roles. The design of the game itself stays very true the original, but adds in a little more flare for the new generation, and as you can see, the graphics have a VERY nice change to them. Did it turn out for the better? Well, that's why I'm reviewing it.
Graphics
The first thing you will notice when you boot up FFIII is that the whole game has been treated as if it were something new. You are greeted by a fairly low res, but still impressive entrance video summing up the first few moments of the game and giving the four main characters a bit of personality (something they were completely devoid of in the original). After that, you finally start the game and you see that you are in a very lush 3D world. The colors are bright and everything animates very well. The dungeons and towns have a very lively feel to them, and although a lot of the scenery is just that, scenery. It gets the job done. Especially in battles. All of the monsters have unique movements and attack animations, but they also yield two of my biggest gripes. It's been a staple, but most of the monsters reoccur as palette swaps later in the game, and also when the monsters die they polygons ten to clip through each other at the same time...it just looks a bit clippy and sloppy. But they are minor gripes.
Before...
...and after!
You have the ability to zoom in EXTREMELY close to the action to get a better look on this, while this function is actually used as a gameplay mechanic, sometimes it's very cool to run through a dungeon zoomed in a bit so you can see the detail in the character's (ever changing) clothes. But, as stated, zooming deep can actually uncover secret switches and items hidden to the naked eye. So it never hurts to zoom in on a suspicious area to see what you might find.
The presentation and style of the game are well done, yet another gripe here is that for almost the entire game. You will never see anything on the top screen. When you are on the overworld it serves as a very useful map, but in dungeons and towns and even battles, it just turns off. There's a lot they could've done with it and it does hurt the presentation a little bit.
The art style shouldn't be anything new. The early Final Fantasy games were always about pitting fairly cute and weak looking heroes against some pretty nasty looking monsters. You'll feel that same sense of scale the first time you're four big headed, bored looking heroes look up to see a very angry Bahamut.
Overall, the graphics got a much deserved overhaul and they look great on the DS. It pushes the DS's power almost the limit, and it shows that they really wanted to make this game looks like it belonged on THIS generation, despite the fact that it's over a decade and a half old.
Gameplay
Now, we get to the meat of any Final Fantasy game. The gameplay. Now, let's get this out of the way right now. This is an old school Final Fantasy game. There's no abundance of save points, no potions lying everywhere, no Phoenix Downs at every turn. If you have grown accustom to the new aged Final Fantasy games. Get ready for a rude, bare-boned awakening.
This game is pure and standard Turn Based Action. The stats dictate who attacks and in what order. But you pick and choose what you want to do. You do your move, they do theirs. That's it. But there's more to it. Final Fantasy III was also the first game to bring the now popular Job System (JSYS) to the FF Franchise. The system was basically that you could make any character a 'job'(class) whenever you wanted. One minute you could have a Knight, then the next you could trade in his armor for a pointed hat and make him a Black Mage. With 20+ classes to chose from (once you unlock them all), the party configurations are literally endless. Although some classes are naturally more useful than others, at every point in the game you'd be able to find time to experiment with what YOU are comfortable with, which can sometimes actually be better for you rather than the recommended team.
Vikings are just one of the many classes you'll eventually have open to you.
And like I said before, this is a strictly old school affair. On the overworld, you can save to your heart's content. But soon as you set foot in a dungeon. You'd better be ready to finish it in one go. Because there are NO save points inside of dungeons. You have to do in one run or you try again later. The learning curve does tend to jump at times. Early parts of the game being a bit too easy but once you really get going, you realize fast that you need to start grinding a bit more before you move. There's been many times where I'd get eradicated by the MONSTERS in the dungeons quite a bit before I even got a chance to move onto the next floor.
Jumping back to the JSYS, while the initial numbers of classes you do get are a bit weak, they are the pillars for what the rest of the classes will be based on: A fighter, a magic user, and an all rounder. A balanced party will usually yield better results than just picking anything willy nilly. Don't be afraid to experiment, but also don't get careless. Every time you swap jobs, the character will go through a down phase of sorts where their stats will be halved for a certain amount of battles. They also do not gain any Job EXP during these times. This hurts a lot if you try to switch a crucial job in the middle of the dungeon, because that halving of the stats will DEFINITELY be exploited by the monsters.
The magic system is a bit odd. You don't get the standard Magic Points the way you are used to having them. With each spell costing a certain amount of points. Instead, each spell has a level (1-8) and any magic user has only a certain amount of times they can use a spell of that level before they can't anymore. For example, Cure and Poisona are both level 1 spells. You only have 14 uses of either one. This obviously eliminates the need to have MP regenerating items(there are none) because the most powerful spells in the game will still only take 1 point from that level, even though the more powerful the level, the less points you have overall. Also, unlike games passed this. You don't learn your spells, you find them on the battlefield and buy them from stores and equip them to a character as you would a weapon or armor. Remember though, just because you can equip magic to a character doesn’t mean they can use it. So it's pretty stupid to give your Monk that nice Firaga spell.
Yes, you can finally make your life complete and have a party of four Dragoons.
There are some flaws the gameplay. Most of the classes you do get tend to be very useless in the long run; some of the specific ones are only useful for key points in the game, and not much after that. The lack of save points inside danger areas might be a turn off to newer players, because it sucks HARD to work all the way to the bottom of a dungeon only to get killed by the boss in one turn and have to do it all over again. Also, the lack of Ether means once someone is out of MP, they are out until the pop a very rare elixir. Also, if you swap classes, not only will your stats dropped, but if you swap a non-magic using class to a magic using class, you don't get any MP to USE the spells you just got. So many a time you will have to stop and actually think out a battle plan before you launch yourself into the next dungeon full of very frequent random encounters. Also, the way you control the game is very bland. On the DS, I would've liked to see more things done with the touch screen. Even though you can litterally control the entire game with the touchscreen. There's just nothing really there to make you WANT to. You have the same level of control using the D-pad and buttons.
This game will kick your ass if you don't know what you are jumping into. But once you get a feel for it you will feel a great sense of accomplishment when you fell the usually painfully annoying (many bosses attack 2-3 times in a single turn) boss at the end of the dungeon.
Sound
When you play Final Fantasy, you expect two things to always be certain. Great story. Great music. This game had a pretty thin, but decent story...the sound however, well. It's decent, but not exactly great. All of the memorable bells and whistles are there. But the thing is that it's all repetitive. Although I will admit that hearing the "You just won!" jingle never truly gets old. The somewhat forgettable battle music does. It doesn’t help that outside of the opening video theme, that all of the music has that odd pseudo-MIDI twinge to it. It's all good quality music, bit it repeats far too much for it to really be any good.
There's a severe lack of voice acting, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but with more and more DS games at least giving you snippets of voice acting, there should've been SOMETHING in this game to give it some flavor.
Other than that, swords sound like swords, spells sound like spells. None of it really bad, it's just not really good either.
Lasting Appeal
It's a great RPG for the NES; it's an even greater RPG for the DS. While the replay isn't all that much since once you beat it, there isn't much else to do. You could always challenge yourself by trying to do a level-cap and trying to max out a certain class. This game is a fairly long affair. If you take a straight shot through, it's still a good 15 hours. You'd be missing a lot, and would probably have a harder time due to not stopping to grind up a bit.
Overall, the lasting appeal is very average. There's no real reason to come back to this game full time after you beat it a few times. Also, Mog-net, while a good idea. Is almost completely useless. This game could've done with a multiplayer feature similar to Final Fantasy VI where you could assign certain characters to certain players.
Fun Factor
If you want a challenge, this is it. Its pure hardcore nostalgia at it's finest. When you invest so much time into building up a job in hopes of beating a boss and finally getting the oh-so-wonderful flash on the screen signaling that he is dead, there will be some moments where you will pump you fist in the air and celebrate. Mostly, because at that point three party members will be dead and the other probably would have been one turn away from the same fate. Close calls like that, and the sheer amount of customization you have over your party will make this game a fun, yet mildly frustrating experience.
The 411
Square-Enix promised a remake of the tale that never hit Western shores. They served it up on a golden plate. While FFIII might not THE best RPG of the last few years. It's definitely one of the best handheld RPGs in a long time. It's a shame that the difficulty will turn a few people off from this, especially people new to RPGs in general. If you want to play a game that you haven't played without the aid of Google before. It's a pretty sound investment to go ahead and snag this game for DS while you can. This will definitely make the list when everyone looks back at the best games for the DS. Let's hope Square Enix can do this again sometime.
Graphics
9.0
It's a very visually pleasing game. A little more polish could've helped, but it showed that the DS is capable of giving some very good 3D, especially in the detail of the summon spells.
Gameplay
9.0
Bread and Butter turn based style at it's finest. It'll be challenge to those new to the genre, but if you've played an FF game before, you know what to expect. Just don't mistake this game for a pushover.
Sound
6.5
Dissappointing. The songs aren't all that memorable, and ones that are you've heard them all before. Full voice acting is too much to ask, but at least SOME voice clips would've helped.
Lasting Appeal
7.5
Once you beat it about two times. You are pretty much done with it. Mognet is a throwaway, and there is no multiplayer to speak of. The game has some decent length and a few sidequests. But unless you really want to use every combination ever, you won't c
Fun Factor
9.5
The adventure is fun, finding new classes is VERY fun, and you WILL feel a sense of accomplishment once you beat the game. Finding the right mixture of magic and power will be a very good lesson and pre-planning. When it all works out in your favor, you'l
