3/5 ★ – ElementaryGaming's review of FINAL FANTASY III.

A dated, but cool piece of JRPG history. The amount of ambition here, for an NES game, is truly staggering. Final Fantasy 3 just "flows" better than its predecessors. It's like the developers finally cracked the code on how to craft an RPG. It's not as difficult to find out where to go next as 1 and 2, but there are still multiple instances where a guide will be helpful. The town residents have more interesting things to say to you. The leveling system and job system are intuitive. The maps don't feel like randomly-generated mazes full of dead ends. The story is not terribly interesting, but it gets the job done with plenty of cool fantasy elements thrown together. There are multiple different world maps to explore, and multiple different modes of transportation which culminate with a badass ship with a built-in bed to heal in and item shops. The soundtrack is great, as one might expect for any final fantasy game. The remade soundtrack is a nice addition, because these remakes are well-made and don't grate on the ears the way chiptunes do. That said, I definitely experienced fatigue playing through this one, having recently beat the Pixel Remasters of 1 and 2. By round 3, even with all of the nice improvements, it started to feel the same as what came before as the game progressed. There are still gameplay moments that I would classify as "appalling". Random difficulty spikes and overpriced, necessary items pop up often. Also, some late-game dungeons have enemies that infinitely multiply whenever they are attacked by a sword. If you haven't been building/preparing your party to battle without swords, you will be demolished. Some might enjoy this sudden change of gameplay that the job systems bring, but I didn't enjoy the way it was suddenly necessary to change jobs in certain areas. The new level of customization that the jobs bring is very cool, though. It allows the player to tailor their experience to the way they want to play. The Pixel Remaster EXP and Gil boost options, as well as the ability to disable random battles during annoying periods of gameplay, are a lifesaver and make the game more manageable. 1-3 would be almost unplayable without these options, unless the player has a high tolerance for grinding. The job system isn't perfect, either- while it's a cool idea, some jobs just break the game in certain areas, like how the Ninja job, equipped with a bunch of shurikens purchased from the final store in the game, can make the final boss almost effortless. The amount that Final Fantasy 3 improves on what came before it is astonishing. But in spite of this, it still feels very dated with its roots in old-school JRPG gameplay, and its story still leaves much to be desired in spite of its improvements on past titles.