Final Fantasy: Lost in Japanese

Overall, I liked Final Fantasy III on the DS more than I liked Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II. In the most important areas the game is right on target.

Visuals
The biggest surprise for me was how much the improved visuals helped to draw me into the game. I’m not a graphics whore, but I have to admit that DS-enhanced eye candy made the game more fun. Monsters looked great, and moving around the world and through the dungeons was a visual treat. Coming after Final Fantasy I and II, the difference is remarkable.

Combat and Character Development
The gameplay in Final Fantasy III is also excellent. With so much fighting in a Final Fantasy game, the combat system and character development system have to be good. I had a blast with these in Final Fantasy III. Combat was fun, rarely got tiresome, and had a nice amount of variety to it. I thought the job system in the game was creative and enjoyable to mess around with.

I do have some minor gripes though. As with Final Fantasy II, the animation sequences in Final Fantasy III have annoying elements to them. At the end of every combat, for example, the camera would gradually zoom up to your party before showing you your battle results. This only takes about two seconds, but after you’ve been in a dozen battles, you really don’t want to wait for the zoom. By the time you’ve had a hundred battles, these delays are a pain. Other spots in combat have equal waits, although I found the in-combat animations to be much more tolerable and on the whole much quicker than in Final Fantasy I and II. Still, it would have been great to have a button press to skip the repetitive sequences.

Lastly, with a combat and character progression system as complex as Final Fantasy III’s, it would have been nice to have better information in the manual. A couple of additional paragraphs on job levels, experience, and character levels could have provided helpful information that would have been nice to know before playing the game.

Game Balance and Progression
I liked the overall balance and progression in the Final Fantasy III. There were a couple of spots where things were definitely hard, but these could be overcome with some old fashioned grinding and some revised tactics. For the most part, random battles were frequent enough to be interesting, and rarely so frequent that they became a pain. Dungeons were large enough to bring a sense of accomplishment when you cleared them, and small enough to not get tedious.

I do have minor quibbles with the balance. Some of the job classes in the game seemed like they could use a bit of tweaking. My Devout, for example, could heal our entire party with her top three healing spells. This gave us tremendous healing power later in the game. She almost seemed too strong. Ninjas, on the other hand, seemed incredibly powerful offensively. With their speed, they add job levels quickly, which makes turning them into powerhouses easy compared to other jobs.

As with previous Final Fantasy games, money in Final Fantasy III loses meaning after about two-thirds of the game. It seems silly to include this in the game if doesn’t add anything to the decision-making process towards the end. As it stands, I could buy anything, immediately, once I got past the halfway point.

Also, on the whole I was surprised at how effective traditional weapons were in the game. For the most part, my offensive punch came in the form of regular weapons, and I didn’t need to think about magic damage. In previous Final Fantasy games, there were enemies that were impervious to regular weapons or impervious to magic. This made me think about balancing magic casters and fighters in my party. With Final Fantasy III, I don’t remember any such enemies. I could always kill something with anything.

Story
Maybe my expectations were high after Final Fantasy II, but I was disappointed with the story in Final Fantasy III. Final Fantasy II’s story made sense, drove the action, and added a lot to the game. It might have been my Japanese hindering things, but in Final Fantasy III I never really clued in to the story. Things seemed to happen for no reason, and I was sent places to do stuff without really having a good sense of how everything was connected. Sure, I understood that I was to collect crystals to fight the ultimate evil and bring the world into balance again, but the specifics of this were largely lost to me. Fortunately for me, the game pretty much puts you on rails for the first 30 hours or so. I had a good sense of what to do, but rarely any idea of how my actions fit into the larger story. The weak story especially effected things at the end, when the game stops leading you by the hand. I felt abandoned for the last ten hours or so.

Save Me Now
After bitching about the save system in Final Fantasy III in my initial impressions, I was surprised at how little it bothered me while playing the game. There were two or three places where I lost an hour or so of gaming, but for the most part the save system was much more bearable than I thought it would be.

It did change the way I played, though. At the end, I knew the final boss battle was going to be a rough fight, and I knew that the dungeon was huge. As a result, I spent a few hours grinding before I went in. If the save system were different, I would have likely tried that dungeon sooner. There were other places in the game where I did similar things to avoid losing a chunk of time to the save system.

To be completely honest, I should mention that in some ways the save system actually increased my enjoyment of the game. The final battle was a tense, epic struggle, largely because I was scared to death of losing the two plus hours of fighting that it took me to get there. Still, I would definitely prefer a game where you can save almost anywhere.

The Little Things
I liked all the extras in the game. The side quests, the extra dungeons, and the post-game Iron Giant are neat touches that add polish and gameplay to Final Fantasy III. The Iron Giant, in particular, is a neat addition that gives the game another five to ten hours of play, and gives meaning to the Onion Knight class. Good stuff.

On the other hand, the letter system, with it’s (circumventable) one-letter per hour limit and the need to send seven letters to a real person, were more of a chore than they were fun. Someone mentioned in a comment on this blog that they thought the letter system was added because the DS had these capabilities and the developers felt the need to include them in the game. I agree with this completely. I have no problem with the letter content and with the game concept, but the execution seemed clunky.

Final Word
On the whole, Final Fantasy III gets the most important elements right. The combat system, game balance, and character development are extremely well done for a game of this length. The story disappointed me, but again, my limited Japanese ability is likely playing a part in this. Overall, I’ll give Final Fantasy III an 87%. It’s clearly my favorite game in the series so far.