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.

I absolutely love the idea of the job system, but it is implemented in a way that I can't stand. You are constantly forced by the game's design to change classes making the early game more of a puzzle as to what party combination the game wants you to have for this specific section than a proper RPG like in FF1.

Couple that with the somewhat rough dungeon design, throwing hordes of spongy enemies at your face and then asking you to fight the boss with no healing or saving in between and this makes for at best a pretty boring experience, and at worse, a pretty annoying one.

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.

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

Another Final Fantasy game done, and another one I'd never beaten before~. Over the course of like 27 hours, I played through this in Japanese on my Famicom Mini. I will be the first to admit, I think I abused save states in this game more than any other I think I've ever played (granted I've played very very few games with save states) because this game can be a proper mean ol' bugger at times. Between that and fighting the with crappy controller on the Famicom Mini, this is definitely a game I don't see myself ever revisiting on this hardware, but it was still one I enjoyed a lot more than I didn't.

FF3 starts out with 4 unnamed orphans stumbling into a cave to find the wind crystal that vanished in a big earthquake, and it propels them into a fateful quest to save the world. I named mine after people who voted for me to play the game on the RB Slack chat (Mr. Popo, Flake, and Marurun) as well as Gunstar, since I needed a 4th member XD. FF3 doesn't have named characters, no, but they're kind of a group character unto themselves. Your party leader will talk and the characters will refer to you as the heroes of light, but there's not a great amount of characterization present. Characters are almost entirely one-dimensional and just there to move the story along, but it's an entertaining story that does the job more than well enough. Honestly, the most interesting part was seeing just how much DNA of this overall plot is present in FFIV and V (and VI to a somewhat lesser extent) with how those two games also take the idea of world crystals being taken/controlled by some otherworldly malevolent demon thing (and V of course going as far as to also link its world crystals to jobs the party gets).

More of an evolution on FF1's job choices than FFV's full blown job system, FF3 has jobs your party can switch between to give them different base stats that effectively just stack a modifier on top of their existing level stats. The only real difference your job makes upon level up is how your max HP is affected (life-long mages will have less health than life-long fighters, for example). You can only change jobs so fast though, as it uses a capacity resource that you build up as you fight things, and the longer you used a job in the past, the cheaper it is to switch back to. However, with how small your limited inventory space and how you NEED to unequip yourself before changing jobs, it's not very practical to carry around more than one or two alternate-jobs' worth of gear at any given moment.

The game's dungeon and boss design likes throwing you into situations that FORCE you to use these jobs, like a boss who constantly changes his elemental weakness so you need an otherwise nearly useless Scholar to tell his weaknesses, or a boss who does lots of horrible AOE magic so you need a lot of dragoons to do Jumps to both avoid his attacks and do big damage to him. The game always tells you when you need to do this though if you just talk to people around towns. It occasionally really sucks, especially when they throw enemies that split upon physical strike at you before you really get the job that can deal with those (dark/mystic knights), but they're generally fairly tolerable gimmicks and never make the game outright boring. It has several dungeons that force you to be mini, so only magic attacks really do anything, but at least those are proper dungeons. The worst gimmick dungeon in FF3 is better than the single gimmick dungeon in FF4 (the atrocious magnetic dungeon). It is also really odd seeing those mechanical steps BACK FF4 has compared to FF3, as this game also does a MUCH better job of automatically stacking and sorting your inventory where FF4 does nothing of the sort.

But compared to all 3 SFC games, this game is FAR harder. The lack of inter-dungeon save points or tents/cottages to heal up in them as well as sprawling late-game dungeons that are far more numerous than any of the SFC games really makes the Famicom version of FF3 something not to be taken for granted. This game easily would've taken me at least 3 or 4 more hours of grinding and redoing large segments of dungeons if I didn't have the Famicom Mini's save states to back me up, and that's a low estimate on my part. Especially the final dungeon, whose beginning has a lot of very difficult enemy encounters, and whose later half has a point-of-no-return and a huge boss rush AND really tough enemies all with no tent heals or save points, it's quite the marathon without the ability to save state. The game's pacing is often quite brisk and didn't really require any grinding on my part, but running from battles is so difficult (and dangerous as it means you take colossal defense penalties) as well as how frequent and incredibly deadly back-attacks are in the late-game, if you wanna do this game as it was originally intended, you're gonna be dying and redoing a lot of stuff a LOT.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. The game is fun, but it can just be SO unforgiving at points that it's really hard to outright recommend this game in any capacity on the original hardware. I would bump it up to a Recommended if you're using save states like I did, but for the Famicom version as it was originally played, this game is just way too brutal for anyone who doesn't really love old RPGs and isn't afraid to grind and redo areas because of that difficulty and lack of respect for the player's time.

Beim ersten Anspielen mit Teil 2 (NES-Version) noch im Gedächtnis war ich sehr überrascht, wie deutlich smoother und schneller Teil 3 in den Kämpfen läuft. Schaden läuft per Einblendung durch, nicht mehr als Textbox - Schaden gegen mehrere Gegner ist so deutlich schneller abgehandelt. Auch die Grafik im Spiel ist deutlich verbessert.

Das Kampfsystem an sich wurde insofern modernisiert als dass Attacken auf bereits besiegte Gegner nun auf noch lebende Gegner umgeleitet werden. Das Magie-System nutzt jedoch wieder das System aus Teil 1 mit den verschiedenen Zauberleveln und "Ladungspunkten" je Level - unmoderner als Teil 2, als das mittlerweile allgegenwärtige MP-System genutzt wurde, eigentlich. Die Ladungspunkte der ersten Magie-Stufe steigen anfangs recht fix an, bei höheren Stufen dauert es jedoch ziemlich lange, sodass Magie unter dem Strich auch in diesem Teil sehr schwach ist, da man deutlich mehr Ladungspunkte bräuchte als man hat, würde man die Magier wirklich als aktive Spellcaster gebrauchen wollen. Erschwerend kommt hinzu, dass Äther/Elixiere extrem selten zu finden und nicht zu kaufen sind sowie dass die Statusheilzauber speziell des Weißmagiers nicht einmal 100% Genauigkeit besitzen. Für den Versuch einen vergifteten Charakter zu heilen auch noch eine der wertvollen Ladungen umsonst auszugeben ist nervig. So ist Magie maximal eine gelegentliche Ergänzung und die Magier insgesamt deutlich schwächer als Melee-Charaktere, die eben dauerhaft ohne Beschränkung angreifen können.

Fast jedenfalls - denn das Spiel baut nette Ideen ein, wie Passagen in denen man sich in Mini- oder Frosch-Form bewegen muss und sich so aktiv mit den negativen Status-Weißmagiezaubern selbst verzaubern muss. In diesen Momenten ist Magie plötzlich überlebenswichtig. Aber auch hier macht sich die Knappheit der Punkte sehr bemerkbar - das Innere des Drachen schaffte ich mit den vorhandenen Ladungen nur mit Müh und Not.

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

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

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.

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.