We got to the cursed town last night, only to find that the Jinn apparently turned the townspeople into these cool-looking hollow gingerbread people (By the way, let’s have a big hand for our yummy gingerbread cookie model, Ginger!). Understandably, being a gingerbread cookie is only cool if it happens to someone else, and the townsfolk would like to return to normal. It’s our job to help them.

As I’m finding is usually the case with Final Fantasy games, nothing is simple, and Final Fantasy III looks to be no exception. So hang on, because this is what I’ve figured out so far…

Only mithril will work to bottle up the Jinn in their cave again, so we need mithril weapons. This means we need mithril, which is in a mine to the south of town. Naturally we went there, but we got wiped out in combat so fast that I knew we were in the wrong place. Enter our good buddy Cid, from Final Fantasy II, who was hanging around the local inn. Seems the Jinn turned him into a gingerbread outline, too. He tells us that he’ll let us use his flying ship, which is in a desert to the west. I’m not sure how this was supposed to help us, but whenever I ask him to explain things again, he just barks at us to go get the flying ship. Ok, ok, we get the hint.

At some point, someone clued us into the fact that it’s not mithril weapons, but a mithril ring that we need, and when we get to Cid’s ship, we find the daughter of the local blacksmith, who tells us that she can’t make a mithril ring. Dead end?

No! Apparently there is another mithril ring that was given to the king, whose castle lies to the west. Zoom, we go flying to visit him. Lo and behold, everyone here has also become gingerbread cookie outlines as well. The gingerbread king tells us his daughter has the ring, but she was captured by the Jinn—or undead, I forgot which—and taken to a cave to the north.

Whew, so complicated! I’m tired just from writing that, forget about figuring it all out in Japanese. Do keep in mind that half of this is probably wrong, as I got a bit confused by some of the language, and the gingerbread folk weren’t the clearest speakers. Who knows, maybe I’m supposed to be eating all the gingerbread people.

If that’s not enough excitement, along the way our party swelled to four members with the addition of various castoffs and aspiring heroes, and we also learned of a powerful sword that lies in the west tower of the king’s castle. We’ll pick up our story with an attempt to get that sword tomorrow.

Onward!

I explored the first town and picked up some supplies in the process. This also kick started the game’s plot, which happened when I spoke with the village chief. Unfortunately, I’m not used to being careful with the touch screen on the DS, so I accidentally zapped most of his conversation before I had a chance to read it. I did catch a part about my character being special because the Crystal chose me. I also caught a part about a town to the south that is under a curse from Jinn which escaped from a cave (or something like a cave, I think) after the earthquake a few days ago.

I tried to talk with the elder again to get another chance to read his conversation, but all he’ll say to me now is to go to the cursed town, which I’m guessing means I’ve got to go fix things down there.

Off we go to solve the mystery of the curse!

After all this time, the wait was worth it. I got a chance to play my first 45 minutes of Final Fantasy III, and initial impressions are strong.

We start out the game in a small dungeon, apparently the result of us falling in a hole in the ground after a massive earthquake rocked our area. I explored the first area, killing gobins (yippee!) and learning how to move about in the game. We made quick work of the goblins, struggled against but ultimately defeated a big turtle thingie, then stumbled upon a huge crystal! Cue the flashbacks to Final Fantasy I!

This time, however, there is a twist: the crystal talks! It was a bit tricky to understand, but I did ok considering it was the first time I’ve ever had to listen to a Japanese-speaking rock. Apparently there is an upcoming struggle between the light and the dark, and the crystal has chosen me to do great things in this struggle. With that, the crystal promptly zapped me back to my home town.

And that’s where I stand at the moment, ready to explore my hometown.

When I fired up Final Fantasy III DS, I left the stone ages of the previous two versions behind me. Compared to Final Fantasy I and II, Final Fantasy III on the DS is incredibly rich. The opening movie brilliantly sets the mood, and the 3D environments pull you into the game in a way that the previous two Final Fantasy games can’t match. I’ve only played for about 45 minutes and spent a half an hour with the manual, but already I can’t wait to get back to the game.

Some random thoughts, in no particular order…

The game engine graphics strike me as being on par with a good Play Station 2 game. To be honest, I was expecting a bit more here, but I can’t complain when I compare them to the GBA graphics of the previous games.

The combat and leveling systems look excellent. In Final Fantasy III, the open-ended leveling system of Final Fantasy 2 takes a step up in complexity with the addition of jobs. In addition to gaining general levels from experience you get from fights, each character has a “job”, such as ninja, white mage, etc., and you get job level increases based on the actions you take in combat. This part of gameplay hasn’t kicked in yet for me, but I’ve read through all the job descriptions in the manual, and I find myself already thinking about which jobs I want my characters to have.

Movement, exploration, and story elements look flawlessly done. I love how you can zoom in to an area to find hidden features (they sparkle when you zoom in). Brief cut scenes pop up when you interact with certain items and characters, and they add another level of immersion to the game. As with the previous two Final Fantasies, gameplay appears linear. So far, I’ve had no difficulty in figuring out where to go or what to do.

Combat looks complex and battle scenes are well depicted. When you fight, the camera angle twists down to ground level, and it’s amazing how much this pulls you into the battle. Some of the combat animations at the end of combat are a bit pokey, and already I find myself wishing there was a way skip these sequences, but this is a mild complaint at this point.

Having heaped all this praise on the game so far, I do have to say this: I absolutely, from the bottom of my heart, with total conviction, despise the moronic save system. In Final Fantasy 3, you get three save slots and one “temporary save” slot. You can only save in your three save slots when you are on the world map, so in essence, you can’t save to your save slots in towns or in dungeons. The temporary save slot, however, does allow you to quit your game anywhere and then resume it from the same point at a later time, but once you do that your temporary save vanishes. Furthermore, your temporary save vanishes if you load a game from one of your three save slots or start a new game.

The consequences for this asinine design decision are as obvious as they are infuriating. Say you fight your way through a dungeon for two hours then lose the last battle. All that progress is gone, and you get to start from the beginning of the dungeon again. The degree of annoyance caused by this feature remains to be seen, as it will vary greatly depending on the size of dungeons and the difficulty of the boss battles, but already it’s been a minor annoyance. I accidentally wandered into a place I shouldn’t have gone yet in one town and got wiped out. My last save was right before I entered the town, so I had to redo the ten minutes of exploring that I did in the town. Obviously, I could have exited the town, saved, and walked back to the dungeon entrance, but even that is a stupid thing to have to do in a 21st century game.

Aside from this one grievance, however, I’m about as excited as I’ve ever been for playing an RPG. Really looking forward to getting back into it this evening.

I’ll make my first post on my progress in the story tomorrow.

My box of games arrived! Inside were six new games: Final Fantasy 3, Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy 6, and two kanji games! Woot! It’ll be great to put this two-week delay behind us and get back to business. This also fills in my Japanese collection of Final Fantasy games all the way through Final Fantasy 10-2.

I’m both excited and concerned about playing Final Fantasy III. I’ve read a bit about the game, and the complexity of the job system seems to have confused many gamers. I hope I can figure it out in Japanese. Also, I’ve heard this game is an “old-school” gaming experience, with a restricted saving system inside dungeons and some brutally difficult, huge dungeons. I’m really hoping that I don’t get stuck.

I’ll be loading up Final Fantasy III this evening and getting busy with it.

I hope to have an initial report up tomorrow.

Let the games continue!