I knew playing this game after playing FFV would have a negative impact, and it did to an extent, but I did end up enjoying this game, probably even a little more than I thought I would.

Clearly a prototype for FFV in almost every way (from the job system and combat/ to the story and characters) it was clear that they were starting to get on the right path but not quite there yet. Still there's plenty to enjoy here. Even though the job system can't compare with V, it's still fun and I'd take it over whatever the heck that was in II. They do attempt a story here, and while it's basic, it's an improvement over FF1. Cid is back, and is a goat as always.

The music might be the least memorable for me out of any FF game I've played yet so that's a bummer.

There are a couple of frustrating sections in the game (the splitting up enemies can eat my fucking ass), but overall it's a fun game, and I'm glad I played it.

I'm really excited to get into IV and VI next, as I hear these are the games. It'll be interesting to see how they hold up.

Cloud of Darkness is #6 on the “Final Fantasy in least to most order of how lame their major antagonists are” list:

Full disclosure, I have not completed this game yet, but I think I’ve played enough FF to definitively comment here for my list.

Xande is yet another dope in thrall to an anonymous nihilist dark cloud, who unfortunately for him does not look as cool as Golbez but fortunately for him does not look as lame as Kuja. I’m also still trying to figure out if his plan makes sense or not (he realizes for the first time he’s going to die, so he wants to bring about the death of all things in existence, so he won’t die?).

However, if we’re going off of dissidia as a standard for FF villains (and we are), then Xande is not the main antagonist, but in fact the Cloud of Darkness. And... she’s cool, I guess. She’s got two snakes. She certainly looks cooler than Zeromus and whatever is going on in IX, but she’s not very complicated. Xande asked for someone or something to erase all life and consciousness as we know it and for better or worse the Cloud of Darkness is the one who showed up. I also get why dissidia passed on Xande in order to fill out their ranks with some female warriors alongside Terra and Ultimecia. In a franchise that seems to be woefully underrepresented, it’s kind of refreshing to see for once that complete and utter oblivion is a WOMAN, baby.

I’m sorry guys, I know this isn’t very in-depth, but to be completely fair to me, you’re acting like the game itself gives me a whole lot to work with either.

EDIT: okay, I’ve played it now. So Xande is part of a trio of wizard apprentices who each get fabulous gifts from their wizard master. The other two get cool shit, like powerful magic and dreams, but Xande gets mortality. This is the start of a great villain, who should have been furious at that gift even without the disappointing cop out that he was manipulated by the cloud of darkness. I would have loved some elaboration on why the wizard gave him this bum gift and a response from Xande on how he feels about it after all, or really anything on this other wizard now that I’m thinking about it. The Famicom version has just enough backstory to suggest an intriguing world, from wizard goofabouts to an ancient society playing around with crystals to make advanced technology, but not enough to sustain any actual interest. Maybe the DS remake goes into more detail? I guess I’ll never know. What, you think I’m gonna play this game AGAIN?

Played the pixel remaster version of the game. This game is a fun and silly adventure that makes several improvements over ff1 and 2. Seriously the difference in quality is staggering. To the point that even though i played the game for 5 hours longer than ff2 i wasn't wishing it to be over 2 dungeons earlier than it actually ended like that game. The job system introduced in this game allows for extreme creativity when it comes to problem solving in battles. I had several moments in my playthrough where i simply skipped grinding by using the right equipment and job combination for a certain boss. The game allows you to freely switch between jobs with basically no penalty for doing so and I really appreciate this as it doesn't give you the anxiety of "oh no i'm making a permanent choice. What if I pick the wrong thing and lock myself out of having fun!" The game attempts a story and while i'm not sure it succeeds the game must still be commended for having actual characters with personalities rather than the cardboard cutouts of previous games. Overall this game makes the previous 2 games look like dogshit in comparison and i can highly recommmend the pixel remaster version.

I’ll start off by saying: thank god I played the Pixel Remaster first. Unlike FFI PR, which mostly kept things the same and fixed bugs, FFIII PR changed some fundamental aspects of the NES version, keeping things largely faithful in terms of vision, but altering technicalities and tedious concepts from the original. FFIII NES is a much less flexible version of the game with a strong dependence on a single stat:

Job Level. Job Level causes tons of problems in the original FFIII and actively punishes you for trying out new classes (which cost capacity to move between) by reducing your hit rates, number of hits, spell damage, spell accuracy, and other things if you’re fresh in a class. It isn’t awful in theory: build up your skills to become competent in a class. In practice, however, moving from one class to another heavily nerfs your initial abilities. Base classes from the Earth Crystal and Eureka at least have competent bases, so becoming a Devout won’t kill your healing and becoming a Ninja won’t make you miss all the time, but jobs from the first three crystals all suffer from this, with the added bonuses that skills are non-transferable, so leveling as a Red Mage and learning both Black and White magic won’t help you if you decide to change into a Black or White Mage later on.

There are also sections where you basically need particular classes (Dragoon for Saronia, Magic Knight for Cave of Shadows, magic wielding classes for every mini dungeon), and freshly reclassing into them will hamper your ability a lot. If you want to defeat Garuda, simply reclassing to Dragoon isn’t enough – you have to grind outside Saronia Castle to make your Job Level not pitiful in order to do meaningful damage to him and not simply miss on your jump attacks. Same thing with magic, which is your only real option to get through the dungeons where you’re forced to be mini (not all classes have Run, and Run can miss a lot more in this game – I suppose you could Escape with a thief, but I don’t think that’s the intended design). Being a fresh Job Level 1 Black Mage would just render your spells completely ineffective.

Speaking of dungeons, in classic final fantasy fashion, they’re all over the place. The mini dungeons are awful, as mentioned above, but the dungeon quality collapses over the course of the game. Early (non-mini) dungeons are largely good, and several of the optional dungeons are alright, if a bit small (especially compared to the nearly 10 floor Tower of Owen at the beginning of the game, why is Bahamut’s Lair just three rooms?). The endgame dungeons are insane, and heavily dependent on invisible wall mechanics, where you just kind of meander through (read: look up a map online and follow the path). Combined with a point of no return and no external healing, this pattern of dungeons getting worse and worse concludes in the World of Darkness, where you fight four bosses (of very high difficulty) who each have a room with invisible walls to get through, and then the final boss after all of that. If you go in without grinding you are going to get bodied.

It's not good! I don’t like to hamper on old games for not having quality of life that we expect from games in the 2020s, but I think there’s a genuine difference between “oh this old thing was clunky and I had to go through more menus/solve it in an esoteric way” and just straight up questionable/bad design, and I think a lot of this game’s faults fall into the latter, in a way that the pixel remaster’s “quality of life” upgrades are actually design changes. Making the game less dependent on Job Level is obvious, but Pixel Remaster making it so that interacting with the crystals full heals your party, changes the game a lot so that you’re not screwed in World of Darkness and just have to Game Over if you can’t handle the gauntlet.

And look, it's not all terrible. Some classes are better here than in the Pixel Remaster, or at the very least different. Scholar is much less terrible, other than its low stamina stat. Geomancer was actually pretty good – the 25% backfire rate wasn’t great, but the damage output when it hit was quite good for the time you got it, with one terrain spell per area. Rangers get low level white magic instead of barrage (something that came from the DS version) and make for a good backup healer. I didn’t find arrow management that annoying honestly.

I did not hate FFIII, I just found it very frustrating and the systems it builds up kind of fall apart.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

I can not say enough good things about this game. I love it. A lot. I didn’t think I would, but look what happened! Yeah, so this game is a hell of a lot better than the first two Final Fantasy games, in almost all respects: vastly improved graphics (on par with those of FF4), a kickass soundtrack (including the coolest boss music EVER).. Basically it’s just a helluva fun game. Think FF5 with less plot. When you win a battle you get Capacity points, and you can use those to change Jobs. Whenever you get to a Crystal you have get more Jobs that you can use, and, uh, stuff. This is probably my favorite Final Fantasy game out there (except for possibly FF7, but we won’t get into that), and is definitely one of the best 8-bit games I have ever played. It starts out kinda rough, but once you get past the beginning, it’s great. Really

Amazing game and was close to being my favourite FF game but some parts did sour it.

Fun gameplay and dungeons and the class system was really fun to play with, insanely good music, a lot of fun moments.
The biggest issue is the weird difficulty spikes, generally the game is pretty solid but some parts are just weirdly stupid hard then immediately going back to fine like enemies in the splitting dungeon have higher hp than half of the enemies in the final dungeon and the final dungeon is pretty messy should have just ended the game at the Sylx tower.
still an amazing game that id recommend playing over the DS version

The Final Fantasy series had a pretty basic, yet still enjoyable start when it came to the original entry on the NES, but then it hit a bit of a snag in the road whenever the second entry rolled around. It wasn’t a terrible game by any means, but several elements of the game paled in comparison to what we had before, and the leveling system in the game somewhat butchered it to where you could either break the game in half, or it would break you in half. Thankfully though, the devs at Square learned from their mistakes in that entry, and would improve upon the formula for the next game in the series, which, like Final Fantasy II, we would not see here in the west for 31 FUCKING YEARS. Yeah, we would get a remake of the game for the DS in 2006, but in terms of the original game, we would not see that version until the Pixel Remaster would be released in 2021. Not sure what took them so long with that one, but either way, we still have plenty of ways to check out this new entry known as Final Fantasy III.

Like with the other two Final Fantasy games beforehand, I had primarily played through a later version of the game before diving into the original. I had first played the PSP port of the remake of the game, and I remember having a good enough time with that version (ignoring some elements I will get to later), and I figured I would have just as good of a time with the original version. So, from playing that game, I can say… the other versions are much better, but as it stands, Final Fantasy III is still a pretty good game, and definitely the best of the original trilogy. It does have its fair share of problems, and it certainly doesn’t reach the heights of other games in the series, but it was still a fun game to revisit, even through its original version.

The story is, compared to Final Fantasy II, much more simple and back-to-basics, where you follow this group of kids who go on a quest to save the world from the evil Xande, gathering four crystals that each hold a power of the elements, and growing to be more powerful and mature along the way, which, again, is much more basic, but with elements like the world and characters you find being much more fleshed out and memorable, it makes for an enjoyable plot overall. The graphics are, once again, on a very similar level to that of the previous two games, but it is definitely the best looking of the original trilogy, pushing the NES to its limits with some of the animations and enemy designs, the music is pretty good once again, having plenty of different songs and tunes that I ended up really liking, even if I prefer their remixes in the remake more, the control is exactly what it sounds like, so moving on, and the gameplay is, again, almost identical to previous games, but it is greatly improved upon in various areas, while also cleaning up after the mess that FFII left behind.

The game is your typical old-school RPG, where you take control of four unnamed warriors, travel across the large world that lays before you, while visiting many different towns, dungeons, and what have you, talk to plenty of NPCs to either get hints on where to go next, purchase additional equipment, weapons, or items, or to just simply have a nice little chat, find many different treasures across the land, and of course, get into random battles. These work, once again, almost identically to the original game, where you will take turns on deciding whether or not to attack your opponent with weapons or magic, use items, or to defend, using many different tools and strategies against many different opponents, and you will gain experience points at the end to level up, which thankfully works like the first game rather than the stupid way that the second game tried out. So thankfully, the battles are fixed and greatly improved upon, with the game as a whole being fun to play through, especially with the new changes and additions made here.

First off, this is the first game in the series to feature the Job System, a mechanic which would become a staple for the rest of the series. If you remember back in the first game, at the beginning, you would choose which job your character would be, and they would stick with that throughout the whole journey, but with this game, you can now switch between jobs at any time you want… as long as you have enough capacity points to afford it. And in terms of the jobs, there are quite a lot to choose from, with plenty of returning jobs like Fighter, the Mages, Thief, and others, as well as plenty of new ones, like Dragoons, Summoners, Scholars and more. While not all of these classes are really all that good, a lot of them can be pretty useful, especially when it comes to certain parts of the game and some certain fights. Although, with that being said, there are plenty of moments in the game where the player will HAVE to switch to a different job in order to get past a certain part, or even to get past a specific boss or enemy because they are the preferred job. Personally, while some of this was a little annoying (especially when you have to be shrunken down), I didn’t really mind this too much. I am the type of guy who, when it comes to having many options of classes to choose from in a game, typically likes to find one class that would best suit me, and stick with it throughout the entirety of me playing the game. So, while I wouldn’t prefer to switch around my classes, this method of doing so does allow me to experiment with some others that I otherwise wouldn’t try, and eventually even grow to keep using as they become new favorites. I’ll at least give the game credit for doing that for me, anyway.

In addition, compared to the previous two Final Fantasy games, this game is HUGE. From the start, you have this one overworld to go through and take on plenty of things in, but then, whenever you get the opportunity to, you can leave this world and discover more overworlds to explore, leading to even more things to do, things to fight and find, and places to see. It certainly isn’t as big or expansive as many other RPGs later down the line, but for being an NES RPG, there is a lot to see and do here, and a lot of it is a lot of fun to see and do. Not only is there more to offer when it comes to the overworld though, there is also much more to offer in terms of… well, everything else. More weapons, more jobs, more characters, more airships, more treasures, more everything! There is so much to do in this particular entry, and if you are a big fan of old school RPGs like this one, then this one will make sure it gives you your money’s worth and then some.

However, don’t think that I consider everything in this game to be perfect, OH NO, because there are several elements that do drag it down. First of all, despite all of the different jobs, weapons, and spells that you can manage throughout your journey, the game can still get pretty brutal at times. Even if you are at a particularly good level, there are a lot of enemies that will manage to do MASSIVE loads of damage on you, have attacks that can wipe you on your ass in no time at all, and there are even plenty of enemies that can divide themselves up whenever you attack them, making them much more of a pain in the ass to deal with. I mentioned before how I didn’t really mind so much that you are basically required to swap jobs at certain points in the game to get through certain areas, but that doesn’t make dealing with some of the monsters you encounter any easier. It can especially be a pain when you have to face off against creatures when you are required to be tiny, and like I also mentioned before, there are some classes that are just better suited to certain fights, making it feel like you NEED to switch to them in those instances.

And then, there is one more aspect that drags the entire experience down, one that any player of Final Fantasy III knows by heart, and loathes all the same. Say it with me now, everyone: it’s the Crystal Tower! This is the final dungeon of the game, and it is absolutely the worst part of the game at the same time. Appropriately, this dungeon contains some of the strongest enemies in the entire game, which are already hard enough to deal with, but then there are also the bosses. On top of the final two bosses you have to face, there are also FOUR OTHER BOSSES that you have to fight when going through this tower, and while some can be taken out pretty easily, others can be a huge pain in the ass, with me being barely able to get through them by the skin of my teeth. With all that being said though, you wanna know what the worst part about this entire dungeon is? You have to do it all WITH NO SAVING. From the moment you enter this tower, all the way to you beating the final boss, you have to do it all with no save points in the middle whatsoever, which, when taking what you have to deal with in the dungeon into consideration, is a massive handicap on the player. Thankfully though, when it comes to the Pixel Remaster of the game, there is a quick save option in it, so you won’t have to worry about it there, and even if you are playing on an emulator, you can just use save states to make the journey much less excruciating, but if you are playing the remake of this game, or you wanna go at it the way it was intended… just, be prepared. Trust me, you will want to at least be, like, around the mid-40s in terms of levels before entering there.

Overall, despite some of the job switching moments, some pretty cruel bosses and enemies here or there, and the entire Crystal Tower needing to fuck off for all eternity, I would still say that Final Fantasy III is still a pretty good game, being the best of the original NES trilogy, and bringing plenty of new elements to the series, both big and small, while still remaining just as fun and satisfying to get through. I would recommend it for those who are big fans of the Final Fantasy series, or for those who are a big fan of old school RPGs in general, because despite those grievances I mentioned earlier, there will definitely be something that you can love or appreciate from this game. Just, you know, be prepared for the Crystal Tower whenever you get around to it. Seriously, even the developers of the game thought they went too far on that dungeon, it is that bad.

Game #450

After the Final Fantasy II disaster, it seemed wise to return to a traditional level-up system with character classes like in the first game. Only this time FF3 cranks up the latter point to never before seen levels with its new "Job" system. The main selling point of this game, instead of choosing the classes your party will be throughout the entire game, the warriors of light can now freely change between any job the player has unlocked at will, allowing for a level of customization previously unseen.

This is novel and refreshing, especially when playing the series in order, but Final Fantasy III has a habit of shoehorning the player into a specific party makeup to tackle the next challenge. The party all has to become mini to enter this dungeon? Well, everyone has to be a magic class then. This boss can only be defeated realistically by 4 Dragoons? Well, looks like the entire party is now a Dragoon. This isn't the worst thing ever since the player can just do what the game wants and get it over with, but it does bring the freedom of customization to a screeching halt.

Some of these jobs unlocked throughout the game are pure upgrades over previous jobs, Summoner is just a better Evoker for example. The 'job points' earned alongside normal experience points don't feel very impactful at all either. These issues are both understandable considering this is a trailblazing Famicom game, but certainly noticeable when compared to a later game like Final Fantasy V that improves upon the whole system massively.

The true elephant in the room with this game, however, and the real factor dragging the star rating down to the gutter, in what would otherwise be a decent game: The Crystal Tower, of course. Everything about the last ~20% of this game is a nightmare. There's no nice way to say it, the last dungeon(s) are some of the worst I've ever seen in any video game. An absolute labyrinthian slog of mind-numbing random encounters and unremarkable HP-sponge boss battles, with not a single save point throughout.

Adding insult to injury, FF3 even pulls the ol' switcheroo after supposedly defeating the main villain atop the Crystal Tower, revealing the real bad guy evil entity that was actually in control all along! The player now has to traverse yet another dungeon (still no save point), defeating 4 unnecessary bosses in each corner of the world of darkness to finally face the final boss, the infamous Cloud of Darkness. As terrible a final boss as I've ever seen, she just spams one attack, the particle beam, which hits the entire party, over and over (she'll sometimes do a weaker physical attack if you're lucky but its not to be relied on). I wish I was making this up but its seriously just a glorified stat check to see if the player has enough HP and healing to survive.

There's two secret jobs, Ninja and Sage, that are the player's best bet for defeating the Cloud of Darkness, but they're found in a separate dungeon at the bottom of the Crystal Tower, which the player could just miss completely. Even with these, the experience is still miserable, there is nothing so discouraging as dying to particle beam spam on the final boss and having to do everything all over again.

It's frustrating how badly Final Fantasy III stumbles near the finish line, because the first 75% of the game is genuinely pretty fun, there's just no getting around the ending ruining the complete package. Final dungeons are supposed to be long, supposed to be challenging, but this is an extreme I'm glad we never reached again. If you want to experience this game for yourself, play any version with quicksaving. Play the Pixel Remaster or just emulate and use save states, anything to dull the pain of The Crystal Tower. In retrospect, FF2 and FF3 are so bad its a miracle we ever made it to 4.

1.5/5.0

TL;DR - FFIII to FFV is like Street Fighter to Street Fighter 2.

FFV is my favorite video game and I love job systems in general so I went into this game expecting to love it. I didn't.

Where to start? Enough has been said about the brutal difficulty curve and how ridiculously unforgiving the final sequence of dungeons are - I broke my no savestate rule for that shit - but I think my problem with this game goes deeper than that: it simply isn't a good job-system game at all.

Firstly, there are so many jobs but only a handful of them are of any consequence. So many jobs you unlock later in the game are simply strictly-better versions of older jobs which means even though you have more than 20 jobs available, by the endgame you have reason to use maybe 4-5.

More damningly, the game utterly misses the point of a job system (flexibility, customizability, creativity) by railroading you into extremely specific jobs for specific dungeons/bosses. One simple example: there's a cave where all enemies respond to physical attacks by duplicating themselves and then swarm you to death. An NPC tells you that if you attack them as a dark knight they don't split. So you use dark knights like the game tells you like a good boy and you're fine.

What if you decide to try to be creative? You could try using magic against the enemies...but the cave is one of the longest dungeons in the game and you won't have enough spell charges to get through (ethers aren't a thing here). You could try using the Master's buildup ability to oneshot them before they duplicate... but using that ability reduces his defence to zero and he will get oneshot. You could use geomancers who can cast spells for free... except the geomancer's ability in that cave is absolutely terrible and has a very high backfire rate. It's as if the developers went out of their way to make sure you wouldn't find any other way around playing the game exactly as they want you to.

And the thing is, if the game actually approached it like a puzzle - leaving you to try to figure out which of the many jobs you have would be the correct solution to a dungeon/boss, then it would be somewhat satisfying. But it's not; it's just an NPC telling you straight up to "use dark knights!" or "use dragoons!" and woe betide you if you try to do anything differently.

Now that I think about it, you can ignore the TL;DR above. If FFV is Street Fighter 2, FFIII is Shaq Fu.

Have to say this is a step down from 2 and maybe like marginally better than FF1? It's mainly held up by a couple neat things like having some good jokes, some fun overworld design, and interesting job ideas.

I appreciate the expanded job system a lot actually but jesus does this game completely ruin it with how it forces your party into certain jobs for some dungeons to even be playable. I understand having it nudge you towards certain ones but a few dungeons are just a million times more difficult without doing this, and job levels mean that switching around can be way too punishing and force grinding. It's just really frustrating how much of the game revolves around this.

Also the rest of the game just kinda isn't good enough to justify it, the story is more akin to FF1 in just being a blank slate for adventuring. I will give it credit in that it doesn't waste too much time with the dungeon layouts compared to 1 and 2 but any of these games would have more enjoyable dungeons if other aspects of the gameplay were more fun.

It was definitely better than FF1 overall but also gave me some of the worst experiences I've had in this series so far.

The NES version of FFIII is significantly more polished than both of its predecessors. It's like they flipped a switch to instantly fix every problem those versions had. The problem is the fucking balancing. You have to grind after nearly every major story beat and it's so tiring. Definitely play the DS or Pixel Remaster versions if you want to experience III for this reason alone.
The job system in general is a bit disappointing. Advertises itself as having so much freedom and then a decent amount of the game practically forces you into an all mage party, or forces you to have dragoons, etc etc etc. It's not egregious, but FFV proved how far you can really take a job system. The gameplay in III does have its moments though, and it was obviously extremely important, starting so many iconic jobs and abilities from FF as a whole. I love the world and the general vibes, and the music wraps everything up in an enjoyable little package.

Final Fantasy III takes all the elements from Final Fantasy I left behind in II and makes them BETTER while taking some of the few elements that did work from II and adding them to the mix.

The story is more akin to Final Fantasy I, and you once again create your own protagonists. The story is, OK, nothing really that amazing, but nothing terrible. The NPCs actually have character now, and the story actually is somewhat engaging. Rather than forcing you to lump around dead weight with a rotating fourth story-related party member like Final Fantasy II, characters now "Join your party" by simply following you around, allowing you to talk to them, which is neat.

The world itself also feels incredibly large, as you realise midway through that you've only been exploring a fraction of the map filled with hidden areas and details opened up to you as you gain more modes of transport. My main gripe with the overworld is why exactly they thought it was a good idea to have half of it just be empty sea that all looks exactly the same, its insanely hard to navigate due to this and just frustrating as you aimlessly fly over the blank void of water.

The EXP system is returned as it was in Final Fantasy I, with the rather groundbreaking addition of the job system. Now any character at any time can fulfil any role and switch between them at a moment's notice. You need to gain points in order to switch, which is kind of a meaningless system as you almost always have enough points, and if you don't you just have to effortlessly grind for them (This system was removed in the remakes). Each job has a unique action and playstyle giving a large variety of options for forming your party, adding replayability. The game has moments that are like puzzles where you must choose the correct job types in order to progress, however, you can also solve these problems by simply using specific spells or actions. More jobs unlock as you progress, further encouraging you to switch it up as you go. The only issue with this is the final jobs you unlock are leagues above any other jobs you had for the whole game, I feel these jobs should have been a post-game reward or something akin, rather than being practically handed to you at the end game. This makes the battles in this game fun and engaging, and the levels of the enemies are never too high or too low for it to become annoying or monotonous. The final dungeon is an exception to this, with a huge spike in difficulty, forcing you to fight waves of over-levelled enemies with no save points for a long stretch of time.

The dungeons themselves are also well-designed, they are fun to explore and don't have any of the annoying bullshit from Final Fantasy II's dungeon design. Once again the exception to this is the final dungeon which is far too long and filled with dead ends. The finale is definitely the worst part of Final Fantasy III, even the final boss is terrible it just spams ONE OP attack at you over and over, no strategy, just grind.

The soundtrack is good, and brings back a few staples from Final Fantasy I skipped over in II, and creates new traditions from the tracks from II.

Final Fantasy III is a great improvement to Final Fantasy I, it's one of those "true sequels" after a bumpy middle child. Definitely the best Famicom Final Fantasy, and perhaps the best JRPG on the Famicom period. The remakes for Final Fantasy III are about the same as the original as far as I can tell, and I find the 3D visuals of the DS and PSP version really ugly, but thats just me.

The best out of all three NES Final Fantasies, but with the biggest problem balancing difficulty, making it even to previous entries.
The Job system is a good innovation: it's fun to juggle different abilities and gameplay features, like Dragoon jumps, Knights ability to protect, Conjurer (Invoker) gamble with summoner magic. I don't even mind SOME of the instances of forced jobs, with a system that allows you change to any job in relatively small time, it's not that big of problem, but... more on this problems later. Mini and Toad transformations are cute, but Mini has restrictions and unnecessary cruel segments. Fuck that big stupid rat bastard boss. Game has similar looks to previous ones, but a lot of animations looks good, even impressive for NES hardware. Endscreen is the best NES endscreens I've seen. Story follows similar principal of the first game and makes some flavor with characters and cutscenes like the second one. FF II is more interesting overall in that regard, but FF III has more engaging moments. Antagonists are kind of boring though. Cutscenes before final zone are pleasant showcase, how you impacted this world and it's people. Music is also good, hearing so many familiar tracks after FFXIV was a treat.
So overall game is better than two previous ones, right? Well...
In some particular moments game is really cruel with balancing. Some jobs you can't even try because you don't have armor and weapons for them (they are in different town out of your reach for next two dungeons). I wouldn't even care about Mini restrictions of no physical damage and armor if not for that big stupid fucking rat bastard boss. I hate Cave of Shadows and it's dividing enemies with passion, since it's the only instance of forced job executed really poorly. The only non-vague explanations of how to beat it are in said cave with rabbit-like enemies spawn rate and in hidden village. And unlike Garuda and dragoons situation (which foreshadows Garuda pretty clearly and gives free armor for multiple characters), Mystic Knights (Dark Knights) are very stingy with their armor and weapons, combine it with necessity of using them... it's not good.
Surprisingly for me, Eureka and Syrcus Tower went smoothly. For the first time in FF games i have top armor and weapons for my characters, i have all summons and decent resources... and then Xande's Meteor hit me. And then the second one hit me. And then I'm dead. And if I play by the rules, i have ether spend good 30-40 minutes to try again, or mindlessly grind for several hours. And then Dark World bosses, especially Ahriman. And then Cloud of Darkness, who spams Particle Beam nonstop. It's unusually cruel even by FF ending standards, i didn't have to grind my way in previous ones, they were hard, but completable. This one isn't. FF III at it's last hours feels like gambling game: ether heals come first or you die a violent death. Game punishes you for not having ~50 level and cuts 1.5 hour of progression right at the end, a stupid problem in a game with save system.
I want to like this game, I want to like it better than other two NES entries, but I can't. In the end of the day, all of them are at the same level. First one because of some BS parts at the middle and it's overall simplicity, second one because of inconvenient way to level up your survivability and way too long ending dungeon, and third one because of some bad designs, meteors and big fucking stupid dumb piece of shit rat.
I hope SNES games are going to be improvement without fucking up endgame.