Earlier this year I started into the epically-long Final Fantasy series, and this is assuredly the last one I'll be able to finish this year- Final Fantasy III, my fifth game in the series. Stan recently beat it as well, and while I don't remember exactly what he highlighted there, he probably mentioned one of the most noteworthy things about the game- how long it took to come to USA. It finally did a few years ago in a nice port on the DS, which is how I played it. It's not too different from your average Final Fantasy game in how it plays, but I'll give you a quick rundown on the main likes and dislikes I've got. First, what the game did well. It's a great update! The graphics look nice, and the controls are all pretty solid- the transition to the DS didn't hurt the game at all. If you want, you can play with odd stylus controls, but I never bothered and neither will anyone else I suppose. The music was as good as any other Final Fantasy game I've played. The combat is pretty basic, but that's to be expected from one of the first games of the series. The game always hovered nicely in between frustrating and broken, so the challenge was never that hard (also I grinded a shit-load before reaching the final boss). And finally, the idea of a job system is something I liked. Want to have a team full of bare-knuckle brawlers? Maybe half summoners and half healers? 20 different jobs means all sort of variety and everyone who plays the game will likely have a different party at the end depending on how they like to play. Now for the dislikes- the job system was set up kinda poorly. I never really felt like I had a good understanding of the significance of the job level. In addition, the later in the game you get, every time you switch jobs you need to fight severely underpowered for 10+ fights. That only encouraged me to stick with the jobs I already had equipped unless I absolutely had to switch. The game's plot just wasn't very good as well. It wasn't as bad as the first Final Fantasy, but the plot was pretty disappointing. It never felt like there was any direction to the game either. The environments were huge, but without a walkthrough I would have been completely lost and gave up a long time ago. But walkthroughs were used, as well as glitches and loopholes to speed up an otherwise boring game. While my post may make the advantages sound like they outweigh the disadvantages, I can assure you they didn't. The game was overall pretty boring and I wouldn't recommend it unless you were trying to get through the entire series. Which hopefully I will! Just don't expect another beaten Final Fantasy game 'til next year.
Final Fantasy "historians" will point o this game's most significant achievement being the introduction of job classes and job switching. The concept really hits its stride in FF5 where you get to set up secondary abilities. Want to be an armor-clad lancer who can also summon things? You got it. How about a sword-wielding white mage? Sure thing. I'm probably playing FF5 next (even though I said I'd do Tactics Advanced) and one of the many things I'm looking forward to is setting up zany and unique job combinations. Then in 6-8 there are really no job classes at all. Characters are almost interchangeable, combat-wise, with the exception of a few unique abilities. And then 12 is most easily comparable to 10 in that it kind of"suggests" the role each character should play with a sphere grid, but allows you to customize it all however much you want to. Anyway, now that we've both beaten FF3, are we allowed to give Sheridan crap until he does so? Or will he just groan every time the game is mentioned?
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