Final Fantasy III hits the DS with a cool selection of jobs, interesting library of monsters, and an interesting story.
User Rating: 8.5 | Final Fantasy III DS
Final Fantasy III takes players on a quest through a world filled with monsters, dwarves, pirates, and even gnomes. With a colorful cast of characters, expected Final Fantasy gameplay, and a (slightly) diverse job system, Speeker_Boxx rates Final Fantasy III an 8.5/10. The story starts off slow with Luneth, one of the main characters in the story, and his quest to reach the surface grounds after plummeting into a convenient hole. After taking on a couple of monsters with your dagger or longsword, you proceed out of a cave and into your hometown. Here you meet and team up with childhood friend Arc, a boy whose fear overpowers his confidence. After traveling to a bit more towns (maybe 5 minutes later) you find yourself with Ingus and Refia, the last two heroes of the story. It wasn't a coincidence that these four young warriors met up with each other; they soon learn that they are the chosen warriors of light. After learning this information, the race is on to save the world from plunging into a dark void. The gameplay of this game is expected from any handheld Final Fantasy game. The four warriors each take turns attacking targets of your choice, with either weapons or magic. Special magic, white magic, is used to help your party rather than hurt your opponent. Whether this type of magic is healing your party, or casting a wind spell on flying opponents, it seems to be a "must have" magic throughout the story. Another special magic that you get to play with, black magic, is used to put the hurting on opponents. Casting fire spells, earthquakes, and even thunder spells, this magic also seems to be a "must have" as it is in any handheld Final Fantasy game. Outside of the battle, walking to different destinations can be a pain to some, as many complain about random battles. Basically, random battles occur (randomly) when you are walking along a cave, mountain, or even the outside world. You're only safe from random battles when you're in a town. Again, this is all stuff we've seen before in a Final Fantasy game. More mechanics that make the game good would be its catchy background tunes and good (but not great) graphics. When the game's all said and done, you've beaten the final boss, it still manages to keep you playing. If you have a friend with a copy of the game, you both can team up to unlock Mognet sidequests with prizes worth the wait (the Onion Knight job, and the Iron Giant battle). Furthermore, you get another challenge by collection mastery job cards. These cards are only given to you once you've reached job level 99 on a specific job. Obtaining every job card keeps the game interesting, and gives you something to brag about. Overall, FFIII is a decent game for the DS system that you shouldn't hesitate to check out. 
