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Final Fantasy III: Reviews

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Game Score: 10/10

The DS has had a decent number of good RPGs produced for it since it's release, but the debut of SquareEnix's flagship property on the platform has been on a lot of "most wanted" lists for the last little while. The excellent re-release of a number older FF properties on the GBA (specifically, Final Fantasy I, II, IV, V and coming soon, VI) has introduced the original Final Fanstasy games to a wider audience in general, and to a handheld audience in particular, so the promise of an updated version of one of the series' most talked-about games was sure to get attention. Always considered one of the series' better games, this is the first time that Final Fantasy III has been released outside of the Asian market, and SquareEnix could easily have simply ported the NES original with a new translation to the GBA and sold many, many copies. The fact that the company went the extra mile - completely updating the game graphically and adding new content for the DS release - is certainly commendable, and to any gamer who, like me, can (barely) remember stumbling through parts of an import Famicom FFIII, trying to figure out what was going on with a dogeared photocopy of a wretched fan translation that read like it was literally compiled from a Japanese/English dictionary, it seems more like an answered prayer. Finally we have the final Final Fantasy released in America and Europe, and it is undoubtably the best re-release to date!

The graphic and sound facelift that SquareEnix gave FFIII makes it one of the most impressive DS games produced to date. The character designs will be familiar to anyone who's played Final Fantasy Tactics, and though I prefer the more "super-deformed" look of the FFVII or FFIX character designs, there's no denying that this game looks very, very good. Environments are well realized and varied, and the map screens are attractive and functional. Of course, the menus for the various management options will bring a sense of deja-vu to anyone who's played a previous FF game. The music is a uniformly excellent reworking of the original soundtrack, and much of it is oh, so familiar! There are no surprises here, except perhaps in how much projection and depth the soundtrack manages to wring from the tiny DS speakers.