Digital Entertainment NewsNews and reviews from the perspective of the average gamer.

Subscribe to DigNews

Final Fantasy III

It arrives with huge potential. As the only mainline Final Fantasy title to never before see release in the US, there’s a lot of pressure on Final Fantasy III for the DS. First, it must live up to the rabid dreams of avid series fans who felt they’ve missed out on the Lost Gospel of Thomas or something of similar importance. Then, they must fend off critics only too willing to rip into it with lines like, “there’s a reason Final Fantasy III was never released in the US before this… it stinks!”

But this reviewer enters the fray with an open mind. While I’m a fan of the Final Fantasy series, I’m not without my critiques of the series. And yet I have no preconception that the only way to be a critic is to be, well, savagely critical. I’m just a gamer who likes the games he reviews to be, y’know… fun. Fortunately, SquareEnix is a publishing house that likes their games to be, whenever possible, y’know… fun.

And so, at long last, we have it. Final Fantasy III. In my Final Fantasy: A Retrospective series, even I wrote that FFIII had flaws and there was a reason it was never released in the US. But I also wrote that, “hopefully, the upcoming DS remake later this year will rescue that situation and make the game enjoyable for modern gamers.” Or words pretty close to that effect.

Now, having played the game over the last several days, I can honestly say that SquareEnix has surpassed themselves with Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS. No, I don’t mean it’s necessarily a better game than Final Fantasy XII of the PS2. What I do mean is, SquareEnix actually put a lot of time into updating Final Fantasy III for the DS to make it, know… fun. Fun for the modern gamer who doesn’t still swoon at the “classic” feel of 8-bit NES titles.

From the moment you pop the cart in and power up, Final Fantasy III has a special feel. The graphics are at least as good, if not far better, than anything that’s been on the DS since its launch about a year ago. Of course, top-notch graphics are par for the course for SquareEnix, right? Well, not necessarily.

You see, anyone who remembers Final Fantasy Origins and Final Fantasy Chronicles will on the PSone will be only to happy to tell you that other than making the games work on PSone hardware, virtually no effort was made to make those collections of early NES and SNES Final Fantasy titles look like anything more than what they were originally – 8-bit and 16-bit games. Sure, they tagged in some cinemas, but the games themselves were pretty much the same as they’d even been.

But not this time. This time, with Final Fantasy III on DS, Square proved they can actually put some effort in and – while staying true to the game’s origins – really reinvent a classic game for the modern era of gaming. The facelift covers nearly every aspect of the game, but let’s take it a step at a time.

Starting with the graphics. Final Fantasy III looks very little like the original 8-bit game that Japanese gamers enjoyed back in 1990. Instead of flat sprites, characters are rendered in polygonal glory from an above-and-away angle most of the time, kind like being in the upper deck watching an NBA game. Cut-scenes enhance this by allowing you close-ups of characters in the kind of polygonal detail that will make N64 and PSone fans reminisce.

But the redesign isn’t just sprites-to-polygons. It goes deeper, affecting even the battle system. Classic NES-era Final Fantasy titles all used the flat left-right side-screen battle layout with four characters looking like they’re standing on one another’s heads, moving out a step to attack, then back a step once they were done, with monsters arrayed on the left side of the screen in much the same way.

None of that here. Instead, the game makes use of the DS’s touch-screen, allowing you to choose to either control actions the old-fashioned, hit the A button a lot way, or use the DS stylus to choose your menu options, select spell and attack targets and so on. When you are selecting your battle-actions, the camera stays mostly overhead to make the task easier. Once your turn-based actions are all in, the camera moves down to more of a sideline view to better show off the more-modern battle graphics, which are closer to a 3D polygonal landscape.

The story has also been made over, somewhat significantly. In the NES original, you start out as four orphans trapped in a cave who need to kill a giant turtle to escape. Yet when they do, they receive a crystal that allows them to change class and the rest of the game was retreading that basic dynamic over and over again.

Well, that’s not THIS Final Fantasy III. Instead, you are alone in a cave when the adventure begins. Yes, you do have to defeat a giant turtle, but instead of receiving a crystal that allows you to change class, you are kinda transported to this “other realm” where a crystal talks to you about the forces of light growing weak and the forces of darkness growing strong and how it needs your help. You then are released to the surface world and over the next three hours of game play, you eventually meet up with the other three party members.

They’re not all necessarily orphans. The newly redone story fleshes out the characters, giving them more diversity and background, and far more interesting storylines. Yes, you get to change classes – this is the Final Fantasy that introduced the job system, after tall – but not right away.

The game is not easy. It’s not uncommon to need phoenix downs and loads of potions and healing magic. And when you start out, you’re level 1 and have maybe 35 hit points, so the game remains true to its old school level of challenge. Folks who enjoyed the two Lunar remakes on PSone should find a lot to like here, since the game seems to push you hard even in some of your more common random battles.

For example, I can’t remember the last time I needed to travel back to town several times for healing and make sure I leveled up gradually before I could completely conquer an early dungeon. Not often of late. But in Final Fantasy III, in keeping with its roots, I definitely needed Cid’s airship, which is introduced very early, to get from town to town alive in the early going, and I made at least five back-and-forths between the game’s second dungeon and a nearby town before I was strong enough to venture all the way in and solve the dungeon.

While the game’s hard, it’s not unbeatable, so the game balance issues have been addressed compared to the 1990 Japan-only release. Sure, some boss battles go a lot smoother if you have your party members switched to certain jobs, but even the toughest bosses are beatable with the right strategy. And I do have to say that even though it’s merely a different way to do the same repetitive thing over and over again, I kind of enjoy using the stylus instead of the A button to interact with the world of Final Fantasy III.

In my summary of Final Fantasy III in my retrospective on the series, I wrote, “The frustrating, flukey nature of leveling and battles shows off Final Fantasy at its worst. Fortunately, FFIII marked the series’ swan song on NES and better days lay ahead. With US gamers blissfully unaware of how bad FFII and FFIII were, they had no bitter taste in their mouth to sour them as the series made the leap to the SNES era.”

Well, in a sense, US gamers will still be blissfully unaware of how bad Final Fantasy III originally was, because the DS remake is such a complete overhaul that anyone who plays this version of the game will most certainly enjoy it. The only roots to the 8-bit original are the important ones: a challenging level of play, and a connection to the game’s place in the history and evolution of the series. Final Fantasy III may not be the series at its best, but thanks to a very thorough makeover, it no longer represents Final Fantasy at its worst.

[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]

Tags: Final Fantasy III

Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 12th, 2006 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Enter your email address:

Related Posts

• Final Fantasy III
• DS RPG Here
• Final Fantasy III
• The Saga Is Complete
• FF III Screenshots
• Factual Fantasy

Post a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.