Final Fantasy Numero Tres!
I did not chose the Pixel Remaster to play this game because I organized my list of what was the best version to play each game in the series in 2020, so before the announcement of the Pixel Remaster. Or simply because I didn't bother spending 15 bucks on Steam so whatever lol.
The story follows a similar formula to the first game, with 4 Warriors of Light being tasked to restore the world balance and obtain 4 crystals with each giving them more power. The original release only had 4 unnamed orphans while in the 3D remake, they have their own separate names and personalities.
Personally I prefer that the protagonists have actual names, since FF2 onwards the series featured characters that have more life to them, making players care about them, so it feels weird to me that 3 omitted this to further push this game as this "FF1 2.0" that 2 didn't. I think they could have just kept the gameplay as is while maintaining the stronger sense of story from the second game but I guess that's all they could've done during the NES era. And even besides that, the story is enjoyable but nothing too groundbreaking and there's a pretty small amount of character interactions between the MCs. Wish there were a bit more of them.
The gameplay introduces a mechanic that will reappear in numerous titles since then: The job system, where now characters can choose 23 jobs during in-game as opposed to the first game's selecting jobs when booting up the game. Now because I skipped 2 and 3 due to my poor first impressions of 1, I got a taste of the job system in 5 instead, where it was more refined and allowed you to take 2 abilites from each mastered job. This game doesn't do that and jobs have to reach level 99 to master, which will reward you with an item so you just have characters stay in those jobs until you decide to change. The 3D remake featured what they called a "job adjustment phase", where characters get a minor stat penalty when switching jobs to maintain the game's balance. Since I didn't bother trying out most jobs (and finding out most jobs are shit anyway), the feature acts more like an annoyance than helpful, although I hardly felt the side-effects when switching jobs.
As for the rest, with what the remake touched upon, well I liked the visuals, keeps that chibi, innocent artstyle that both the classic games and artworks are familar with 'cept including Amano's art. I was never a big fan of 8-bit music in general, I turned my attention to the orchestrated OST instead and find it entertaining to listen while playing, in contrast to FF4's OST where I sticked mainly to the SNES original.
Overall (without going too much in detail cause i'm writing this at 1 AM), Final Fantasy 3 is without a doubt the best of the NES trilogy games, it manages to make the game engaging without being frustrating and bullshit unfair. That is not to say the game was super fun, merely acceptable but often times tedious. If you want to avoid that "tediousness", especially with the 2nd part of the game, you have to grind.
And grind.
I did not chose the Pixel Remaster to play this game because I organized my list of what was the best version to play each game in the series in 2020, so before the announcement of the Pixel Remaster. Or simply because I didn't bother spending 15 bucks on Steam so whatever lol.
The story follows a similar formula to the first game, with 4 Warriors of Light being tasked to restore the world balance and obtain 4 crystals with each giving them more power. The original release only had 4 unnamed orphans while in the 3D remake, they have their own separate names and personalities.
Personally I prefer that the protagonists have actual names, since FF2 onwards the series featured characters that have more life to them, making players care about them, so it feels weird to me that 3 omitted this to further push this game as this "FF1 2.0" that 2 didn't. I think they could have just kept the gameplay as is while maintaining the stronger sense of story from the second game but I guess that's all they could've done during the NES era. And even besides that, the story is enjoyable but nothing too groundbreaking and there's a pretty small amount of character interactions between the MCs. Wish there were a bit more of them.
The gameplay introduces a mechanic that will reappear in numerous titles since then: The job system, where now characters can choose 23 jobs during in-game as opposed to the first game's selecting jobs when booting up the game. Now because I skipped 2 and 3 due to my poor first impressions of 1, I got a taste of the job system in 5 instead, where it was more refined and allowed you to take 2 abilites from each mastered job. This game doesn't do that and jobs have to reach level 99 to master, which will reward you with an item so you just have characters stay in those jobs until you decide to change. The 3D remake featured what they called a "job adjustment phase", where characters get a minor stat penalty when switching jobs to maintain the game's balance. Since I didn't bother trying out most jobs (and finding out most jobs are shit anyway), the feature acts more like an annoyance than helpful, although I hardly felt the side-effects when switching jobs.
As for the rest, with what the remake touched upon, well I liked the visuals, keeps that chibi, innocent artstyle that both the classic games and artworks are familar with 'cept including Amano's art. I was never a big fan of 8-bit music in general, I turned my attention to the orchestrated OST instead and find it entertaining to listen while playing, in contrast to FF4's OST where I sticked mainly to the SNES original.
Overall (without going too much in detail cause i'm writing this at 1 AM), Final Fantasy 3 is without a doubt the best of the NES trilogy games, it manages to make the game engaging without being frustrating and bullshit unfair. That is not to say the game was super fun, merely acceptable but often times tedious. If you want to avoid that "tediousness", especially with the 2nd part of the game, you have to grind.
And grind.