After playing through I & II on the Famicom, III felt absolutely huge, jam packed, every town was stuffed with treasure and the plot moved quickly from crashed airships to gold mansions, to the bottom of the sea and ancient mysteries.
Comparing it to later JRPGs, it might look a little unremarkable. There's the seed of a great idea in the way this game implements a Job system, but it won't really sprout until Final Fantasy V. Likewise, while there are plenty of beats to the story, it is still a little half baked and confusing compared to the more characterful, cutscene heavy approach of the SNES games. The game brushes by the idea that the Xande- only introduced very late in the game- is bitter because his master gifted him "Mortality", while he gave his other students power over dreams and magic. What does this mean? I'm still not clear.
But for the time it came out, compared with its contemporaries, this is absolutely amazing, I enjoyed playing it and it's the best of the Famicom/NES Final Fantasies by a huge margin.
Comparing it to later JRPGs, it might look a little unremarkable. There's the seed of a great idea in the way this game implements a Job system, but it won't really sprout until Final Fantasy V. Likewise, while there are plenty of beats to the story, it is still a little half baked and confusing compared to the more characterful, cutscene heavy approach of the SNES games. The game brushes by the idea that the Xande- only introduced very late in the game- is bitter because his master gifted him "Mortality", while he gave his other students power over dreams and magic. What does this mean? I'm still not clear.
But for the time it came out, compared with its contemporaries, this is absolutely amazing, I enjoyed playing it and it's the best of the Famicom/NES Final Fantasies by a huge margin.