Look Ma! An RPG!

RPG's are often seen a genre that are mundane, repetitive, and unwilling to change (this is especially true for Japanese RPG's). This stereotype has been broken in the last two decades. Newer RPG's have made strides to improve on the concept of a party, equipment, and monsters. Several have innovated, and not all have succeeded, but some have taken positive steps to not only improve the genre, but to appeal to people who haven't touched a game of this kind. In the case of Final Fantasy III, none of the innovations are here, but is careful to include all of the things that typically make people hate the genre.

FFIII, is, for all intents and purposes, a remake. It originally came out long ago, in Japan, anyway. Now, because of all the confusion of Final Fantasy releases in the US (II here was IV there, III here was VI there), this version was never released here, officially. Recently, Square Enix remade III (getting tired of Roman numerals yet?) for the DS. Consequently, that meant they had to release it here, so now, 16 years later, Final Fantasy fans can enjoy what is basically the most traditional game in the series.

The story of FFIII is as basic as you can get. Your party are the Warrior of Light, a group of orphans who are destined to stave off the flood of darkness and save the world with their magical light force. In order to do that, you have to go around the world(s) and find several crystals scattered throughout, making progress on way to the final boss battle. Really, it's your standard RPG fare, the story really has no suprises, it plays out very linearlly, and I never really felt compelled to keep going for the sake of the story. I mean really, If you've ever played and RPG, you know what you're getting into here.

To be fair, though, you don't usually get into most RPG's for the story. You do it for the battle system. In this area, also, FF III sticks to as traditional a method as you'll likely find. The battles themselves are turn-based, speed applies as to what order the characters go, and that's pretty much the whole of battles. Nothing that FFI didn't do before it here. However, be aware that this one is harder than your average, and I don't feel it was for fair reasons. The AI is smart, and by that I mean cheap. It attacks whatever member you don't need it to attack most, and pretty if one of your characters dies, then you revive them, it'll ususally target them, so if you lose a character, have fun getting them back. Also, it seems to me that they're able to alter the order of moves. I don't know if this is true, but it seemed like the order would change to the computer's advantage, and to my dismay.

The graphics are probably this game's most notable feature. Unlike 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 for the GBA, III is rendered in full 3D, and does it gorgeously. Sure, it's N64 graphics, but on an LCD screen they sure look crisp. Everything from the overworld to the actual battles are fully polygonal, but the animations are somewhat lacking. They just look like they put the 2D motions on the 3D renders. The touch screen controls are also new. They allow to basically never touch the buttons at all, and while they were nice to use in the beginning, I found myself always going back to buttons, and never pulled the stylus out again.

The last new feature is the Wi-fi additons. You can send messages to friends and characters in the game, and they can reply back. Not much else to do here. However, it really bothers me that there is not only a class that you can only get if you send a certain number of messages to friends, but there is also a secret dungeon that you can also only get if you send out a certain number of messages. This won't be a huge problem for anyone near a router, but if you don't have internet (which most people should, the problem is getting that stupid dongle or having a compatible router), not having access to this stuff (and hindering content to those without internet when it could just as easily been available without it) is really, really dumb.

Now, something that FFIII did first was the job system. What this entails is basically the ability to choose what you want your character to do. Do you want them to be a tank class (such as a warrior, knight, etc), a Healer class (White mage, Devout), or a sort of specialty class (Bard, Geomancer, etc.). This allows to go through the game several times with completely different parties. My problem with this is that while what class you choose has a great effect on what the outcome of the battle will be, there are only a few classes worth using, and the rest of the classes just seem like gimmicks. My other problem with this system is that you only get more classes after beating certain bosses (the ones surrounding crystals), and no matter how much time you've invested on a certain class, the ones you end up getting will almost always be better than the ones you have, so you'll have to constantly switch classes.

My last problem with this system, is that unlike FFV's job system, which encourages you to change classes by allowing you borrow skills from one class and take advantage of them in another class (thus leading to mixed sub-classes), FFIII completly discourages ever changing your class. It does this in three ways. First, whenever you change class, there is absolutely no description of what the job does. That means that aside from the obvious Warriour and Mage classes, you don't know what you're getting into when you change. I almost never changed classes to experiment with a new class, only going for classes that either had a cool name (Ninja), or one that I knew would be a better version of what I had (Dark knight). Most people won't want to change classes because they don't want to invest time in a class that isn't going to give them a good return.

This wouldn't really been a problem if it wasn't for the next problem, which is by far my biggest gripe with the job system. Whenever you change classes, there is a "job adjustment" phase where all of your stats are decreased. Yes, this is realistic or whatever, but it doesn't help that when you want to change jobs, you don't know what you're getting into, and you're also risking getting your ass kicked. It isn't entirly crippling, but I never wanted to switch classes for fear of whatever class I chose totally sucking, and having decreased stats may get my ass kicked, especially in the early stages of the game.

My last problem with the game may or may be influenced by FFV, and its skill system, but I feel it's still a valid complaint even if haven't played it. Whenever you change classes you don't carry anything over from the class you switched over from. Nothing. That means that all the time you spent increasing that class's level was for nothing other than getting you through the part of the game that you were using it. It's really irking to to switch to a better class and have to start over from square one with that class all over again.

My other big gripe with the game is that it just expects you to know everything, as if you had played the game already (in japanese, on a Famicom), it almost never hints as to what the hell you're supposed to be doing, and when it does, it's very vague about it. Things are hidden in places where you're likely to never look, don't hint as to their whearabouts, and you have to scan around whole towns just to find anything useful. The game doesn't guide your hand at all, and if you're lost, well get used to it. Now, for RPG (and especially JRPG) vets, this really won't be a problem, but someone who's never played one is going to feel really, really, confused.

FFIII is basically what you'd call an RPG. It doesn't do anyting new, in fact it's probably the most traditional Final Fantasy I've ever played. It's about as monotnous, grueling, and long as you'd expect it to be, and for most RPG's that's fine and all, but when you're getting kicked around by a game that doesn't help you get anywhere, triumphs on your every mistake and does it while laughing at you, it really doesn't help. It's not challenging, it's cheap. I beat the game in about 30+ hours, but any skill is easily replaced by leveling up, which makes it more tedious. If you've played any Final Fantasy game before, pick it up, in that sense it's really what you're asking for it's not better or worse than average, but if you'd like to get introduced to the RPG genre look elsewhere.