This game was a lot of fun, way more than I was expecting. It has it's issues, the end game can burn and I'm not a fan of the fact that they brought the spell charges back for this, but outside of that, this was a good time. The world was fun to go through, the job system was fun, really glad the pixel remaster gets rid of the whole job sickness thing, the world was mostly fun to go through outside of the end game areas, although and this might be because of the remaster but the crystal tower wasn't the worst thing ever, the cave of shadows was probably my least favorite area and those bosses in the world of darkness weren't that fun either. Other than that this game was fun. Now on to FF4 with me.

I was so happy to finally get to play a proper version of this game after so many years. The original III was the best in the Famicom trilogy, but it was still jank enough that it warranted official revisitation.... that it never got. The only times it even came to the west was from an english rom hack and a half baked DS remake. When these pixel remasters came out, this is the one I was most excited about, because it deserved its due.
And it was well worth the wait! Like the other pixel remasters, this is largely 1-1 with the originals, with plenty of modern quality of life improvements. This is a stellar game. The world, the plot, the characters, and everything else are well fleshed out. Its the only Famicom game that ever surprised me, and I never expected to cry. This is definitely one of my favorites, and the upcoming release for consoles has got me excited!!

Final Fantasy III feels like the game where the series started to find its feet. It's the best of the NES/Famicom games, feeling in many ways like a refinement of the first game and eschewing the failed experimentation of the second game.

It's still kind of basic. There are recurring NPCs and they give one of the villains a kind of puzzling backstory, which is more than Garland or the Emperor got, admittedly. It's still pretty much paper-thin though and since this is a remake of the 2D version, the player characters go back to being generic rather than the unique named characters of the 3D version. It's an improvement over the first two games though, and not really bad for an 8-bit game.

The job system is new to this game and is a generally ok to good first outing for it. That you can't combine jobs like in FFV is a knock on it, and the game has a tendency to force, or at least heavily encourage, certain classes for some bosses or dungeons. It is at least nice enough to provide some NPC who will basically give you the answer when this comes up, but the system feels punitive. A really good job system promotes experimentation and ingenuity, but the lack of subclassing or borrowing other class commands removes the fun of finding synergy between classes, and the class forcing feels like a heavy-handed way of forcing the use of certain jobs, some of whom are honestly not very good outside of the one niche role the game gives them (looking at you, Scholar).

The Pixel Remaster does at least let you switch jobs freely, without penalty, which is nice.

Dungeon design is tighter and a big step up from the meandering dungeons of the first game and the awful trap room gimmick present in many of the second game's dungeons. If I had a complaint, it's that the dungeons are a bit unspectacular, but, again, 8-bit game, and they are at least fairly breezy most of the time.

The game doesn't pull punches and towards the end even basic enemies can hit pretty hard. It definitely rewards exploration more than the other games, offering a handful of optional dungeons that are presumably intended to be used to get some levels in as the difficulty curve spikes upwards. I admit I did some grinding to just overlevel most stuff, but if I hadn't, I feel like I'd have had quite the challenge.

I will say as well that much of my exposure to III has been through XIV, which has incorporated and adapted much of III's Crystal Tower arc into its own lore, so it was definitely interesting to see the inspiration and compare it with XIV.

III also has some fantastic music and as with the other Pixel Remasters, the soundtrack gets a big glow-up along with the nicer graphics and QoL features like auto/quick save, autobattle, a map button etc.

Overall, III is solid. It's the first of the Final Fantasy games where the series starts to hit its stride and feel good on its own, rather than as some exhibit of gaming history. It's still dated, of course, and there's little in here that hasn't been done better by other games in its own series (let alone other JRPGs), but it's a relatively short and fun ride.

Pretty much a step-up from FF1 in every way.
It's a cool, high fantasy game coming from the late 80s/early 90s about saving the world, with a cool sense of adventure, as the party both goes to cool places and meets new characters along the way, some of them even join them for a bit, and even tho they might not help in battle, they help in pushing the story forwards. Gives the story some characterization, even if the party of WoLs is a characterless blob itself, for all intents and purposes, the WoLs don't even need names. Oh well.

The gameplay also sees evolution, as the roster of jobs has grown to 20+ jobs throughout the game, will some being better than the others. Nonetheless, the number of available jobs gives the player better control of the game. It's worth noting that the PR version removes any penalties for changing your jobs, and you may do so at your own will.

Personally, I've found the game a bit on the easier side. Apart from some of the main and optional bosses, I breezed through the game with autoattacking/autobattling, all job having the ability to dual-wield weapons is kinda op, even mages' melee attacks would be enough for overworld mobs tbh.

Shame this version doesn't have any optional juiced up/ superbosses, similar to the FF3D Iron Giant.

FF3 PR has all other QoL improvements present in the game, the eight-directional movement, new music arrangements, and really well-done sprite work (the WoLs blend in just right tbh) enriched with some modern shaders/post-processing. The gameplay is really nice.

FF3 PR is probably the most accessible way to play Final Fantasy 3 nowadays. Sadly as it's with the other FF PR versions it's only available on PC and iOS/Android would be cool if Square released them on the PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, and the Switch.

I've played the game on the SteamDeck and can report that I haven't found any problems with it during my time with it (20 or so hours) on that platform.

Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster

No me ha gustado mucho, igual que el 1. La trama me gusta más la del 2, y no hay conversaciones entre protagonistas ni nada.

La OST sí que es la hostia. El sistema de jobs, está bien.

(5/10)

El mes que viene el IV #1Month1FF