Set out on a typical Japanese fantasy adventure filled with monsters to defeat and kingdoms to save.

User Rating: 8 | Final Fantasy III DS
A phenomenal earthquake shook the very foundations of the lands. It is said that four crystals of light were thus swallowed into the unknown depths of earth. The darkness then rose and yielded the lands full of sorrow and despair. Monsters and evil powers are growing steadily in the dark hollows of the earth – but all hope is not yet lost! Prophecies tell of brave warriors of light who will come to restore the balance in the world.
And so it came to pass that an young adventurer found an underground cavern by chance, and within that cavern was one of the crystals of light. The adventurer, named Luneth, became blessed by the crystal's power – and that makes him one of the four warriors of light.

The adventure begins when Luneth falls into the underground cave where he soon finds the crystal of light. The game quickly introduces the player to the combat system and the game's underlying rule set. You'll get the chance to find some basic items, learn to equip and use them and try some battles before the real adventure begins.

As this is a remake of the original Final Fantasy 3 for the NES from 1990, you won't see many innovations here gameplay wise. You'll be fighting monsters, talking to villagers, searching for clues, completing quests and buying weapons and armor just like in many other similar roleplaying games. What makes this so great though, is that it finally gives us Europeans and Americans the chance to play the game – the original was only released in Japan.

You begin play with only Luneth as the main character, but soon enough you will meet Arc, your best friend who also joins you in the quest to set things straight in the world. Finding the two other warriors of light will eventually occur soon enough too – once you have your trusted band of adventurers you'll really feel the strategic depth this game has when it comes to fighting battles.

The battles are turn-based and require advanced tactics, at least further into the game. You'll encounter hard boss fights that typically needs a few tries before they go down, and generally when exploring monster filled areas, your characters will need to be able to stay alive. You will need someone who can take a lot of damage, someone who can cast healing magic, and someone who can deal a lot of damage.

The game is set in a fantasy world with many dangers and treasures. There are numerous different monsters, bosses, items, weapons and spells though the game. As you progress through the story you'll unlock more and more jobs your characters can assume. Each job represents a special ability, a strength and a weakness. The different jobs that you can play in the game are; Freelancer, Warrior, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage, Thief, Ranger, Knight, Scholar, Geomancer, Viking, Dragoon, Black Belt, Dark Knight, Evoker, Bard, Magus, Devout, Summoner, Sage and Ninja.
As you can tell, there is a wide array of different character types you can have in your party. You can change any characters job at any time – but when changing jobs like this, that character will need a few battles to "get into" his or her new job before she can start leveling up that job.

Thanks to all these different jobs you can form and shape your party pretty much as you want. What jobs you level up will determine what general strategy you use in combat. You are free to experiment with different combinations of jobs as much as you like. Much of the enjoyment in this game relies on trying different jobs. The more you experiment though, the more monsters will you need to kill to maintain your party's level of power. The further into the story you progress the harder will the monsters be. This means that you more or less need to have a certain character and job level to stand a fair chance against the forth coming challenges. This is not quite as intimidating as it may sound though – you'll quickly notice if your characters aren't strong enough. In that case you can easily backtrack and fight random monsters and level up that way until you're ready to move on.

Not only will you be leveling up your jobs, but also your character levels. Job levels determine how good you are at doing your jobs – for instance, your chance to success at stealing as a thief increases the better your job level is. Your character level on the other hand determines your characters basic stats, such as strength, dexterity, hit points and magic points and so on. But you need not pay this much attention because you level up jobs and character levels at the same time, in the same way – by killing monsters.

The story takes the young adventurers through many perilous and strange places. You'll have the chance to visit the dwarves, fly an airship, explore underwater caves, fight dragons, save a kingdom and so on. Needless to say; the game is very epic like the other Final Fantasy titles. There are secret treasures hidden here and there that can aid you in your journey. You'll make new friends and at the same time prepare yourself for the greater evils and challenges of the world. If you are into these kinds of things, then you'll enjoy every second of this game.

There seems to be some minor balance issues in the game. Using two weapons with a melee fighting job seems overpowered compared to using a weapon and a shield. Dual wielding two weapons basically doubles your attack power, and it seems that you always benefit from doing this. Some of the special abilities from the jobs seem overpowered too – the warriors ability to increase attack power at the cost of defense, for example is incredibly advantageous. The defensive abilities like the knights "defend" ability isn't even close to being as useful, and that seems a bit unbalanced.

Other jobs abilities such as the scholar who can study enemies to reveal their hit point total can also seem a bit futile. This can also work as a difficulty setting of sorts – if you want the game to be harder you can choose to play with jobs that aren't overpowered – or if you want to play the game more than once you could spice things up the second time by playing with new jobs. I assure you that the difference will be huge.

The game will need you to fight a lot of random monster encounters – and I really see no way that this can be avoided. You need to make sure that your characters are strong enough to beat the next boss all the time, and if you aren't, you have to level up. Much of the play time will be spent on killing monsters just to gain those precious experience points. This is pretty normal for most roleplaying games in general, so the repetitive nature of these kinds of games is an accepted fact. If you aren't up for this, then playing this game might not be your cup of tea after all.

The DS does a great job in rendering this game in 3D. The graphics are good albeit the use of 2D sprites in the three dimensional space. 2D sprites are used mostly in the backgrounds and as props while the figures and the rest of the area is built in 3D. The monsters are nicely modeled with a minimalistic polygon count, and the special effects like spells and such are also looking good. It's arguable that the game could have looked better if it was entirely made in 2D as that eliminates the somewhat "grainy" look of the characters, but certainly the graphics are fully satisfying as they are. One of the strengths graphics wise is that the game is fairly varied as it portrays both forests, castles, caves, temples, ruins, underwater areas, dungeons, many different monsters and so on.

The music is entirely based on the original music from the 1990's game. It's totally revamped though, and renders the music beautifully on to the DS. The music itself is very appropriate and builds tension and immersion at every turn. It's epic, it's sad, it's hopeful and glorious – it's pretty much perfect. As you will be fighting the monsters much of the time there's always the risk that you'll grow tired of the battle music.

The quest in Final Fantasy 3 is a long one – it'll take 30 – 40 hours to complete. Personally I would have been happier to see an 70 – 80 hours adventure but you can't have it all, can you? This is never the less an unforgettable adventure and if you like any other Final Fantasy game you'll instantly recognize its distinct feel of epic adventure and harsh battles. This isn't however the best in the series by any means, but it sure is worth playing! Seeing the world rendered in 3D for the first time is a novel experience, and saving the world from evil darkness can never get old!