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| Final Fantasy 3 (DS). by Jhoh Clbbl O_____O 11/22/2007, 10:52am PST | ||||
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| It is playable only because it isn't just ported, it's updated. This one actually has 3D graphics, which not only look better than sprites, but is a good sign that they went back and fixed things that were previously wrong with the old games. The polishings and updates to this make this an actual enjoyable and yet pretty casual Final Fantasy game.
This is the last FF game I haven't played (aside from FF9, and I never finished FF8 but I looked up screenshots of it). I went through FF1 and 2 on the GBA when they were updated with new graphics and put onto one cart, and it was not only NOT an impossible life wasting shitload of fuck like the original FF1 was (all I remember about FF1 was that you had to grind outside the first town LITERALLY FOR HOURS until you were strong enough to actually make it past the opening forest area). One thing that made FF4 so much better when it was released here is that you basically started at level 20 and killed every one of the first few bunches of enemies with no effort. That's what they've been doing with these ports, along with adding shit like letting your characters hit multiple times as they gain levels throughout the game. Also it seems like they cleaned up a lot of game text to make it really clear where you go next and what you do. The polygon characters have much more detail than the old sprites, and the camera is better at showing them off, with different weapons in combat and such and such. Another nice touch they added was the secret switches in all of those early FF games, usually you'd have to just go around touching every wall to find shit like that, but in this if you hold L it zooms the camera in, and when close enough a lootable container (jar or such) or a hidden switch on a wall will sparkle so you can actually see it, so finding the hidden treasure stash in a house or wherever is nice and easy. So FF3 was the one that introduced the job system, a terrible failure. It's not so bad in this game, but the very idea is kind of horrible, because by its nature it means that as you're lvling up your TOONS :( you will also have to level up your job levels, so you have to level up two things at once, and then you have to start all over if you switch jobs, and you'll have to switch jobs since a lot of the later jobs are just better versions of the introductory jobs. You have to go through like 3 to 6 battles for the character to "adjust" to that job, and then they have to get to job level 10 to have any worth in their job at all. And say you have a black mage from level 1, and start leveling them up. The job leveling goes pretty fast, sometimes you can get a job level every one or two fights, and it doesn't scale so it doesn't start taking MORE fights and XP or points or whatever to get to the next job level, it just takes like 10 moves average and bam you gain a job level (so leveling up jobs is mostly pretty easy and no problem in practice). HOWEVER, you don't start getting any MP until you're a few levels in, and when you gain a level it doesn't give you the MP, it just raises your max MP but you're still stuck with 0 MP so you can't cast shit. You have to actually go to an inn and rest to refresh your duders, then you get your MP. And the MP system in this game is weird like with the old games (they didn't unify MP until 4, which I'm sort of eagerly awaiting because I thought it was so great back in the day and I'd like to see the 3D updated port they'll be coming out with soon). But anyway, in this game your MP is sort of like charges. At level 1, you get like 5 casts of a level 1 spell, and you equip spells to your spell caster (they actually have several jobs that can cast spells, like knight and red mage, which is pretty cool really because they are pretty good hybrid jobs). Anyway, you can only equip 3 spells per spell level, and the spell levels are like 1 to 8. This sounds more complicated than it is though, but it factors into what jobs can cast what spells (like knights can cast lvl 1 white spells, scholars can only cast lvl 1 white and black, red mages can cast lvl 1 through 4 so far, black and white mages can cast almost anything). They give you tons of jobs eventually though, and some of them are just garbage. The scholar class is almost totally useless (although it's CUTE ^_^ to see them use books as weapons to slap enemies around) except for a boss battle where you need to analyze their spell weakness to damage them. The problem with the job system is that it just means you have to manage your character's jobs and fuckin throw them around as they give you the updated versions, abandoning all the work you put into your previous job, and then having to start over, or having a character that was a caster becoming unable to cast anything when you switch their jobs out. The grinding and random encounters sort of even out though, and the game isn't really too hard except for by the time you reach boss encounters, which are fightable as long as you prepare. I thought the job system sucked in FF5 (I much preferred FF4 and 6, where they just assigned jobs to your characters that they were stuck with, and then you'd just have the character for whatever job was necessary), but it was better there than in 3 because in 5 if you leveled a job up enough it would give you a special menu option for that character which you could equip, so you could actually mix and match a job with an assignable skill, which was really like having 2 jobs at the same time. There are other things that are weird about this game though, like no fuckin tents. I really miss tents, because I'm tired of having to travel back to the same dumb town to be able to use an inn to get my MP back. So far there are no ethers for restoring your MP either. It's all just resting at inns. Still it hasn't stopped me from tearing through the game, and the progress you make in 1 hour of this DS port would probably take 2 hours in the original. I also like how they made it so you can play the entire game with the touch screen. You move like Diablo/Phantom Hourglass where you just hold the direction of the screen you want to run in, including diagonally (even on the worldmap and in the ship, which is another nice polish upgrade thing). In combat you just touch the menu options you want and the enemies you want to attack. To cast on all you just drag over your party or the group of enemies and it shows a little selection box, which sort of implies that you can select which specific multiple enemies you want to cast a spell on but it really just casts it on all, always, which doesn't really matter because the combat in this is sort of a nice normal version of the Final Fantasy random encounter fighting, not very hard but not incredibly easy, not so rare that you can't keep a nice gradual leveling up pace but not so often that you feel like you can't fuckin walk anywhere without having to fight a billion enemies. It's also cool that whatever class you pick (mage, warrior, red mage) you can equip a weapon in each hand, which goes even more towards making the game easier because the second weapon just adds to your damage dealing and attack paour. They still have things like shields, but who needs them. So anyway, this is a nice simpler FF game from back then, with a really basic story, same shit about a prophecy with four warriors of light and 4 magic crystals you have to go find. It is pretty easy to play so far and requires pretty minimal walkthrough use, although it's always handy to just download a short one from gamefaqs to run you through the game. I really just like that the game is easy and has almost all of the Final Fantasy game engine adjustments they had been making over the years (I still remember in the original FF4 that if you wanted to use a potion in the menu, you could only use one and then had to reselect the fuckin potion to use over and over every time you wanted to use another, but in these newer FF games you can just keep using them). |
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