Retro Achievement Mastery 198 - Final Fantasy III DS

Last year I played Final Fantasy 3 for the first time ever. I also beat FF5, which is basically FF3-2, and LOVED it. I wanted to play more FF5, so I played it three fucking times for Four Job Fiesta. And even after ALL of that, I still kinda wanted to play more… so I pulled out FF3 for DS.

When I’m playing all these old games I try to go older to newer, and I usually go for the oldest version first. This means I usually don’t get to remakes. There’s too many games to play and I don’t replay games often. FF3, however, I loved so much, AND people were gushing about the remake as I played the NES version, so I was excited to play it. Funnily enough, as I played this version though, people’s tunes changed, and they were like “Oh, this version isn’t very good, it has too many flaws, it’s too difficult”.

Now, FF3 is the hardest Final Fantasy game I’ve ever played. And people were telling me that this was harder. I was surprised. How could it be? So I’ve now beaten it, and I can say, they were wrong. This is not harder.

There are a lot of changes between FF3 and FF3DS, but less than you’d expect. When they were remaking the first Final Fantasy games around this time, they mostly updated the graphics and mechanics, on the GBA. FF3 took longer to make though, because they apparently lost the source code and had to do it from the ground up. So it came to the DS, and direct remakes were less in vogue then. You needed to spice it up. PLUS it was 3D now, so they decided to take the time to completely redo the vibe and story… kinda. I was expecting more. These are now characters. In FF3, they were all just blank slates. They talked and existed as characters but they were blank slates to put your thoughts and characters into, really. Here, they are characters. One is a generic hero, his childhood friend who’s shy and sweet. An independent fiery blacksmith’s daughter, and finally a royal knight who joins them. But they still do and say basically the same things as the original game, so it doesn’t really add as much as you’d expect.

The best thing about it is that these character designs were made by the same artist who made Bravely Default, and I love the designs.

You still meet the same characters, go on the same mini stories, and do the same dungeons. Even the dungeon and level design is pretty much the same. There were a COUPLE of rooms and floors that were changed, but it was shockingly accurate to the NES designs. Even some of the suspect stuff. The NES had dungeons that I was like “woah, this is fucked up and rude”, like the mini and frog dungeons, the Dark Dungeon, or the final Dungeon, the most fucked up final dungeon I’ve ever seen. None of that is toned down. It’s the same as it was in the NES verison. But I still think the game is easier, for a few reasons.

One, in the NES version, you could fight up to 9 enemies at once. Here, it’s 3. Their health is increased to account for this but it’s still easier to take on 3 tankier guys than 9 slightly weaker guys. Secondly, the numbers are just… a bit nicer. I didn’t have to grind as much to handle the Dark World. In the NES version I had to grind HARD, but here, nope. I could beat the game without much worries. Even the fucking Garuda fight, which again had an achievement where I had to do it without Dragoons, was SO much less of a problem in this version, and this version’s achievement was HARDER. In the NES achievement, it didn’t matter how many of my units died, but here they all had to be alive, AND not use any Dragoons. But I still found it easier, just cause the numbers were nicer.

There was just one problem.

The Iron Giant is a bonus fight made for the DS version, and he is fucked up. I literally had to grind to level 99 to handle him, and it still took me like two tries. TBF, I also had to beat him with no one dying, but like, he’s REALLY tuned. But that’s a bonus boss in an RPG, like, they’re all overtuned, and I won’t hold that against the rest of the game.

Over all, I liked this version. The music is, for the most part, better. The story changes didn’t add as much as I’d hoped, and I think I prefer the NES graphics, but it certainly wasn’t ugly. It being on the DS added literally nothing, the touch screen basically did nothing. You COULD use it but why would you? All in all, it was another pleasant way to play a good game.