Wednesday, January 3, 2007

State of the Gamer: Final Fantasy III (DS)

Christmas came, and I received two Final Fantasy games: FF3 (Nintendo DS) and FF5 (GBA). Since FF3 was only my second game for the DS, I played that one first.

SquareEnix recreated an old 2D Japanese-only classic into a 3D stylus-enabled adventure. Since I mentioned it: the stylus. Again, this is only my second DS game, but the use of the stylus in this game is pretty... useful. I could easily see somebody using the stylus for the entire game. However, it's not required, and the basic controls still function the same way as any FF game.

The 3D feature is nice. It appeared a bit blocky at first, but still preferable to the normal 2D stuff. Plus, it probably looks better than an FF7 port would.

The game has a WiFi feature that allows you to send mail to other FF3 players as well as NPCs in the game. All of these are required to open up some of the games secrets. The only frustrating thing about this are that you have to start mailing early, or you may find yourself tinkering with your DS clock to overcome the "1 mailing per hour" rule. Also, the button for the spacebar is NOT on the same page with the alphabet, but fortunately no one sends real messages to each other--they just post their Friend Code on a website and send nearly blank messages to get the unlocks. On the other hand, the game allows you to send weapons to your friends as well, though only at a certain point, and only the master weapons and armors. Still, pretty nifty function!

The story is good, if not choppy, but I can't really complain about this since it is only the third installment. The story is much more involved and much better than FF1 (and I haven't touched FF2, despite having it on PSone and GBA).

The gameplay is really intriguing. Your character can take on around 20 jobs, meaning you have the ultimate freedom to choose whatever you want for your characters. I took one character to Job level 99 Thief... and then realized there is only one worthwhile thing to steal in the entire game, and I probably wasn't going to use it. The variety is great and adds to replayability.

My biggest complaint is that the characters are not very personalized. Because they can have any job, you never get a sense of what they REALLY are. Great for playability, bad for character development. But worse than all of that... the first character you control is a dude who looks like a chick. Maybe this is to make up for the fact that there is only one female playable character, but I wish they had simply made it two girls and two guys, rather than two guys, one girl and "Pat."

Overall, this game is a lot of fun. Beyond what I have already mentioned, I especially enjoyed three different types of airships and the limitations imposed on each. If you're a fan of Final Fantasy, this is a must-have. But aren't they all? (Remember, Mystic Quest, just like Rocky V, DID NOT HAPPEN).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.