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The Final Fantasy series is one of the most storied in the history of video games; even casual gamers, and those who dislike the RPG genre, can’t help but be familiar with the series as a whole – especially flagship titles like Final Fantasy VII. It comes as no surprise, then, when Square/Enix (Squenix to which it is often lovingly referred) announced that an installment was coming to the extremely popular Nintendo DS. The catch was that this was not to be a new title, but rather a complete remake of the classic Final Fantasy 3 – which in original release never made it to US shores.

Of course the prospect of having a game of such stature available to the American audience for the first time, outside of directly importing the game, was enough to throw fans of the series into a frenzy. Helping to fuel this was the announcement that the game would be a 3D rendition, harnessing the often underestimated power of the Nintendo DS. But does the game live up to all the hype?

Graphics: 5/5

One of the major concerns with the announcement of a 3D engine for this title was whether the DS was up to the task. Final Fantasy has long been regarded as top notch in terms of not only graphics, but overall art direction. These concerns are addressed from the moment the cartridge is inserted into the DS, as we are greeted with a stunning FMV sequence in which the game’s main characters are found riding Chocobos through a field. This sequence immediately gives the impression that Squenix was serious when they said they were committed to development on the DS platform – the FMV looks as good as any you would see on a full size console system. Of course you don’t actually play the game in this state of pre-rendered nirvana, so I can’t really award points in the graphics category solely on an opening video.

Our first taste of the graphics in FF3 actually came from a game completely unrelated to the prospect of dragon slaying and character building – of course I am talking about the previously released Mario Hoops 3 on 3. Hoops was co developed between Nintendo and Square/Enix using the same engine that is the foundation for FF3; this is extremely evident in later levels when you actually play against Final Fantasy characters on the deck of an airship – leading to Penny-Arcade declaring that ninjas shouldn’t be allowed to play basketball.

The engine looks great on the high contrast screen of the DS Lite; owners of the original DS will no doubt be missing out as the vibrant colors used throughout the game will look muted on the older version of the handheld. While the polygon counts are kept relatively low, they are used masterfully to make characters seem full and tangible as opposed to the 2D sprites used when the game was originally released on the Famicom. The characters look very close to those from the legendary Final Fantasy VII, showing that although the PSP may get all of the graphics talk in the handheld world, the DS can still hold its own. Textures, while often pixilated, do not detract from the overall look of the game, and backgrounds are immersive. Spell effects are adequate, but watching the higher level spells doesn’t give the same feeling of power that it did in previous games (remember the first time you cast “meteo” back on the Super Nintendo?).

One of the disappointments is that to get this level of graphic performance out of the DS, the top screen is usually unused; in most DS games if I were to say unused it would mean that there was some stupid map or other useless UI element taking up space superfluously – when referring to FF3, I mean the screen is literally turned off. The only time you actually see both screens in action is when accessing the menu system, or during certain cut scenes. While I’m sure performance issues prevented developers from doing so, I would have loved to see all of the action take place on the top screen, with the bottom screen displaying the menu system at all times – thus cutting down on the amount of swapping back and forth when trying to cast magic between battles.

Sound: 5/5

Incredible musical scores are also something closely associated with the Final Fantasy series – FF3 does not disappoint here either. The sound is good through the speakers on the DS, but plugging in a set of headphones really gives a “wow” effect. No, it’s not 5-channel Dolby surround, but it sounds pretty darn good. Bass hits through headphones are deeper than expected, the midrange seems wide and clean, while the higher pitched sounds aren’t annoying or screechy. Battle music does get tedious after a while, but that isn’t uncommon in this style of game. Even though it gets repetitive, the quality of the music makes it remain bearable.

One complaint would be the lack of character voices. I know that the classic FF games were never voiced over, but these days all RPGs seem to have some sort of voice work to help convey the emotion of the characters. Now, I’m not foolish enough to think they could have complete voice-overs in the paltry storage space of the DS cartridge – but I would have loved to hear the pseudo-speak implemented in “Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time” or “Star Fox”, both of which are DS titles. In both of those games (but especially in Partners) the voice work done with the characters gave a greater sense that the character was alive – and helped the player to identify with their emotions.

Gameplay: 3/5

It’s Final Fantasy – I could probably sum this section up with that. So then why did I give it such a low score? Well, a major part of FF gameplay is the story; gamers picking up a FF title are expecting a deep and engrossing storyline, with double crosses, surprise twists, and plenty of dialog – even though FF3 had all of these elements, it didn’t explore any of them far enough for the player to actually care. I understand that this is a remake of an older game, and that “back in the day” developers were limited in the story they could create by the amount of storage space they had to work with; however, I would argue that when they overhauled the graphics they could have spent a bit of time fleshing the story out as well.

If you listen to the podcast portion of this website you may have heard me say that the dialog in the game was “written by retarded Japanese monkeys, and then poorly translated by a non-English speaker.” After finishing the game, I still stand by that statement 100%. The subplots that exist throughout the game are not only shallow, but are horrifically marred by bad dialog. NPCs talk like robots instead of people, and often times what they are saying has no regard for what is actually occurring in the world around them. Many characters in previously visited towns will continue to give the same dialog clues as to what you should be doing, even if you long since completed the quest that they are referencing – this totally pulls the player out of the game, as it feels like their actions don’t actually have an impact on the world.

The item system, while true to the FF style is also starting to feel tired. Blame Blizzard for this, but since “Diablo”, the “loot game” has never been the same. Most modern RPGs have a dynamic loot system – not so with FF3. The items you get are basically handed to you in a linear fashion, thus taking that “special” feeling away from them as you expect to find new weapons/armor at a fixed interval – it’s almost like levels for your loot. Which brings up another point, frivolous leveling. Playing through “Neverwinter Nights 2“, the game leveled you up in such a way whereas if you were completing the side-quests the player would more or less always be at the level they should be at for the next encounter in the main storyline. Final Fantasy doesn’t do that. I battled through just about every random encounter I had along the way from point A to point B, but when I got to certain sections of the game, I found myself having to spend a half hour or so just “leveling up” to overcome the next boss. While this isn’t surprising for a FF game, it has a dated feel to it, harkening back to a time before games had engrossing stories and complex play mechanics.

The final item I wanted to comment on in this section is the job system. The job system in FF3 allows one to play with a wide variety of classes, and make up parties tailored to their own style of gameplay – the reality is that all those choices aren’t really necessary. I chose the “classic” party combination from the original Final Fantasy of Warrior (Fighter), Monk (Black-Belt), White Mage, Black Mage – and until the final dungeon, I was able to overcome every encounter. It’s disappointing that given the huge number of choices available, what works best is just sticking with one party through the whole game; this is driven home by the fact that you gain job levels separately from character levels – meaning a job you pick up later in the game will be significantly less effective than your previous job, unless the time is invested to level it up. As I discussed previously, leveling is tedious enough as it is without having to worry about doing it over and over for a whole bunch of different class types.

Replayability: 2/5

The only reason I can see playing through the game a second time would be to try out different classes. In about 20 hours I was able to level all of my characters to 60, complete the main quest, obtain all summons, and complete all side-quests except for the ones that require messaging over Mognet. Having done all of that, I feel that I pretty much conquered this game in its entirety.

While the game supports the WiFi connection feature, there isn’t any multiplayer aspect. The whole of the WiFi functionality is the ability to send messages to other players. This is completely pointless and utterly tedious, as anyone reading this is most likely familiar with the horror that is the DS friend code system. By sending a certain number of messages to other players, a couple extra quests are unlocked along with another job type. Personally, I don’t think that it adds enough to the game to put oneself through the torture of accumulating friend codes to send messages to. Even if one were to get some friends all hooked up, they can only send one message per hour – pure agony. I would have loved it if they used the WiFi connection to allow players to pit their parties against each other similar to the “Pokemon” series of games; heck, I would have even been happy with a multiplayer boss race a la “Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow” – but as it stands, once the main quest is completed, you are very done with this game.

Performance: 4/5

As this is a console game there isn’t a whole lot to write about in this section. I did want to make note that in battles involving multiple enemies (3+) the game would slow down during animations until one of the enemies was killed, eliminating it from the screen. Again, I think the 3D engine used is pushing the DS about as hard as it will go, thus causing things to creep a bit when too much is going on at once. Even with this, it wouldn’t slow down horribly, and the general performance of the game was smooth. This game also drained the batteries on my DS faster than any other game I have played on the system – I imagine this has to do with the amount of wringing the developers had to do to squeeze out the graphics.

Final Thoughts

Final Fantasy 3 for the DS is a great game. I know I just spent several paragraphs taking apart various features and telling you what sucked; but this is a review, and I want to make sure that anyone reading it knows what they are getting themselves into. The graphics are gorgeous, the sound is amazing, even the length at about 20 hours is substantial for a handheld system – but if you’re looking for the “it” game for the DS, this isn’t what you are looking for. Replayability really hurts this title, which isn’t unusual for a linear RPG, but I can’t help but think the developers could have done more with the DS’s wireless capabilities to really give this thing some lasting value.

A must have for all Final Fantasy or RPG fans, but for lasting enjoyment you are better off with Square/Enix’s other big name title on the system: Mario Hoops 3 on 3.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Review System

• Nintendo DS Lite – Polar White

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 4:26 pm and is filed under articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.