"Incredible RPG, that, for some reason, never reached our shores"

If you've ever played the Final Fantasy series, you'll know what to expect. With Square releasing Final Fantasy V in the states soon, there will still be two games that American players have been denied. Of course, these are the games that were released for the Famicom, Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III.

Final Fantasy III is one of the best games ever released on an 8 bit platform. The graphics are top notch, a definate improvement over Final Fantasy I and II. The characters look better, and the enemies are, as always, drawn very good. Also, like all Final Fantasy games, the sound and music is absolutely incredible, and Square even released a soundtrack to this game (which was very popular btw)

If you've ever played Final Fantasy V or Tactics, you'll know about the class system. This system was first used in Final Fantasy III. You win different classes by visiting the different crystals in the game, just like in V. Each class can use different magic, different weapons, and have different strengths and weaknesses. You have tough choices to face, such as will you have a black mage and a white mage or two red mages? With four characters to work with, the possiblilities are endless.

In Final Fantasy III, there is an abundance of items and equipment available for your party. Many of this can be bought in stores around the world, but also, many of the best items and equipment must be found in treasure chests, hidden deep in caverns or treacherous castles. With the different classes being able to equip different stuff, you may keep finding, lets say, dark swords, the game is telling you to switch to a class that can equip dark swords.

This game, like all Nes Final Fantasy games, is very challenging. You're only able to save in the overworld, so if you end up dying at the last boss, you'll have to do the whole last tower all over again. This can be frustrating, but you'll remember to level up properly next time!

Also making its debut in Final Fantasy III is the summon spells. Anybody familiar with Final Fantasy VII is familiar with summon spells. You are able to summon huge monsters who do a powerful attack on your enemies and then disappear. Of course, being a Famicom game the Summons aren't as spectacular as in Final Fantasy VII, but they're great for their time.

In short, Final Fantasy III is 8 bit perfection. I don't know of any 8 bit games for any system that are as good as Final Fantasy III is. If you have a Famicom or a converter to play Famicom games, it would be in your interest to hunt this game down. Its pure joy factor will keep you busy for days on end as you try to beat it, and when you do beat it, you'll want to beat it again. In all, an incredible feat by Square, and I have no idea why this game never made it to the US...

Reviewer's Score: 10/10 | Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 08/07/01

Liked this review? Click here to recommend this item to other users.