Final Fantasy III: Hit or Miss?
hoboninja80
80% score
It took nearly sixteen years, but it finally hit U.S. shores. Final Fantasy III, as you can read is the 3rd installment of the long standing Final Fantasy series. It also was the only main Final Fantasy title, to not make it to the U.S. But! Now its here. If familure to the general scheme of FF games, you'll be right at home here. The story, as with most FFs, starts off with the main protaginast finding a crystal, and begins to tell him that he needs to save the world... and so you begin! As with the original 2 FFs you must obtain the power of the 4 elemental crystals, to gain Jobs, and stop the major bad guys. There is also a few new things that the original didnt have such as the MogNet, which alows players to converse with one another and NPCs through moogle mail. The default job of Onion Knight, has been changed to Freelancer, and some of the other jobs have been rebalanced, such as the Sage and Ninja. Also, the battle system has had a very nice upgrade, alowing the bosses and enemies to have descent AI. But the real verdict? Can it stand the test of time, as other FF titles did? The game in general, is good for RPG fans, old or new. Those new to the series might be a little "lost at sea" in the begining but will soon catch on. The battle system is the classic turn based type, not the ATB similar to the FF titles afterwards. The story is a bit repetitive to other FF titles, and can easily be predicted. But what really makes this baby shine, is the graphics. For a DS game, this looks amazing, surpassing even PSone graphics, yes i said it, this game is better looking, graphically, than FFVII. The audio is also very amazing. Uematsu him self redid all of the musical scores for this game, including the final battle music, with his band, The Black Mages. Another new additon that adds to the mix of having it on the DS is the touch screen! You dont even have to touch a button playing this game. You can use the stylius for everything, sure it takes a bit to get used to it, but its still handy. The only problem was using the stylius during battles, the menus were so cramped together, it was very easy to choose the wrong option. Which wasn't much of a problem beacause you could just cancel the action, but if you chose wrong on the last character, you were screwed. Also new, the ability to Zoom. You must use this feature in order to find hidden treasure, as well as secret passages. The bread and butter of this title has to be the job system. This allows the player to choose over 20 different jobs. This allows players some much deserved replay value. But also new with the DS version is the Job Transition Phase. This is basically the number of battles you have to fight until your stats are unhindered between switching jobs. Just like in real life, you cant be good at something without a little practice. The worst thing one could say about this title would have to be the new additon of MogNet. As its not neccesary to even use this to beat the game, but it makes maxing jobs useless, unless you have a friend with a copy, or a wifi connection. The catch? You can only send one letter to one NPC, and one friend, per hour... yea... and to get the most of the game to finish the bigger side quests, you need to send 7 letters to your friends, not NPCs. But overall this game will stand the time of FF. As its not as ground breaking as some of the other previous FF titles, its still worthy of at least one play-through, or an additon to your current FF colection.
