An excellent RPG on the Nintendo DS.

User Rating: 8.2 | Final Fantasy III DS
If you own a Nintendo DS and are a fan of RPGs, odds are you have at least looked at Final Fantasy III. Final Fantasy III is a remake of the original Final Fantasy III for the Famicon, which never made it over to North America. The game that we know as Final Fantasy III is actually the sixth game in the series. The game has been graced with many updates, visually and some mechanically. Final Fantasy III is presented in some beautiful 3D graphics, this is relatively speaking of course, they cannot compete with Gears of War, you must keep in mind that this is on the DS, a portable system. The game really doesn't do anything special with the touch screen or using two screens. The lower screen is where most of the action takes place, while the top screen is usually displaying the world map. Occasionally the top screen will display some text during cut-scenes, but nothing extraordinary.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it is more or less your standard turn-based RPG. You end up with four party members and you have to equip them and level them up, nothing new here if you've played a turn-based RPG before. There is a job system in this game, with many to choose from, which is pretty cool, although many of the jobs are pretty much useless. The variety in jobs gives you many possible combinations, which really adds to the replay value of this game.

The story in here is pretty cliche. The world is in trouble, surrounded by darkness, Warriors of the Light must save them, yadda-yadda, you've heard it before. It's not horrible or anything, it's just nothing inventive. You'll stay interested in the game, so that's a plus.

One of the more notable things in this game was that you could not save while you are in a dungeon. So if you die, you start from the beginning, or the last place you saved (you can only save in the world map). They did add a quicksave feature in the DS version, so you don't have to keep your system on if you want to stop. The lack of saving in a dungeon makes this game fairly difficult, especially when you reach the final dungeon. There are six bosses in there, all of which are quite difficult. I lost hours and hours of gameplay when I lost and had to start over several times in this dungeon. This created a lot of stress, but did give me a more fulfilling victory afterwards.

The game really doesn't utilize the Nintendo WiFi Connection all that much, you can send mail to other people, but really, nothing exciting. It would have been cool if they had a battle arena or something, but not a huge loss.

Final Fantasy III may not be the best game in the long line of Final Fantasies, but it is most definitely a great RPG. It is a great buy for anyone that owns a DS, and you will get your money's worth out of it. Once you beat the game, there are many sidequests and such to attain to, so even after 30 or so hours of playing, you technically aren't finished. I would recommend this game to anyone that likes Final Fantasies or turn-based RPGs in general, or anyone looking for a great game on the DS.