Final Fantasy III (DS)

Game Diary / March 2, 2007 / John / 1

I’ve been waiting ages to start this, but I had (and still have, I guess) too many Castlevania games in the way. Well, it’s time for a change of pace I think. The first thought was “ZOMG!” – the introductory FMV is beautiful – exactly the type of thing you expect from Squenix. Once the game itself starts, it’s “ZOMG!” again because it is truly lovely. The graphics are, I’d say, on par with Final Fantasy VII on the PS1 – rich and colourful.

It’s in the gameplay that things take a turn for the surprising – particularly when compared to the recent FFI&II on the GBA. FFIII is pretty unforgiving – you can’t just go rushing into a new area and expect to stay alive – the enemies, even early on, are pretty tough. I popped south to a village, doing some one-hit goblin slaying along the way, done a bit of chatting, got an airship and a full party of four, heard a rumour about a cool sword in the west tower of the castle I was in and thought “aha – I’ll need that, I’ll just pop up the stairs and DEAD”. Of course, I hadn’t saved since the first dungeon, so I have about forty minutes play to repeat.

The morale of this story, kids, is LEVEL UP. FFIII doesn’t look like it’s going to let me breeze through the plot the way I and II did. It gets tough quickly – which is a GOOD THING, because I and II presented no challenge whatsoever.

Oh, and did I mention it’s very pretty? Only downside (and I don’t know how much of a downside it is yet) is that there’s a pause of a second or so before entering combat, before the victory animation and before returning to the main view. It’s not a problem after a battle of a minute or so, but if you’re ploughing through a succession of one-hitters, it could grate. I’ll have to see how it goes.

John