Like i had before with Dragon Quest 3, i had to double check the year this game came out with how it nailed what it meant to do the best it technically could.

The more story driven final fantasy titles (like 4 and 6) feel a bit too restrictive as far as experimenting goes. Understandably so, if your characters can become anything there will be sacrifices in the story department. The story was not even that bad. FF 1, 3 and 5 all have the same story idea, but it evolved in each game. At least here the main characters (while still not that interesting) have personalty and are not just faceless dolls. They really tried to have some humor in it as well. The main plot while somewhat predictable actually did hold my interest, and it becomes better the farther in. It's the best told version of the ' the crystals lost their grace and slowly kill the land' tropestory old FF became famous for.

While i like complexity in my combat, the saga games are a bit to complicated for my taste, and the more story driven FF like i said a bit to restrictive. This game felt like the perfect balance. I can experiment however i want and the possibilities feel endless for someone like me that wants to do as much as possible in a single playtrough. But i don't get overwhelmed like in saga, where i sometimes feel like i need a college course to see all in and outs of what i can do. There is a lot of player choice but it's not overly complex at the same time. And nothing feels overly OP in comparison to all the rest, like more than 80% of games where balance is important.

I really feel this is the best of the old (1-6) final fantasy's gameplay wise. This job system even echoes through the ff14 mmo. A surprising amount of jobs there (almost all of them) already were possible to play here, which is a testament to this game's enduring brilliance. The whole idea of the blue mage and beastmaster control to make it learn certain spells is someting i enjoyed immensely in ff tactics when i was younger ( i never played ff5 before now). Nice to see it's origin. it's such a creative design and wasn't done before.

I wanted to try out the pixel remaster of FF3 (i did not like the DS version) since it's easier to change jobs there, but it only ever will be a beta version of this game as far as gameplay goes. This game ruined ff3 for me before i could finish it, that's why i normally play series in order of original release. Maybe when it's 80% off on steam.

Reviewed on Feb 05, 2023


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