Tbh, not my fave FF. I remember playing the DS version, though I was a lot younger, and it would've been one of the earlier ones that I played through fully. I did feel I had a positive time with it then, but wonder how it'd hold up now...

The introduction of jobs was really interesting, and this game has some cool ass bosses. Of the original trilogy from the pixel remasters, I think it's my least favorite, as the story is really pretty subdued. The best part of the game for me was the final dungeons which absolutely ripped, and constituted probably 1/5 of my entire playtime lol. Mayhaps too long? A lot of the backstory etc is loaded into that end game bit.

As with the other pixel remasters the sprite work, attack animations, and re-orchestrated soundtrack are wonderful.

Also now that I have XIV under my belt this game gave me a lot of wojack pointing energy. I'm glad to have played it again regardless, as I needed a refresh on the early entries of FF. I am really looking forward to playing the rest of the pixel remasters.

Interesting to return to Final Fantasy III now, as it’s one of only a handful of Final Fantasy games that I have prior experience with. I got the DS remake back in my teens and had a decent time with it up to the water temple, where the difficulty seemed to spike dramatically. The prospect of doing a lot of grinding was partially what put me off playing many JRPGs going forward; kind of a funny outcome, given that it probably wouldn’t have been That taxing.

Anyway, approaching the pixel remaster version now I was primarily struck by the surprisingly large scale of FF3. “Scale” seems to be the primary focus everywhere: the game features a huge 44 song soundtrack, numerous modes of transport, a robust job system, and even some honest-to-god optional content! Even the story, which in many ways is the most stock and underwhelming of these NES games, feels at least filled with a fair amount of incident and rotating locales. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have played this when it first came out in Japan and gotten the revelation that the world you’re playing in is only one (floating) continent in a much larger land! I like that this scale also extends toward making the world feel more alive with detail; being able to shrink yourself to explore certain dungeons gives the impression that all of these spaces have whole secret worlds within them, while existing in others where they are but one small component. The game’s light “hidden paths” mechanic (brilliantly tied into your party characters’ sole detail, that they are kids that enjoy exploring) also helps this feeling.

For all this ambition FF3 still remains breezy, taking me less time to complete than FF2 while feeling a lot “bigger” than it. There are more dungeons, but they tend to be shorter and more realistic in scale as opposed to FF2’s massive labyrinths. The game is well balanced; with only a couple instances that required some brief grinding, it managed the trick of making my party feel powerful While being challenged by powerful enemies (especially at the end game). The expansive job system allows for the kind of customization that FF2 aspired to provide, but there’s also an occasional puzzle component to it that I found enjoyable. The only thing really holding back FF3 for me is that the narrative is, again, Very stock. There’s not a ton of satisfaction inherent in “balancing light and dark,” as compared to the vastly more exciting implications of FF1 or some of FF2’s more enjoyable plot maneuvers. But it’s at least a passionately made object, so clearly designed to push a budding development team’s ambitions to the furthest extent they could on the hardware they were working with.

Fromsoft's souls games are my favourite rpgs ever. I first played Dark Souls 3 co-op with a mate and couldn't stop playing it for months. After Ng+ DS3 i remembered that eons ago i played a game that was similar to it in my youth. all i could remember about it was that there were hairy men that attacked me in the street for no reason. So i picked bloodborne back up and finished it in a week of non-stop playing. i fell in love with yharnam and the story it told. The combat was much more my thing than the defensive playstyle of a dark souls or demons souls. The world i was walking through was so rich and densely packed with insane lore and detail that i spent months looking into post finishing the game. If i could give this more than 5 stars i would. Cosmic Horror on top.