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AtomFinal Fantasy III DS: old school RPG for the hardcore
Don’t let this cutesy-tootsey remake mislead you into thinking Final Fantasy III on the DS is easy. The game will kick your ass back into 8-bit land if you’re not paying attention. For anyone who’s tired of brainless, easy turn-based fighting that holds your hand the whole way, Final Fantasy III is your answer. This modern remake of an old school RPG keeps its difficulty intact whether you like it or not. Unfortunately, since it’s an older RPG, the story shows its age: four warriors are chosen by a crystal to save the world from darkness.
A refreshing kick in the face for me was the fact that this game is HARD. We’ve been getting soft-bellied with our forgiving, modern-day RPGs. Getting KO’ed in here means you’d better have a phoenix down handy or you’ll be dragging that useless teammate around until you find one or a spring capable of reviving people. Inns aren’t going to help you there, sister. While this may scare some pansy-ass gamers away, it may also be exactly what some people have been waiting for.
After recovering from the "Wow, I really need to save often because I die a lot" shock, I noticed another thing: the music in this game is remarkable. While all the music has essentially stayed the same, the DS makeover has improved it. There really is no excuse not to play this with headphones on. At times, I can’t believe the sounds are coming out of the DS when I play this. When I was watching the long opening movie, someone from the next room shouted to me, "Are you watching a movie in there or something?" Yes, it’s that good.
One thing a lot of people have been making a fuss over is the fact that this is the first 2D Final Fantasy to make the leap into 3D — and what a fantastic leap it was. The characters with their cherub-like faces are cute to the point where I want to pinch their cheeks and say, "Awwww." Dungeons look a little sparse and drab, but towns are full of details like turned over buckets and items on tables. Using the Mini spell actually shrinks your characters on screen. Using the left trigger to zoom in also reveals switches to hidden passages as well as treasure.
While the graphics have been overhauled, the menu system unfortunately hasn’t been. I wish they had added the "optimize equipment" found in the later games. Load times between walking around and entering houses or battles were a few seconds long, but disguised by the screen fading in and out. A puzzling thing is why the top screen isn’t utilized more. It displays a big world map when wandering around the world, but in towns and dungeons, it’s dark most of the time. A display of character status would have been more useful.
If you’ve always wanted to play one of the older Final Fantasies, but couldn’t get over the antiquated 2D graphics (for shame!), then Final Fantasy III was made for you.
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3 Responses to “Final Fantasy III DS: old school RPG for the hardcore”
November 28th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
I realized I was in for a good time when I went into the mythril cave in the second town and got wiped by two skeletons. I also realized that I had to save on the world map to keep from starting over. One hour later I was back, but I avoided the cave like the plague for a good ten levels.
I, too wish the top screen was utilized more. I can live without an optimize feature, because they at least have the decency to tell you how your stats are affected. My only real beef is with the fact that holding down the ‘A’ button on the battle menu doesn’t auto accept. I used that quite a bit in later games. Now I have to hit that damn thing at least three times to get to the net person waiting to kill something. But man do I love the hardcore nature of this game!
November 29th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
From translated ROMs I know this all too well. The NES Final Fantasies definitely have an… interesting difficulty curve. The original was pretty well balanced, but this one takes a hard curve towards insanely difficult after you get through a few quests. I ran into trouble shortly after the pirate area.
And FFII is a whole other story. The encounters on that one range from absolutely pathetic almost everywhere to absolutely impossible in other places, with little in-between. I personally think the original is the best of the bunch, but III is definitely a good one.
Gaming Map
November 28th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
oh god i love this game, im right near the ending. of course, that ‘difficulty’ level of it can easily be overcome if you take an hour of your time and just level up youre characters, but then it becomes less fun(since it’s less challenging).
i actually went through a large chunk of the game with all four characters having the dragoon job(i call it my kickass scuicidal party).
they all use jump to deal major damage to enemies, but they cant heal or revive each other. good thing theres blood lances, so whenever they do damage they gain health. i went through about 1/5 of this game with just that class, it was awsome.