Final Fantasy III - Better Than the Original

Final Fantasy III is the last Final Fantasy that was released on an 8-bit console and was a huge improvement over the first two that came before it.

Again, the story was basic, involving four orphans out to save the world against the darkness by harnessing the four elemental crystals of light. But when I played it back then I found it addictive, and with the addition of changing classes on the sly as each crystal gave you new job classes to play with. It even improved the game by introducing summons. 

By introducing summoners, invokers and sages you could summon a monster to do one action and it differed depending on which class you were playing as. Changing classes involved using Capacity points and depending on the switching cost different amounts. For example, going from fighter to knight would only cost eight as they were related, but going from fighter to black wizard would cost a lot more.

There were not as many bugs as there were in the two predecessors, and the annoying hit the air feature was now gone. Oh, did I mention that you get a submarine and an airship with its own shops and a cannon that hits all enemies at the start of battle? The conflict between Dorga, Unne and the villain Zande is quite basic but you feel sorry for the villain when he feels cheated but you as a player realize, he was given a great gift. The Main NPCs run a gamut of who’s who, from a Princess to an Ancient, oh and the four old men who think they are the actual light Warriors crack me up every time.   

But if we cut out the reminiscing, the question you want to be answered is ‘is the pixel remake any better?’ Well compared to the DS version that’s a matter of opinion, I personally thought the DS version was a slog to go through and didn’t work for me. As opposed to the 8-bit Famicom/Nintendo version. There has been little need for improvements to a great game, but again the graphics are a pleasure to look at. However, the text is a bit hard to read, but a mod can fix that. You know who is talking through different texts, as the original confused in that respect.  The music again supervised by Nobuo Uematsu is amazing, the boss theme and the Dark Cloud theme I enjoy especially.

The gameplay has changed a little, the difficulty has been lowered so it is a little easier to enjoy the game. Instead of Capacity, you get job levels, where you get more powerful when dedicated to one class. So, changing or upgrading, a fighter to a knight for example will handicap you till you build the knight back up but the character ends up more powerful for it. A few changes to the classes have been implemented, from the Bard gaining a new song every ten job levels instead of being stuck with the song his instrument plays, and Geomancers terrain ability doesn’t backfire. So, in summary, both are good but the new version on Steam is easier to get and get into.

 I rate it Five Onion Knights out of Five.