The Power of Three: A First-Timer's Final Fantasy III Analysis

#FinalFantasy3 #FF3 #FinalFantasy3PixelRemaster

Final Fantasy 3 may very well be the best Final Fantasy yet! Its certainly got its shortcomings, but the overall package is a fantastic template for future games to follow. Square was certainly confident in this one, and it shows. The Power of Three: A First-Timer's Final Fantasy III Retrospective - let’s discuss in this Why Final Fantasy III Is Better Than I and II video.

Intro - 00:00
Title Card - 02:14
Scaling Your Fantasy - 10:00
Square's Serviceable Story - 12:39
Evil's End Game Gauntlet - 23:51

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Links Mentioned:

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Final Fantasy III is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Family Computer. The third installment in the Final Fantasy series, it is the first numbered Final Fantasy game to feature the job-change system. The story revolves around four orphaned youths drawn to a crystal of light. The crystal grants them some of its power, and instructs them to go forth and restore balance to the world. Not knowing what to make of the crystal's pronouncements, but nonetheless recognizing the importance of its words, the four inform their adoptive families of their mission and set out to explore and bring back balance to the world.
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Intro and Outro music provided by Streambeats by Harris Heller.

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click in exists so you and I can talk about games.

[clickingaming]

Hey all! Final Fantasy III is certainly the best one yet, and one I very much enjoyed despite a few shortcomings. I hope you enjoy the video!

[jacksonramsey]

The player only needs to be in Toad form to enter the "main dungeon" portion of the Tower of Owen. Once inside, players can change out of Toad form and use their normal job setup.

[strangehominid]

good on ye'! i like this one alot

[MelodeathxTed]

I really enjoy your reviews and they are some of the best I have seen on FF yet. I have always wanted to see an FF newcomers take on the series chronologically. I'm very excited to see your takes on the remaining entries.

[olserknam]

IV definitely does make some monumental changes, at the very least to how the story is told, as well as characters having pre-determined classes. But it does maintain some aspects from II and III... Uh, well, the better aspects of II and the worse aspects of III. I don't know what are you gonna play, but I'd suggest the PSP's The Complete Collection edition for IV, it looks spectacular and I wish we got III, V and VI in that style.

[allthelonely]

Good review. If you liked the job system in this game, you’ll love it in Final Fantasy 5.

[luki]

Good review.

The DS remake doesnt add much - the only optional content i can think of is the superboss Iron Giant in an underwater cave.
The remake also changes the story a tiny bit by giving heroes names and weak backstory (they have almost no personality anyway). At the start of the game the main hero Luneth has fallen into the cave alone and he only meets the next party member Arc in Ur village after he gets out of the cave. Then he meets a blacksmith daughter Refia (in the village with invisible people i dont remeber the name). Last he meets Ingus a knight from the castle who joins the party to rescue the princess Sara from the Djinn (he has feelings for her and he stays with her after the end of the game - it is not as random as in the remaster). Other than that the story doesnt change much, maybe a little bit of dialogue so i am not really sure why they bothered giving the characters in the remake names and backstories.
Overall i think the remake is good but can be grindy and painful.

Cant say the same thing for FF4 - IMO FF4 DS remake is much better than the remaster (it has voice acting, dialogue bubbles for characters thoughts at any given moment and better features). Overall it is a better experience if you care about the story.

If you liked ff3 job system then prepare yourself for FF5 - it has the best job system in the entire series.

[ManiManiPlays]

The quick saves alone have to be so nice for that final gauntlet. My first time through with this game was on the DS, and it was annoying going through all that BS just to lose to the final boss and having to do it all over again. Not to mention THE GRIND right at the end. It's weird because I don't remember having to grind all that much leading up to the end, it's just that the final dungeon pretty much required you to gain an extra 10 levels for no reason. At least it had the item dupe glitch to ensure a steady flow of Elixirs.

[pawcanada]

Good review. I remember played FFIII for the first time on the DS and hating it. I tried not to let my fondness for later games cloud my judgement, but at the same time, I found a lot of the game's mechanics very archaic by contrast. I think I grew fed up when I had to spend time outside a dungeon grinding, then when I felt ready, run into the dungeon, escape all combat encounters to preserve magic, health and healing items and try and blitz the boss there and then. As someone who always prefer physical jobs, having to switch to a magic party to deal with specific dungeons one too many times just wore me down and I stopped playing the game, I think around where I got the submarine. The lacklustre plot didn't help either, as while I agree with you about FFII's gameplay, I do think it's plot has a lot more depth than people give it credit for, and often have an "underdog fondness" for the game and it's characters.

All that said, maybe I'll give FFIII another try with the Pixil Remaster. I know the 3D version makes a number of changes that amplifies the difficulty, such as the "job switching period" (which was another reason I never liked before forced to use specific jobs in certain dungeons) which I don't think was in the original, and I believe the PR version lacks whatever was in the original version as well. Perhaps I'll enjoy this version more and find myself giving the game a second chance.

[veghesther]

Which one the DS/PSP version is just as HARD as the NES one the Pixel version that still does NOT have a PS4/PS5/Switch port is the easiest one of the 3 despite that its final boss STILL uses Particle beam EVERY turn but the Pixel versions of FF1 to 6 allow Quick Saving nearly EVERYWHERE.

[djeemy]

Don't Stop please
Do the 4-5-6
They are the best!

[LucasSantana-wspo]

Weird, I really liked FF2's gameplay and had an awful time playing FF3 with it weird job system (that for me is polished to its peak at FF5)

[lichenshadow]

The fact that theirs a ton of quest and side quest that end up going no whare feels like 60% of the game is mostly filler and that kills it for me I couldn't finish it ... and my ds broke around the same time lol

[lisandrosantana]

Yay final fantasy! Does anyone like dragon quest too!?

[dtcharo]

Putting my disagreements regarding the balance issues in Final Fantasy II aside, trying to slight Final Fantasy II by saying it was a poor system because it wasn't implemented in the next Final Fantasy game is a silly argument. Again, I'm commenting on a video that at this point is a year old and this may have been addressed below in the comments but the fact that the SaGa series exists, is successful, and uses the framework that Akitoshi Kawazu set in Final Fantasy II, is a counter argument against your assertion even if you don't think so. Granted, I think both lines of logic are faulty because I find the premise flawed but that's beside the point. It's easier to point out that Kawazu didn't do the battle planning for Final Fantasy III and it was Hiromichi Tanaka instead and also Sakaguchi wanted to combine elements from both games hence the change. You even stated this in your video. The franchise is known for reinventing the wheel (often to its detriment) after all. Personally, I think the introduction of a job change penalty and the bringing back of spell charges instead of sticking with traditional MP in Final Fantasy III was a misstep and thankfully the former was done away with in the Pixel Remaster. The spell charges complaint is just a personal nuisance and not a deal-breaker but the PR is significantly more optimized than the DS and NES iterations. You were curious about Kawazu's involvement in Final Fantasy II. There are some pretty good retrospectives on the game by various creators but a creator by the name of Andrew Bluett does a great series on Final Fantasy I recommend checking out.

Furthermore, I would like to state that I like the job system, as a concept, better than the first Final Fantasy's approach to just choosing your party of various classes and Final Fantasy II's progression concept for that matter. However, in execution, I think the replay value is better on the first Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II because the execution of the job system is poorly done in Final Fantasy III. The game forces the player's hand at many points in the game to use specific job classes to progress unless the player wants to grind heavily. This and the fact that the game has two definitive job classes that completely make the other classes obsolete really hampers strategic job combinations. In short, this is handled much better in Final Fantasy V. That's not to say that Final Fantasy III is a bad game. Far from it. There's definitely fun to be had and Final Fantasy III has more widespread appeal when it comes to the job system. However, the NES version has arguably worse difficulty spikes than Final Fantasy II. Thankfully, the PR version has QoL options to mitigate my criticisms.

What I find frustrating is that you're comparing a significantly more optimized experience with Final Fantasy III in the Pixel Remaster version and comparing it to a largely faithful update (little quality of life improvements) with the Origins version of Final Fantasy II. Again, you're absolutely entitled to your opinion of disliking the game. It's certainly dated in many ways and ill-informed players can struggle with it. However, your comments in this video fail to take into consideration the observations made about your previous video on Final Fantasy II and you just repeat your opinion again as fact. It's unfortunate you didn't have a good experience with the Origins version of Final Fantasy II. However, as someone that has and is currently playing Final Fantasy II on NES, the consensus being that it's the worst version of the game, I do not have the balance issues you've experienced nor have I decided to abuse the common exploits that you and other YouTube commentators have said is necessary for stat growth and progression. A lot of these claims against Final Fantasy II are often self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you want a fairer comparison I'd say play the PR version of Final Fantasy II or you can play the DS or NES versions of Final Fantasy III and see if your opinion changes in any way. Or don't. Life's short and if you don't think Final Fantasy II will appeal to you regardless of the updates in the PR then that's cool too. Watching the Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III videos back to back it felt like you were just completely ignoring good-faith comments from the former when reviewing the latter. That didn't really sit well with me hence the novel I've written you. Still, I've enjoyed the content regardless so I'm going to keep watching.

Cheers.

[calvinrump]

Final fantasy advance tactics gba is still the better game than all of them.