Final Fantasy 3 is a great update of a classic game that shouldn't be missed by any RPG fan.
The story in Final Fantasy 3 is almost like a missing link between Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy 4. It continues to develop the theme of the four warriors of light restoring the light to the four crystals like the first two games in the series, but, also, adds more story elements and character development into it like FF4 did. When playing through the game it's easy to see the transition in the series.
The game uses a turn-based battle system like all of the early FF games. Some people have been complaining about this, but, as a fan of the SNES games, I actually find it somewhat nostalgic. There's something very addicting about hitting the A button for attack over and over again. The job system in this game works pretty well. Every time your party acquires another crystal they gain the ability to learn 4 new jobs and any character can learn any job. The only problem is that there is a small transitional period after switching jobs during which your characters will be very weak. This may discourage some players from ever changing jobs. Also, there will be times where you will need a character to be a certain job in order to progress through the game, but you may not have been training any characters in that job so you are forced to weaken one of your characters to progress in the game. The magic system works very well when compared to other Final Fantasy games. There's no complicated gambit system or grid board in this game. You simply buy the magic and then, if your character is powerful enough to use it, you can use it. The only real problem with this game, however, is the save system. You can only save on the World Map, which means that if you are in a dungeon and you run into a really hard boss battle and die, you have to play the entire dungeon over again, because you can't just save right before the boss. This is forgivable throughout most of the game, but during the last couple of dungeons, where you have to fight several hard bosses without being able to save, this gets really annoying.
The graphics in this game are simply amazing. Making this game for the DS instead of the GBA was clearly the way for Square-Enix to go. The in-game graphics look like they're probably somewhere in-between FF7 and FF8, but then the style of the game captures all of the charm from the old SNES games in the series. Both of these styles working together create an amazing fusion between the PS1 games and the SNES games.
The music is pretty good. The game reuses a lot of the same music from old FF games, which adds a nice nostalgic feel to the game, but they also use the same music over and over again which makes it sound repetitive. Also, since most of the music is taken from other games, it fails to capture the feel of THIS game.
The scope of this game is huge and your characters move through about 3 different world maps before finally arriving on the real one. The game itself will last most people somewhere between 25-30 hours, which is good for a handheld RPG. Also, there are a few extras like extra dungeons and bosses and, of course, the whole Mognet system adds length to the game.
Overall Final Fantasy 3 is a great update of an old-school game and, if you like RPG's, this game shouldn't be missed. FF3 is highly addictive and i found that soon after I got it I was unable to put it down. After playing this game, I hope Square-Enix changes their mind about remaking FF6 for the GBA and switches it to the DS.