Final Fantasy 3 is nearly a perfect step up from the first game. Disregarding a lot of the time wasting bullshit from FF2, 3 manages to improve on all the things the first game did, though this is not to say 3 doesn't have its shortcomings.
For the positives, you could really just copy a lot of my praises I gave to the first game, now with the added bonus of expanding the small things. FF1 had a VERY barebones story, sparsely using dialogue, named characters, or cutscenes. While this functioned perfectly fine for 1, FF3 shows how far these things go for an RPG. I have to admit that there were a few times where I'd have to consult a guide for FF1 due to forgetting some random bit of information, or the game being a bit esoteric with what I was given (a rat's tail is a mark of courage?). This did not occur with FF3. The game expertly leads you from place to place by expanding your range of exploration while contextualizing the purpose of your journey. There's a moment about halfway through the game involving the floating continent that gave me a rush of excitement the first game didn't have and the second failed to execute. Combine this with the solid gameplay from the first game and you have an experience that manages to surpass it.
Unfortunately, FF3 is still fairly average as a video game, and is tied down by a few aspects, especially the job system. This series is known for practically every game being unique from each other, and 3's trait is the ability to change your character's jobs at any point, with jobs essentially acting as the classes from the first game. The way this system ends up being used is far more gimmicky than would appear. Instead of constantly messing around with jobs to create interesting party compositions, most of the time, you'll end up sticking with the same 4 or 5 jobs and only ever change when you need to pass a gimmick section like turning into frogs or fighting a boss that takes extra damage from one job. The worst example of this comes in the late game when you have to do 2 dungeons back to back that feature an insane level spike for the enemies you're fighting, and every single one of these enemies can't be hit with physical attacks without multiplying the enemy. This forces you to kit out magic and dark knight classes, which will be a huge drain on your wallet, which means a shit ton of grinding for you.
Despite the new job system being a bit of a flop, FF3 still cements itself as a worthwhile experience in the series, and giving me newfound hope for the rest of the games that 2 almost managed to kill.

I came into the early Final Fantasy games with basically zero expectations. As far as I was aware, the first game in the series worth talking about was 6. Imagine my surprise when FF2 managed to fall FAR below these nonexistent expectations.
The most impactful feature of FF2 is how stats grow. Instead of level ups, your stats now improve with certain actions (attack to improve attack, use magic to improve magic, etc.). And while this sounds interesting in concept, playing the game reveals just how awful the system really is. For one, growths seem to be somewhat character specific. If I spammed attack with all the characters, Firion and Guy's strength stats always increased 3 or 4 times over before Maria's went up once. It doesn't feel like much of a "guild your own character" when you're still trying to railroad me. Secondly, since there's no longer a hard number of predicted battles to fight before I take on tougher foes, the stats are all meaningless numbers until you've gotten thrashed by enough enemies to know when you're outmatched. For example, in FF1 and most other RPGs, you'll know when your levels are adequate because you aren't struggling with the current enemies you're facing, and because the amount of exp they give you are pennies. In FF2 however, your stat growths are battle-specific, so the only way to know if your stats are adequate is to test out each and every one on a multitude of different enemies, which is obviously ludicrous.
This leads us to the fact that FF2 wants you to GRIND. Not just fighting a certain number of enemies, no. You've got to be nose-deep in whatever stats you're trying to improve to even be able to keep track of your improvements.
The saving grace of grinding in a lot of other RPGs is that you can simply disassociate while you do so. FF2 does not have this luxury. Despite spending around 3 hours less on FF2 than FF1, 2 felt it had been going on for WEEKS.

Then there's the issue of story. FF2 has a far more involved world than FF1, both in story and in layout.
In FF1, you don't really have much to go off of other than solving a town's problems and restoring the crystals. This makes your goal easy to keep track of, since at any given point you know exactly WHY you're doing what you're doing.
In FF2 however, the overarching plot has far more say in what you do and where you go. So I stead of simply finding the next town and continuing your adventure, you must constantly talk to the same NPCs over and over again to get your next objective.
This also means that your movement is very restricted to the progression the game wants you to move at. FF1 progresses you from land, to seas, to rivers, to skies, naturally allowing the player to figure out where they want to go next through the number of areas that were previously inaccessible. FF2 tells you to go from town to town, but only after you talk to a specific person. FF2 tells you to fly across the world, but not in an airship you explore in, but rather from paying Cid to constantly be your taxi driver. By the time you finally unlock sea travel in FF2, there isn't even anywhere you'd want to go. By the time you unlock full air travel, you're at the end of the game.

Perhaps it's unfair to compare FF2 so heavily to FF1. But FF1 was a mediocre game to me. It did the bare minimum of everything it needed to get right, which means that it's the perfect springboard for how FF2 gets it so wrong.
It astounds me that there are people out there who consider this game to be the hidden gem of the franchise. To those people: did you think 2 was good because it's UNIQUE, or because it was actually of quality? Because if it's the latter, that hidden gem must be a pretty tough dig.

Danganronpa has made me seriously consider the worth of a visual novel as a video game. On the pessimistic side, my opinion of games such as the Ace Attorney series have soured now that I know visual novels can be far more than glorified movies with point-and-click elements.
But as you can probably tell from my score, this is a VERY good thing for Danganronpa. The class trials have so many elements to them that you'll still get introduced to new mechanics into the second to last chapter. These all exist to engage you with the material and actually feel like you're playing a video GAME as the story plays out.
And speaking of the story, it's incredibly good. Obviously I won't be spoiling anything here, but know that this game puts a lot of work into properly pacing its story elements across its runtime, making the climaxes as satisfying as they are.