A Brief Look at Final Fantasy 3

Final Fantasy 3 was an interesting game if you ask me. It was interesting because the game that we got in america that was titled "Final Fantasy 3" was actually Final Fantasy 6, and in my opinion, the games are not even comparable. It was also the first game in the series that introduced the "improved" job class system that would be an integral part of every other Final Fantasy game to come, and it would also be the first game in the series to attempt a more compelling story even though it was fairly weak. Even though I don't think that the game's story really holds up today, I think that this game really helped shape the Final Fantasy series into what it is today, so let's take a look at Final Fantasy 3.

Final Fantasy 3 mixed a lot of the gameplay elements from the first two games, and also adds some new stuff. First of all, they kept the turn based battle system from the first two games which was a good thing, but then they also decided to update the User Interface (a.k.a. UI) to make the menus in and out of battle look a lot smoother. They also brought back the experience system from Final Fantasy 1 which was missing in Final Fantasy 2. The most important thing that was introduced in to the game was the new and improved job class system. In Final Fantasy 1, you chose what class your characters were going to be for the rest of the game at the start. However, in Final Fantasy 3 you were able to change classes on the fly which was really neat. After completing a dungeon where one of the 4 main crystals was held, the crystal would break and its shards would give your characters its power in the form of new job classes. Another thing that was added into the game was the fact that job classes leveled up and gained experience after battles just like the characters. After gaining a certain amount of experience for a class, the class would learn new skills. This job class system would be further improved upon in Final Fantasy 5.

The story of Final Fantasy 3 I think was definitely a step up from its predecessors. The game starts off with the 4 main characters trapped inside of a cave, and they are all the Onion Knight class. At the end of the dungeon the characters fight a boss, and they gain the power of the earth crystal. The children soon learn that they live on floating continent, and that there is a whole other continent below theirs. On this new continent the children learn of a warlock, named Xande who is trying to skew the balance between the dark and light forces of the world, and must be stopped. Over the course of the game, the kids learn more about the light crystals and their counterparts, and also learn that similar events happened many years ago. I thought that this story was okay, but the remake of the game that was released in 2006 on the DS really improved on the story by adding more depth to each character.

Even though Final Fantasy 3 was far from perfect, and is not even close to being one of my favorite games in the series, I think that this game was important to the series because it gave us the Job Class system which would become a huge part of many Final Fantasy games to come.

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