Out of the entire series, I feel Final Fantasy III being someone's first Final Fantasy game is pretty rare.
I first saw FF III from a old friend who had the DS version, and the first thing they ever showed me was that incredible CG opening. The only other CG opening I saw before was Kingdom Hearts 1, but oh my god this had so many more characters, such grand and lavish environments, cool ass magic and a dude who wields two swords what the hell is this game?? Oh and that music, even to this day I just adore the soundtrack. The town themes, Cid's theme, The Forbidden Land Eureka, Castle Hein, the final boss, and especially the overworld theme 'Eternal Wind'. I'd hear Eternal Wind in my head every time I would walk in my back woods, such an engaging, adventurous piece.
Back to that opening, it painted an exciting but also treacherous adventure, which reflects perfectly when I started playing it after borrowing it from my friend. For someone's first ever turn-based RPG that wasn't Pokémon, this game was hard and unforgiving. There's the fact that dying booted you to the title screen, and that alone was a shock to the system. If I lost in Pokémon I'd just lose a bit of money and could easily continue my journey. Here, no way! I die then it's over. It made the fear of failure borderline overwhelming. If I fuck up then I can lose so much. Not helped by the fact that I was, as the kids say, "bad". I didn't use items, I rarely used magic as they were limited by spell slots and they're much less convenient to recover then using a Pokémon center, I didn't know what any of my stats did, I hardly changed my jobs, and I almost never talked to any NPC who wasn't critical to progression. RPGs can be a challenge of numbers or strategy, but they're also often knowledge checks. And if you are insufficient in knowledge then ideally you should ask the townsfolk for helpful hints. This never occurred to my tiny mind.
So my (literal) dumbass got bodied by so many things. I didn't change all my party members jobs to spellcasters during the points where you had to be small which makes all physical attacks deal 1 damage, I didn't have a scholar who could identify the ever-changing weakness of Hein, and despite how many dragoon equipment they give you for free I never thought to use a dragoon against the infamous Garuda fight. This never dettered me from playing however. It was scary for sure, the next boss fight could kill me without a second thought, but it also engaged me to the game more. Every (accidental) success got me closer to exploring more of this vast world. If I was lucky, I might even find a crystal of light that'll give me brand new jobs for my party. Yeah I didn't change them often, but I usually changed them into either the coolest looking one or the same jobs they had during the game's cg opening. The overwhelming danger of this magical world made it more engaging.
But even as someone with a lot of tenacity as a kid, even I couldn't push through that. If you're familiar with this game, then you know what I'm talking about. A big reason why this should never be your first Final Fantasy game unless you really enjoy sadistic design. The Crystal Tower.
The final dungeon of this game. First some background, by this point you have access to a airship with a free inn. Incredibly valuable if you ever bite off more then you can chew, or just run into dumb luck. You also can only save on the overworld. Mid-dungeon save points weren't a thing till Final Fantasy IV. You probably know where this is going, but let's continue. First is the Great Maze. Not too difficult nor winding, but it does take a while to just run through. You wind up outside for your final chance to save the game before entering the Crystal Tower, but you'll notice that you don't have access to your airship. If you need to heal you'll have to walk through the maze all over again. Bearing in mind if you need to heal then you're probably out of most of your spell slots, so hope you don't run into too many encounters on the way back. I'm not going to walk-through the Eureka section since, while long and difficult, is at least situated at the Tower's entrance. Just know that it's"optional" but has the final tier of spells and the best shops and weapons so NO, do not skip it. Then you have the climb itself. Nothing you wouldn't expect from a last dungeon, longs floors, a lot of floors, encounters with tens of thousands of health that may nuke your party with magic whenever they feel like it, and chests that have the longest most roundabout hallways rivaled only by Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. An hour later you reach the boss, who of course has Meteor, so hope your numbers are big enough. Beat them after a long fight... now for part two. Now you have to go through even more of this dungeon and fight four more bosses before facing the true final boss, plus the best head piece in the entire game is guarded by clones of the boss from the first part of the tower, AND once you're in part two of this place you can't leave meaning if you die you start aaaallll over again. Bearing in mind that some of these bosses are pretty absurd with their damage output, and in the DS remake that I was playing some of these guys have up to three turns of actions every round of combat. Final boss included.
You can see why young me couldn't do it. Here I am with a dinky wooden sword held together by shoe string and hope as I face against an unflinching sentinel crafted by the arms of a God that spares no thought in killing everything it sees. Someone tries to teach you a new fighting game without ever holding back, your learning by making sure next time less of your bones are broken. Thrown into the middle of the ocean with a compass and a raft board. Find your way home with that. Good luck, jackals (suppose to be "jackass" but that autocorrect is a lot more funny).

So eight years later I finally beat the game.

As much as I would like to tell you it literally took eight years of attempts, no I just put the game down and moved on to other games. At the time I just accepted I wouldn't see the credits, but I got well over 50 hours of enjoyment(?) out of it, so I wasn't too bummed. But then I grew older. Taller. Very marginally more intelligent. By that I meant I could read better and look things up on Google. I learned many things I wasn't aware of. I learned what stats actually did apart from damage. I used jobs like Viking and Monk more effectively for tanking and offense respectively. I was smarter with my magic usage. Items... still weren't used a ton but I now knew how valuable exilirs were. They're the only other way to recover spell slots, but are exceedingly rare so you have to use them only when it matters. And by that I mean only the final dungeon. Also I didn't start back from my old file, but rather I started a brand new game from scratch. Things were already a lot more smoother. Bosses that felt like a gamble if I could beat them as a kid were a lot more comfortable now. I knew where to go for progression so my runtime was a lot shorter. I did grind a lot, but this was still at a time where I didn't have a lot of games. And by the time I was grinding I was already at the Crystal Tower, but have yet to take a real crack at it again. Looking back, I think I didn't want my time with the game to end yet. Didn't want to have less of a reason to dress my guys in funny costumes, to listen to the scariest boss music I ever heard at the time, to admire these chunky-ass DS visuals, and to watch that beutiful CG opening again for the hundredth time. But I did it eventually. It was long, but not the worst. Bosses were still deadly, but I've learned how strong Ninjas were and the power of Black Belts. I also felt Sages were kind of overrated with their low MP, so I stuck with a Devout and Summoner for all my magic needs. It felt more surreal then satisfying watching the end credits. This'll sound ridiculous, but it felt similar to graduating High School. This constant in life was over, so what do I do now without it?

I could just play it again, you dramatic butt!

Joking aside, I honestly felt content in what I played. No feelings of "Thank god that's over", more "It's done." Simple as that. I enjoyed my time with it and now it's time to look for greener pastures. Like a decade later playing the Pixel Remaster of Final Fantasy III. Yeah finally talking about the game this is a review on, but "review" may not be best descriptor for whatever this thing I'm writing is. The best way to describe the Pixel Remaster version is that it's Final Fantasy III but for people who got shit to do. The big thing are autosaves. You die at boss, you can respawn in the room you died at. Also since this is a 2D game with lightning fast animations, battles just fly by. You also have a auto-battle feature to replay the parties previous actions but on fast-forward, allowing for some painless grinding if you feel ill-equipped. Or if you ever feel like saying "screw it" you can jack up the exp and money gains for less time in battles overall, or turn off encounters if they start getting in your skin. I don't feel you need these boosts on a first-time playthrough, but it's there if you want them. The autosaves also help ease the frustration of loosing a lot of progress because "Oh you didn't know your first-time fighting this boss that they have a meteor spell? That's a shame. Die." All around I saw the credits in 12 hours, with the caveat that I've beaten a version of Final Fantasy III before so I knew where to go at all times. If, like me, you have played the DS version then some things will throw you off due to it being based more on the original Famicom version. Namely dungeon layouts and when you obtain certain jobs. They caught me off-guard for sure, but I ain't going to complain getting access to Black Belt much earlier. Music is mostly fantastic, but I'm not the biggest fan of the remix battle themes. The electric guitar doesn't real fit FF III to me, the DS version of the boss theme gave the fights far more tension then the Pixel Remaster. Eternal Wind though, that remake is fuckin beautiful. No notes for that. The Pixel Remaster also has no penalty for swapping jobs. Yes, there's something like that in both Famicom and DS. The former required a currency from battles in order to change jobs, while the latter had your character debuffed for several battles as your character "adjusted" to their new job. I don't think I need to tell you that removing that is unequivocally a good thing even if you are the most hard-core FF III fan.
I am kind of one of those people who feels the autosaves removes a lot of tension from dungeons and boss battles alike, but if I take off my nostalgia goggles for a minute I do acknowledge that a lot of games have done FF III but better, at least in terms of combat and customization. Hell, you'll often hear Final Fantasy V as "It's like FF III but good". And after playing FF V for the first time recently (no I didn't write a review for it), I get the sentiment, though I also feel FF V has also been outdone by many other RPGs. That may imply I feel there's no reason to play either game, but that isn't the case. Even the oldest of games can provide something that nothing of modern times can. There's always a lot of value to be found in anything, or anyone's past. FF V certainly is a lot more manageable if you are coming in from a more modern mindset, but III has merits that have paved a lot for the Final Fantasy series to this day. It's the first game where Dragoons can jump in the air and slam back down with their spear, many iconic jobs like Ninja and Bard got their start here, summoning as a mechanic was new, Moogles exist, even dedicated optional bosses like Bahamut and Leviathan began here.

This is such an odd game to be introduced to Final Fantasy. The plot is simple, progression is just a simple but with a few steps that feel missing, combat is imbalanced with some jobs being relatively underpowered, the game forces you change jobs in several sections so you can't play however you want at times, and the final dungeon alone filters so many people out it's pretty sadistic. I can't say if I'd be singing a different tune for this game if I played it for the first time this year. I first played it in just the right circumstances at just the right age, being incredibly impressionable with a lot of free time and not a lot of other games. It's funny, I could've been playing so many other games at that time and I feel I wouldn't have nearly as much to share about them. Final Fantasy III is far from the perfect game or even one my favorites nowadays, but it was perfect for a young, imaginative kid that had so much more to learn.