FINAL FANTASY III

III/III, ta wuenazo! (ahora voy el IV)

Is Final Fantasy.

[h1] Hydrogen Bomb (FF III PR) Vs Coughing Babies (FF I & II PR) [/h1] I went into this one with a lot of apprehension. Having loved FF III on DS for its features and difficulty, I was especially afraid of the treatment FF III would get after going through FF I & II through the Pixel Remasters. Even with 0.5x modifiers across the board, FF I devolved into auto-attack slop by the mid-game punctuated with extremely harsh peaks of difficulties (or rather peaks of stats) in bosses with the latter's attack/spell cycles being changed for complete RNG which made the battle outcomes of said bosses based way more on luck (especially the final boss), and FF II was nothing more than a tedious walking simulator with an interesting yet self-destructive battle system slapped on top. With FF III... they finally made it work. Again at 0.5x modifiers, the experience was challenging even if less punishing than on DS, with some amounts of grinding but nice enough to not be overboard. Maybe I'd advise leaving Job Levelling at x1 the whole way through though, and putting x1 EXP by the start of the endgame, but either way... What struck me especially with FF III compared to the other two is that strategising and planning around battles actually is required, even if it's to a low amount like for some of the grinding sessions. I was almost always in a bit of danger in random encounters, giving them actual meaning in their existence, rather than being some random pile of EXP dealing 1 damage or failing its spells against me (right FF II?). This is what an old RPG should be, I should have to put at least some modicum of thought into it, battles always felt engaging and had consequences to my ressource management whenever I would screw up. Classes are not exactly super balanced, there are obviously some that suffer because of their unfortunate introduction and how the game proceeds, in that the loot you find through game progression generally hints at what classes will be effective for the coming battles (it's true especially of Dragoon & Dark Knight). The Bard for example is probably the worst class in the game, as when it comes it has ZERO armor choices, thus no survivability when you use him for as long as you're stuck on Amur. However, the progression system makes classes sort of act like keys & lockpicks (for the less effective ones) to the dungeons & boss' doors. Even the Bard can have its uses; while I said it's probably the worst class as an example, it's a testament to this game's good design that every class is workable and that you're rewarded for switching things up to account for any situation. If you lose, you don't necessarily need to farm (though that sweet HP can make a difference) as you can win by changing the class composition and experimenting a little, but it's also nice that you can limit that and force through that lock with less effective options. The cave you're supposed to do with at least a Dark Knight I managed to do with a team composed of Evoker/Geomancer/Bard/Knight (IIRC), and although a little rough it still worked! One thing that is a bit regretfully absent but that I can understand: Job Points (Famicom) & Job Readjustment system (DS) are absent here, meaning there is no disadvantage to switching out of a job to another, besides losing/not getting MP if a magic based class is involved. It does make things a lot easier for experimentation however. But what if you don't want to put any thoughts to it and break it outright? Well, you can adjust the modifiers. I'd assume even then on x1 it should be fine even for modern gamers, but they can go up to 4x. I'm at least thankful that as opposed to FF I & II, there is a difficulty level where I can say "I love this from beginning to end". That is... well... okay. The end is a bit of a dip in quality. Once I got Ninja & Sage, the battles got a little more binary, and I'll admit I missed switching around between Dragoon, Dark Knight & Evoker for just one character, making Bard work, switching between Knight and Black Belt... and then the endgame was two classes that had so many advantages there were no reasons to go back. Beyond that, once you get into the Dark World after the Crystal Tower, you're absolutely unable to go back, so at least one part of the original sadistic game design was left intact. Hope you saved prior entering, otherwise, well, hope you stocked up on items and those nifty Shurikens that cost an arm and a leg! (I couldn't buy them, I had just 4 saved up for the final boss... ugh...) It's still saying something though that the low points of this game are still kicking FF II's peaks in the ass. Gameplay alone is my sole reason this trashes the previous two games.