Hogan Reviews

Taking a bit of a break from RPGs series I’ve not played before with a return to the always fun Pixel Remasters. Final Fantasy III thankfully brought the series back to traditional levelling up systems and added in Jobs for the first time. Admittedly they also reintroduced nameless and personality-less protagonists and a more simplified story, but hey-ho, can’t get it all right, I guess! … Well, later entries will prove they can actually get it all right, but you know what I mean… Anyway, let’s take a look!

Background:

Ah, the early jobs… What’s the meaning behind the names? Oh well… I can’t be arsed to explain. Sorry.

Final Fantasy III was released in Japan on April 27^th 1990 for the NES (or Famicom, I guess) and much like II it wasn’t released in English speaking markets for many years. It’s first release outside of Japan was the Nintendo DS 3D remake, which came out on August 24^th 2006 in Japan, on November 14^th 2006 in the US and May 4^th 2007 in Europe. I actually have that version but I don’t remember getting very far in it at the time, and I don’t plan on replaying it in the foreseeable future, so I wouldn’t count on a review of that appearing on this site any time soon, that’s for sure!

The Pixel Remaster version first came out for PC and Mobile worldwide on July 28^th 2021, marking the first time the original game was playable in English. It was then further refined and released on the PS4 and Switch on April 19^th 2023 worldwide with an XBOX Series X/S port following on September 26^th 2024.

I believe an English version was planned at one point but dropped when the SNES started gaining traction, making the first SNES Final Fantasy a more tantalising idea for the next US port instead.

Gameplay:

Yeah, forgot to mention some enemies that can duplicate themselves if hit by most attacks. That was annoying as hell…

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: the game is a turn-based RPG, so you travel on a world map (via land, sea and air) facing enemies in random encounters, visit towns where NPCs can give you advice, shops can give you new equipment and inns can restore your health, then enter dungeons filled with chests containing loot, more random encounters and a boss at the end. The combat is pure turn-based RPG too, so you can attack, cast magic or use other special commands to attack, use an item or attempt to flee and when you’ve chosen all your moves they happen on screen followed by the enemies taking their turns to strike you, a speed stat deciding the order of things. If all four members of your party die then that’s it! Winning nets your Exp which will level your characters up and money that you spend in the previously mentioned shops and inns.

New to FF III is the Job system. So each of your generic protagonists start as “Onion Knights” but as you progress you unlock new jobs, like black mage (offensive magic), white magic (healing magic), dragoon (jump attack), ninja (can use throwing stars) and so on. When you level up in battle your Job also levels up, and you can switch between Jobs outside of combat to cover all bases or just experiment, really. It’s a lot of fun and adds a tonne of replayability to the game. Some spells are a nessisty for progress, a few times the only way to get into a room or a cave is to use the shrink spell on your own party to enter a hole, or turn your party to frogs and then enter via water. Some of these ideas were fun… the first time. I think they liked that idea a bit too much by the end.

You thought Zelda: The Minish Cap was the first to do this? … Me too, actually. *shrug*

Being an old school 8-bit RPG there is a lot of grinding to do if you want to stand a chance with some of the bosses, but once again given this is the Pixel Remaster version I didn’t have that issue, instead when I reached a point where I needed to grind for XP to attempt the next dungeon I just used the double or 4x XP toggle, did a few random battles to level up a couple of times, turned it back off and headed in. As mentioned before I know purists will hate that I did that but at the end of the day I’m not cheating as much as streamlining the experience, which given my small amount of free time it’s something that makes these games all the more feasible to play…

Overall it was a fun time, the simple combat and lots of choice with Jobs made sure I never got bored, and the “modern conveniences” meant I didn’t drift away from the game due to having to grind too much.

Graphics and Sound:

Right on, now you’re talking!

Graphics, like the other Pixel Remasters before it, are really good. Clean spirt art, lovely backgrounds that fill out the screen, clean and chunky text boxes… nothing to complain about at all.

Sound-wise is also hard to find fault. The original score is there to listen to, but you also have a full orchestrated remix overseen by original composer Nobuo Uematsu himself you can switch to. Sound-effects are classic FF beeps and boops so no complaints there either!

Story:

Riding a Chocobo near the edge of the world… of the Floating Continent.

On a floating continent known only as, um, The Floating Continent, four young orphans are chosen by the Crystals of Light to become the new Warriors of Light after a flood of dark magic had begun to swallow the land. In the past Light began to swallow the land and four Warriors of Darkness beat back the light, showing it’s all about keeping balance rather than good vs. evil. The Warriors of Light travel across the Continent, meeting people like airship engineer Cid (hooray!), Desch the last survivor of an ancient race, a Princess named Sara, and more. Eventually they leave the Floating Continent and head down to the surface, which is almost entirely flooded. There they manage to drain the water and free the citizens of the world from being frozen in time, restoring all the towns and villages that had been submerged and restoring the planet back to how it was, the citizens none the wiser, which was a fun twist at least.

They eventually meet Doga and Unei, two students of a powerful mage called Magnus Noah who granted them immortality and tasked them with watching over the living and dream worlds, respectively. They reveal that there was a third student, Xande, whose arrogance led Noah to give him the life of a mortal instead of immortality so he could understand them and learn to love them. Sadly all that did was drive Xande off the deep end and it’s him that’s behind everything… sort of. The Warriors of Light defeat Xande but it turns out he was possessed by an evil entity known as “The Cloud of Darkness” who soon manifests itself. With the help of their friends and the returning Warriors of Darkness the Warriors of Light overcome the Cloud of Darkness and restore balance to the world.

So more involved than FF I but not as focused and interesting as FF II, story-wise. Almost like a mashup of the two games, now that I think about it…

Thoughts Now:

Cloud of Darkness looking a little more green than she does in her Dissidia appearances…

Final Fantasy III was a fun time, the simple (but actually understandable this time) combat was good and the Job System added experimentation to stop any sense of boredom that might have creeped in due to the more simpler plot and lack of hero characters with names and backstories. While I understand why this game often fades into the shadows when talking about Final Fantasy, as it’s neither “one of the bad ones” or one of the exceptional ones, it’s still a good one, and one I could see sticking on again sometime down the road…