Final Fantasy III on the Famicom has been a game I’ve long been wanting to complete. It’s a ‘bucket list’ title, if you will. I’ve played a lot of it over the years but never to the end. I didn’t even know that this game existed until I was a teenager despite being a huge fan of the franchise. It was never localized for North American audiences. When it was finally translated we got a watered down remake on the Nintendo DS. I had to play the original. All the way through. It’s infamous for its difficulty, but I’ve played harder games before. I finally sat down and completed this one. It just made me sad that I couldn’t tackle it when I was a child. Final Fantasy III is easily the best of the NES FF trilogy. Let’s dive right in.
Final Fantasy III starts off in a dark cave. You name the four characters in your party (they’re just empty shells with no personality). They’ve fallen into this chasm from the effects of an unnatural earthquake. While trying to find an exit they learn from a magical crystal that they have been chosen to become the legendary world saving warriors of light. It’s up to them to fight back the darkness and by the last wishes of the stone are given magical abilities. From here it’s up to the party to save the world from almost certain destruction. In typical Final Fantasy fashion all of this takes place in a magical medieval setting with lots of swords and sorcery but with airships too! The setting hasn’t really advanced in thematics from the last two games but I like it.
Despite having largely silent protagonists Final Fantasy III has a surprisingly good story by 8-bit standards. There’s a lot of world building and lore. It’s great to follow and this is one of the few RPGs wherein I felt inclined to speak with all of the townsfolk of each new area. There’s backstory to each of these countries and you really feel like you’ve been plucked into a world full of history. All of this shines through the dull colors and rudimentary pixel graphics.
The game itself is a standard Japanese style RPG of its era. You travel the world via an overhead map complete with towns, dungeons and other points of interest. Combat is completely turn based and viewed from the side with your characters facing off against various groups of monsters. These encounters (aside from boss fights) occur randomly while you walk around. There’s no shortage of them though because the encounter rate is pretty high, but hey that’s par for the course with a role playing game this old. Final Fantasy III is obviously not a good pick for beginners to the genre because of both this and the high difficulty. At times this one feels like a survival game when you’re rationing items in the long dungeons and praying you can take ten stops without another fight.
Final Fantasy III stands out from the crowd with its job system. This is the title in which Square finally invented the modern class changing system that they used in future titles, and which was also copied by other developers. There’s a good reason for that; it works, it’s fun, and it makes the game significantly more replayable than your standard Japanese RPG. With each of the four magical crystals you gain a set of different jobs. Your four characters can be switched to these and their battle abilities change. Their stats are altered, they use different pieces of equipment, and even have varying skills at their disposal. Some of these are offensive, others defensive, and sometimes they use very non-traditional strategies to support the other party members in battle.
The variety of jobs at your disposal is pretty impressive for such an old game. You have basic fighters such as warrior, monk, thief, knight, and more. In the beginning everything is pretty standard. Things get more interesting when others like the dark knight and dragoon are opened up. Then you have a variety of magic users like the red/black/white mages, geomancer, bard, and more. The most unique jobs are those like scholar. Unfortunately these are used solely to find out enemy weaknesses and this must be exploited in certain encounters.
Unfortunately there are some issues that rear their head as early as when you get the second set of jobs. Some of these just aren’t useful, or they’re completely outclassed in every way by others. No one is going to use a warrior when the knight is an option. Outside of when it’s required is anyone actually ever going to use a scholar? I think not. To make matters worse toward the end of the game you unlock two jobs that completely outclass all of the others. These are the ninja and the sage. The former can use every piece of equipment in the game, and the latter all spells. They also have the best stats thus making all other options obsolete.
Final Fantasy III uses the traditional experience point system wherein your characters gain levels from fighting enemies and get stronger this way. On top of this you also earn ‘capacity points’ and this is where the developers went astray. These are used to switch jobs. You spend them, and if you run out you can get locked into the current jobs until you fight and defeat enough foes to get back capacity points. The major problem is the fact that this game often requires you to switch to specific jobs in different areas. The jobs you absolutely must use include the black mage, scholar, and dragoon. There’s no way around these, and you’ll start figuring out when you’ll need to switch because you start finding a lot of equipment for the job in question.
This leads me to one of the game’s biggest problems. First of all, the dungeon designs in Final Fantasy III are a clear step above the past two titles. They’re generally fun to explore and plenty challenging. The issue I was referring to comes into the form of the tiny and toad dungeons. For these areas you have to inflict your entire party with the status ailment in question. The thing is all of your attacks (no matter the job you’re using) inflict one damage on your foes when you’re tiny/toad. You have to rely solely on magic. This means you have to earn enough CP points to change your entire party to black mages, and then you have to earn enough to switch back once you’re done with the dungeon. This system is poorly thought out and can be the most frustrating part of Final Fantasy III.
With those complaints out of the way Final Fantasy III is actually an incredibly enjoyable game. Few RPGs have intrigued me so much as far as world building goes, and I was excited to see each new environment and push the story just a bit more. I also really like the gameplay scenarios and found the job system rewarding (at least in the first half of the game). Heck, I don’t even mind the grinding. Some people will have a real issue with the difficulty of this title and I’ll admit that it’s no slouch. Final Fantasy III eases you in but the last fourth of the adventure is absolutely brutal. The final dungeon in particular forces you to fight a gauntlet of boss characters with no healing or even a save point. You will need to spend a significant amount of time grinding here.
In terms of graphics this is one of the best looking role playing games for the platform. The world map has significantly more different tiles than the past games did, and these feature even more details than before. In addition, each of the character classes has their own inside and outside of battle designs. Considering how many jobs you have at your disposal this is pretty impressive to be honest. It’s still a bit of a bummer that the ground is black within battles, but I was able to move past this pretty easily. The soundtrack is also really well done. The world map themes in particular rank among the best in the entire franchise. The battle themes are really good as well. I like the soundtrack here a lot.
