Game Review// Final Fantasy III (DS)

Final Fantasy titles have been thru so many versions and iterations that sometimes its hard to know which ones are new ones or which ones are remakes. Another confusion is over the numberings of the versions. Final Fantasy II is actually really Final Fantasy IV. But thats another story for another time. Final Fantasy III is a remake of a game that only came out in Japan, and is being seen here in North America for the first time on the Nintendo DS.

Story
The narrative of FF games have always been pretty simple. This one is no exception, just take four kids magically linked together to find the powerful crystals that will prevent from total catastrophe from occurring.


Gameplay
I Enjoyed this one quite a bit. After all this time of me being out of Japanese RPGs, I found this one to be pretty pleasing. The controls are very standard to what other FF games have. You can use the stylus to move your character or navigate the menu. The difficulty on this game is actually quite high. Which is surprising seeing as it's a DS game but also quite refreshing that there is no hand holding being done around the game.


Music & Sound
I don't know if it's because this is on DS or because they are trying to stay true to the Japanese version. But I find that the music in this game is actually quite plain and somewhat low quality.
Simple tunes, some catchy some annoying, nothing close to being as good to something as say Earthbound. The sound effects in this game are quite solid with no technical glitches that I have encountered.


Graphics
The graphical update may not please some of the more hardcore fans, what with a lot of things having been aesthetically changed. But to everyone else, it will not be much of a problem if any. The game does look good for a Nintendo DS 3D game so I give em props for that. Although if zoomed in too much, the polygons do start becoming quite jaggy and ugly. Overall this is a pretty game.



Final Word
This game is kinda long for it to be a renter. But if you get bored easily of JRPGs then you should get enough with just renting this one. A fair buy if you can find it for around 30$ or less.