A pretty fun entry, I thought the job system and story were great, but nothing makes me despise this game more than the final stretch of the game. Up until that point, I'd had fun with the challenges in the game, and I don't remember the grind being too bad.

But then you REALLY hit the bullshit wall.

So, after getting the Earth Crystal when you clear the Ancients' Maze, you then get access to Syrcus Tower. And god damn, if this wasn't one of the absolute most bullshit difficulty spikes I'd ever experienced in a videogame, ever. I ground for hours, changed jobs, ground some more, and would still get absolutely stomped in just the first floor of the tower.

I dropped this game after that and I never intend to go back to it.

Apart of introducing the job system, everything else is terrible in this game. By far the worse of the numbered series.
Story is generic almost like a remake from the past two games, very unfair last dungeon (even in the remake they didn't fix this issue). The dungeons are annoying, particularly more when you need to become tiny. That's a feature that fortunately they quitted from the following titles. Also this constant crash of the airship is the most irritating of all. If this version is supposed to be better than original, I would stay very far from the NES version.

The biggest tragedy I can currently think of is that they didn't complete the Wonderswan port of this and include a more faithful version in Origins with SNES-esque graphics

Here's the good part: a lot of care obviously went into making this thing.

The rest will be the bad part.

We Occidental are stuck with this version, perhaps forever, a disappointment after FFII, an inferior attempted refinement of FFI's magic and combat mechanics, an interesting job system poorly paced and implemented, occasionally nice looking towns and occasional horrific looking characters, a sluggish combat system, and a duct-taped storyline that is by turns inane, maddening, contradictory, hokey, banal and usually all at once.

2 monsters at a time was a mistake. The final dungeon was done better in the second game, a sour taste prevails, and I was left wanting not only never to play this game again but wanting to punch it in the face.

I haven''t played all of the games in this series, but I would be unsurprised in the extreme if this doesn't end up dead last.

Perhaps the Famicom version would change my mind.
仕方がない

I played a bit of this on PC and I was liking it but the graphics weren't so hot and something about the controls & UI rubbed me the wrong way so I tried it on my Galaxy S10+ and it was a lot better. Clearly the UI was made for a touch screen especially with the use of zooming in and it looks rather clean on my phone than my laptop.

First play through - 36h36m19s
I was given three stars

Important tips the game doesn't tell:
You can group heal & attack with white & black magic spells. When you select the spell, look at the top right hand corner and press all.

Higher overall level is more important than job level because it determines more how many spell charges and damage you do.

This has to be the absolute worst PC-Port I played this year.

Okay, back when I was a child, I played this on my DS and absolutely fell in love with FFIII, it's music and yes, even the aesthetic of the remake. It was my third Final Fantasy after 8 and 7.

So because I finished 5.3 of the Shadowbringers expansion for Final Fantasy 14 lately and got overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia for FF3 because "Eternal Wind" played all the time, I wanted to go back and play it for a couple of hours to see whether I would still enjoy it.

I bought the steam port of the DS Remake years ago, so naturally I went with this, as I was familiar with this version of the game already. To my disappointment, it turned out that the PC version is an absolute lazy port of the Android Port of the DS Remake. I wouldn't mind the floating PNGs all over the place, if the rest would've worked as it should but the sound quality is absolutely abysmal. After one minute in an area, the music starts crackling really bad to a point, where listening to the in my eyes perfectly alright and at times great soundtrack, is atrocious and gets straining really quickly. I refuse to play this horrible version any longer, even tho I still believe I would've enjoyed at least the first few hours of this game, before it becomes grindy and tedious.

I have a strong love hate relationship with this game but I have immense respect for it.

It's plot is strung along by haphazard events and pure whimsy without any tangible pacing to speak of most of the time. The map and game world continually gets bigger and bigger with some new big bad enemy. Every time you think the game might end somewhat soon there's always something new behind the curtain, and the first couple times it can be interesting but it just keeps happening. It's essentially "But wait, there's more!" the game. Because of this the game can really really drag on as it goes. It's honestly probably like 40% too long in my opinion and parts of the middle are especially bloated like some never ending shounen anime.

With that said I honestly think it's a fantastic time to play for the most part. The job system is incredibly fun to play around with and it give the battles and overall feel of the game a flair that helps it a lot. Even some of the endlessly growing map has entertaining bits in it's approach with it's almost Metroid ideology with the different vehicles and means of travel you unlock through the story giving you access to new and old areas in new ways and there's even an added sense of optional exploration and content to this system making what was already a bloated game even longer, but it still felt worthwhile to me. Finding the hidden summons, especially going back and fighting the unbeatable enemy from much earlier in the game and making it become a summon, were unforgettable moments.

It's a game that tried to have a epic story early in the franchise but didn't really know how to integrate it in to this format very well just yet, but it really tried and despite it's glaring shortcomings in pacing I will always have fond memories of playing it. It's fun gameplay in the Job system actually make me enjoy it significantly more than even Final Fantasy IV, which has a story that is leaps and bounds better but was much more boring of an experience playing for me.

The original was my least favorite in the series by a country mile. How did the remake fare? Well, it did add a nice graphical coat of paint to it, and I will give it credit for attempting to tweak the jobs to make them more unique and balanced. Getting a full heal every time you beat a boss seems like a subtle change but it made the final dungeon far more bearable.

But it still suffers from a broken difficulty curve, lots of grinding, and some horrendously bad enemy balancing. Apparently they had actually given the characters a lot more personality, but for whatever reason chose to omit most of the dialogue from the finished product, making them pretty boring. It's better than the original but I doubt I'd play it again.

I originally didn't like the Famciom version of FF3, it's a rough game with a story that's a step back from 2, an overall uninteresting job system, and just kind of a lack of memorable moments or setpieces.

The remake does fortunately fix some of these issues, but overall is still just a good game, which relative to other Final Fantasies, is a low bar in my opinion.

First I do wanna mention the improvements, the job system is vastly improved when it comes to character variety and abilities, now every class has some form of secondary ability that truly adds more identity to the cast, stuff such as Advance on the Warrior, Retaliate on the Knight, Barrage on the Ranger, or Soul Eater on the Dark Knight. These give these classes at least some more viability and uniqueness past "they can attack things and maybe they have a bit of magic!

Unfortunately the one downside is the job adjustment phase system, in which your stats get halved for a few battles after you change jobs, overall I managed to just continue to progress and not mind the lower stats, but this is worse than the Capacity system from the original.

I think the battles overall have been enhanced, the game is much harder and has more interesting boss fights, I found myself using more items like attack items and messing with strategies I never would in the original (such as Bard Songs or Scholar's innate Item Lore), the final boss in particular going from a boring heal attack heal attack to a fight with interesting attacks and patterns that can be quite down to the wire.

Unfortunately the game barely improves on the story and the graphics are worse, the flow between areas still feels quite sporadic but it's not too bad, and the chibi-esque art isn't great. The music is fine, I really like some of the remixes but there's also an 8-bit option for people who prefer it.

Imo this is a good RPG that's fun to see the origins of the job system ,but is overall a very rough game and one of the worst Final Fantasies.

7/10 Flare Waves/10