4/5 ★ – NiGHTS108's review of Final Fantasy III.

Alright, Final Fantasy I and II are done. The first established the gameplay and tone, and the second brought some new ideas to the table. Now for the last NES game, the fundamental challenge of Final Fantasy III is expanding upon these elements. In a lot of ways, FF3 really feels like the swansong of the 8 bit entries to me. We just got out of a pretty tumultuous game full of confusing progression and a story riddled with despair. As such an experimental game it makes sense why FF3 would generally build on what FF1 did so well, but it actually manages to expand on the good chunks of FF2’s ideas too! The main gimmick of FF3 is the “job” system, which serves as a way to change your class throughout the game and new ones are unlocked as you progress. It kinda takes on a different approach to the whole idea with FF2 being “Let’s make every character every class”. There’s a lot more depth to this system in general, not every class can equip every weapon just like in FF1 which forces you to make priorities and account for other classes. They also more often than not come with an ability specific to that class, such as the Thief’s steal ability or Ninja’s throw. It comes together into something that generally feels like FF1’s rigid class system but with the variety that FF2’s experience system provides, it’s honestly really well done. This game also introduces quite a few elements that would become recurring in the Final Fantasy series, particularly jobs, and this is also the game that introduces summons for the first time. They’re… kind of underwhelming here but still pretty cool! Also I didn’t mention them in my FF2 review since they’re so irrelevant, but the Chocobo is here to stay. Just like in FF2, you can find a Chocobo in a forest clearing and ride around the map on it and not worry about random encounters for a bit. The difference is 1. There’s more than literally one area where you can find them, and 2. This game also introduces the Fat Chocobo who can store items for you. Neat! This game also gets kind of meta with Final Fantasy’s conventions, even just three games in. Like, I kinda chuckled when Final Fantasy II only gave you the airship 95% through the game, and this one gave you it immediately. Problem is, it sucks and can’t go over mountains. I also had a pretty big shock leaving the first world map for the first time. If there is one thing I don’t particularly care for in this game, it’s that it does get off to something of a slow start. This game only gives you *some of* the FF1 classes at first, which is something I’m sure wouldn’t annoy anyone just playing this game, but can lead to the first chunk of this game feeling just like more FF1. It does introduce more jobs soon enough though. Predictably by now the story here isn’t great, it’s less, uh, tumultuous than FF2’s parade of misery and slightly better than FF1’s festival of fantasy tropes, but still not great sadly. Props for being probably the best story so far however. Overall, Final Fantasy III is actually pretty great. It absolutely succeeds in taking the Final Fantasy series to a new high, it has an increased level of self-awareness that allows it to ascend past the games that came before and a lot of RPGs in general at this time. Next up, we’re going to FF4 and the Super Nintendo games, and I’m honestly really interested in how they’re going to go further with this. I feel like FF4 is going to be more of a “revolution” game than an “iterative” game like this, but I suppose we’ll see. As I said though, FF3 isn’t perfect, but for my money it’s pretty damn good and gets me excited for the future of this series (the past). Grade: A- Difficulty: B