I found it fun but nowhere near the super classic praises it gets. Beat the game on February 6th, 2007.
The game has 2 ‘modes’, town and combat.
When in town mode, you do what you usually do in a RPG. Talk to NPCs, gather informations, recruit people and buy/sell/craft stuff. There are many towns in SF3, some big, some small but they all have some little secrets than you can find if you take time to explore.
The action takes place in the combat mode (duh!). You control up to 12 characters, each with their own stats, skills, spells, etc. The combat takes place on a 'grid' map with forests, sand, water, hills that affect your movement. This is a turn based, strategy-RPG game. So you and your opponent take turns moving and attacking, trying to get an advantage on the enemy to beat it.
My biggest critic about the game is that most of the story is told during combat. That means the story is like a moving train, it never stops, always forward. There is no world exploration, no random battles (FF style) or respawning monsters (Zelda style). Once you beat the opponent’s army there’s no coming back. Get out of town, combat, next town, combat, get out of town, repeat. The only way to do a battle multiple time is to loose or cast a spell/use an item that will bring you back to the last church (save point) you visited. I recommend the later option because if you loose (when your main character dies), you loose half your gold and will most likely need to spend extra cash to revive fallen comrades. Worst part is that’s the only way to effectively level up your characters!
Leveling up is cool. You get experience points from damaging/killing the enemies and healing (in the case of priests, monks). Each level you gain extra points to your base stats and at predetermined levels you gain special skills and spells. The special skills are like super power critical hit with unique animation. They are pretty cool to watch (spells too) and you will find yourself wishing for a Mega Charge or a Drain Arrow. You can even promote your characters at level 10, giving them new skill, spells and cloths. One sad note about levelling up is that healers just can’t keep up with the fighters and mages. They don’t do a lot of damage (less XP), are less likely to finish off a monster (no XP bonus), so their easiest way to make XP is by healing. They get a fixed amount of XP for healing no matter how much HP they heal. Word of advice, never end a battle with a healer MP not empty.
Crafting is fun but not very deep. In town and combat, you’ll find mitryl and dark matter pieces that can be forged by a smitty. They can be tricky to find and they appear late in the game. You give the piece to the smitty, for whom the piece will be crafted and an amount of gold. Randomness and luck do the rest. I mostly sold what the smitty gave me, you either already have crafted it or find a better one.
The controls are simple. Move with the cross, A and C to confirm, B to cancel. Left and Right shoulder buttons rotate the camera left and right. You can choose from 3 different views with the either the X,Y,Z buttons. I recommend using the 3D control pad as the stick make it easier to move around. I’ve got to complain about the targeting and the default action though. I sometimes ended up dead because the game would select the unharmed monster instead of the nearly dead one. Wanting to go fast, I’d just select the attack action and damaging instead of killing a monster giving the opponent 2 turns to attack me.
I beat the game just under 40 hours. It could have been longer if I levelled up ALL my characters but I just stick to the same 12…
Thanks for reading, feel free to comment about my views and my review, it’s my first one.