Final Fantasy III was released exclusively in Japan for NES on April 27, 1990 until it got a worldwide release multiple times since, the first of such occasions occurring in 2006 with the DS release (a 3D remake). Most recently, a Pixel Remaster released worldwide on July 28, 2021.
I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).
The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.
The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.
It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.
But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)
STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.
You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.
What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.
GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.
A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.
So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.
The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.
The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.
Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.
In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.
There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.
There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.
Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.
The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.
Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.
It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.
On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.
In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.
REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.
I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).
The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.
The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.
It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.
But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)
STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.
You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.
What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.
GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.
A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.
So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.
The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.
The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.
Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.
In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.
There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.
There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.
Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.
The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.
Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.
It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.
On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.
In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.
REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.