First of the Final Fantasy games that I think is truly enjoyable to me through and through with no huge strings attached, taking the sense of scale that the previous games had while smoothing out a lot of the really rough patches and providing a far more grandiose experience. While I'm definitely a bit sad about how much of the weird, more ambitious ideas were stripped from this compared to what 2 was running around and doing, I wouldn't say this is totally devoid of its own unique charm and appeal either, and I think a big reason for this is how much of the game revolves around the idea of expansive exploration in an even more prominent way. While collecting the 4 crystals and defeating the lord of darkness or whatever is definitely an element of the story, it often feels like it plays 2nd fiddle to the party's desire to uncover new ways of exploring the world around them and just discovering new problems to help solve.
This becomes increasingly prominent as the game goes on, with so few of the objectives you accomplish feeling much as if you're directly contributing to your main quest of tracking down crystals, instead having many instances of just seeing a new problem and being the ones to take it down. Beyond anything else, I think the thing that this does the most is make the world feel less in service of the player's presence, with so many other things going on all over the place that you often just accidentally stumble upon, leading to a pretty wonderful assortment of plot points that act almost like a melting pot of different fantasy ideas. I love how these often result in happening to gain new ways of travelling too, whether it's getting that airship for a 2nd time and realising the awesome little mid-game twist it leads to, or learning that there's even more to find once this same airship gains the ability to dive underwater. Time and time again, the world around you gets recontextualised and opens things up in a lot of pretty cool ways. This leads to exploring the world around you to be really engaging with the way it'll so often change and expand as you unlock things, occasionally throwing entirely unexpected curveballs your way to reinforce this.
The narrative on the whole is quite nice as well thanks to this slightly slower, more aimless pacing at points lead to a certain opportunity to better take in the locations that you've directly helped out in their struggles. With that said, I also quite enjoy a lot about the endgame here as well, being this absolutely absurdly long, vaguely nightmarish gauntlet that figures out new and fun ways to keep stringing you along for as long as possible. While I totally understand the distaste some might have for this, it reminds me of a less extreme take on the Cave to Rhone from Dragon Quest 2, where it almost feels as if the evil nature of your current surroundings is doing literally everything in its power to halt your progress, trying as hard as possible to just whittle you down as you're making the gruelling trek up to take down this great evil that's plagued the land. Other than the fact that there 100% should have been a way to save the game at some point while going through this final set of 4 dungeons, it's just a great time all around to me, where just knowing to utilise the stockpile of resources you have at that point will drastically smooth out the process while also evoking this atmosphere of desperation as you see these resources slowly but surely dwindle. The whole nature of 2nd guessing whether you'll actually be able to make it not only does a lot to make this final stretch feel incredible tense and oppressive, but then also makes those moments of reprieve where you can then go and heal up for free all the more glorious.
I unfortunately can't really say I fully love the game either thanks to a few decisions that overall make things feel a bit weird, most of them to do with the combat in this game, which is pretty hit or miss. The way the job system is utilised is easily my biggest problem with this game, giving the player so many options each with their cool looking designs, but kinda going against the whole idea of versatility with them because of how many of these classes are either strict upgrades of previous ones, or just largely useless. By the end of the game there'll only be 5 or 6 of the jobs that feel at all useable, and even amongst them it all feels a bit uneven. The way the offensive magic is used especially feels unfortunate, with most lategame enemies having absolutely no weaknesses resulting in the dark mages being entirely kneecapped and dealing less damage than a regular knight but with the added problem of having a finite amount of these attacks because of MP being a thing. I also feel like the player isn't really encouraged to get especially creative with their party setups either for similar reasons, as it's not like in Dragon Quest 3 where you can mix and match different class attributes to make some weird and often entirely broken hybrid classes, but in this, changing the job just railroads you entirely into the characteristic of that new class you just chose.
While a lot of these jobs definitely feel unique, this lack of any major carry over from one to another as the game progresses makes it all feel a bit too disconnected and impersonal, all your party members feeling very indistinct without even much interesting and unique character progression from a purely mechanical standpoint. It's a shame too, because I really like the flavour added with some of the more unconventional classes, such as the geomancer casting magic for free but it's random and dependant on the terrain you're currently on, or the dragoon having an ability to jump out of the map for a turn, potentially dodging really devastating attacks if you think that one of those are coming. It's just unfortunate that the game doesn't seem to care much for you actually experimenting with these at all, both because of the aforementioned unbalanced nature of a lot of them, but also because there are a few too many instances of the game reaaaalllly wanting you to choose certain classes. On its own this would be annoying but acceptable to basically force a certain strategy, but FF3 makes it way worse by essentially shoving what the player needs to choose down their throat, blatantly telling you the solution and then cutting off most other possibilities in one way or another. For a game that so often doubles down on its more open, explorative nature, it simply feels like a very dissonant aspect of it all to make the dungeon traversal to often feel so restrictive in comparison.
Biggest reason why this isn't a dealbreaker is just because there's enough I love about the game that the experience as a whole is still very positive for the most part, but a more carefully considered system revolving around these jobs would've gone a very long way. Even so, despite stepping back in certain regards, Final Fantasy 3 not only continues representing the trend of this series going out of its way to constantly be trying something new, but also further refines the pre-existing elements from previous entries to make my favourite of the OG trilogy. It's certainly not always a game that works, but when it does, it's a fantastic ride and one that I'd happily play again when I'm looking for something pretty low stakes and comfy.
This becomes increasingly prominent as the game goes on, with so few of the objectives you accomplish feeling much as if you're directly contributing to your main quest of tracking down crystals, instead having many instances of just seeing a new problem and being the ones to take it down. Beyond anything else, I think the thing that this does the most is make the world feel less in service of the player's presence, with so many other things going on all over the place that you often just accidentally stumble upon, leading to a pretty wonderful assortment of plot points that act almost like a melting pot of different fantasy ideas. I love how these often result in happening to gain new ways of travelling too, whether it's getting that airship for a 2nd time and realising the awesome little mid-game twist it leads to, or learning that there's even more to find once this same airship gains the ability to dive underwater. Time and time again, the world around you gets recontextualised and opens things up in a lot of pretty cool ways. This leads to exploring the world around you to be really engaging with the way it'll so often change and expand as you unlock things, occasionally throwing entirely unexpected curveballs your way to reinforce this.
The narrative on the whole is quite nice as well thanks to this slightly slower, more aimless pacing at points lead to a certain opportunity to better take in the locations that you've directly helped out in their struggles. With that said, I also quite enjoy a lot about the endgame here as well, being this absolutely absurdly long, vaguely nightmarish gauntlet that figures out new and fun ways to keep stringing you along for as long as possible. While I totally understand the distaste some might have for this, it reminds me of a less extreme take on the Cave to Rhone from Dragon Quest 2, where it almost feels as if the evil nature of your current surroundings is doing literally everything in its power to halt your progress, trying as hard as possible to just whittle you down as you're making the gruelling trek up to take down this great evil that's plagued the land. Other than the fact that there 100% should have been a way to save the game at some point while going through this final set of 4 dungeons, it's just a great time all around to me, where just knowing to utilise the stockpile of resources you have at that point will drastically smooth out the process while also evoking this atmosphere of desperation as you see these resources slowly but surely dwindle. The whole nature of 2nd guessing whether you'll actually be able to make it not only does a lot to make this final stretch feel incredible tense and oppressive, but then also makes those moments of reprieve where you can then go and heal up for free all the more glorious.
I unfortunately can't really say I fully love the game either thanks to a few decisions that overall make things feel a bit weird, most of them to do with the combat in this game, which is pretty hit or miss. The way the job system is utilised is easily my biggest problem with this game, giving the player so many options each with their cool looking designs, but kinda going against the whole idea of versatility with them because of how many of these classes are either strict upgrades of previous ones, or just largely useless. By the end of the game there'll only be 5 or 6 of the jobs that feel at all useable, and even amongst them it all feels a bit uneven. The way the offensive magic is used especially feels unfortunate, with most lategame enemies having absolutely no weaknesses resulting in the dark mages being entirely kneecapped and dealing less damage than a regular knight but with the added problem of having a finite amount of these attacks because of MP being a thing. I also feel like the player isn't really encouraged to get especially creative with their party setups either for similar reasons, as it's not like in Dragon Quest 3 where you can mix and match different class attributes to make some weird and often entirely broken hybrid classes, but in this, changing the job just railroads you entirely into the characteristic of that new class you just chose.
While a lot of these jobs definitely feel unique, this lack of any major carry over from one to another as the game progresses makes it all feel a bit too disconnected and impersonal, all your party members feeling very indistinct without even much interesting and unique character progression from a purely mechanical standpoint. It's a shame too, because I really like the flavour added with some of the more unconventional classes, such as the geomancer casting magic for free but it's random and dependant on the terrain you're currently on, or the dragoon having an ability to jump out of the map for a turn, potentially dodging really devastating attacks if you think that one of those are coming. It's just unfortunate that the game doesn't seem to care much for you actually experimenting with these at all, both because of the aforementioned unbalanced nature of a lot of them, but also because there are a few too many instances of the game reaaaalllly wanting you to choose certain classes. On its own this would be annoying but acceptable to basically force a certain strategy, but FF3 makes it way worse by essentially shoving what the player needs to choose down their throat, blatantly telling you the solution and then cutting off most other possibilities in one way or another. For a game that so often doubles down on its more open, explorative nature, it simply feels like a very dissonant aspect of it all to make the dungeon traversal to often feel so restrictive in comparison.
Biggest reason why this isn't a dealbreaker is just because there's enough I love about the game that the experience as a whole is still very positive for the most part, but a more carefully considered system revolving around these jobs would've gone a very long way. Even so, despite stepping back in certain regards, Final Fantasy 3 not only continues representing the trend of this series going out of its way to constantly be trying something new, but also further refines the pre-existing elements from previous entries to make my favourite of the OG trilogy. It's certainly not always a game that works, but when it does, it's a fantastic ride and one that I'd happily play again when I'm looking for something pretty low stakes and comfy.