Final Fantasy III is one of my favourites in the series. It combines the hardkore oldskool sensibilities of tne 80s with the marvellous open-ended job system which made Final Fantasy V famous in the 90s. It's wedged just between the games which are not noteworthy enough to warrant a remake and the ones that are good enough already without messing. One could argue that if any of the old FFs deserved a bells-and-whistles update rather than a straight port, it was this one.

The game employs 3D graphics and chibi big-eyed character designs which use the FF Tactics art style. There are two advantages to this approach. The first is that it allows the game to stay close to (and considerably expand upon) the look of the original whilst still being palatable to a modern audience. The second is that it bugs the HELL out of Playstation brats. (One I saw on the Gamefaqs forums noted that "They've totally kiddified it, but I guess they had no choice now that Final Fantasy is on a NINTENDO console.") Along with the tuneries of Uematsu, a man about whom the worst one can say is that even his most workmanlike grafting is easy on the ear, it makes for a damnably pretty package.

This isn't the only overhaul the game has received, however - old hands will notice immediately that while the original dropped four faceless "Onion Babies" into the thick of the action, the DS remake features a cast of named main character along with cut scenes, character-based plot dialogue and superior pacing. The game engine has also been tweaked - character stats and job level power up is now largely independent of each other. This fixes a fairly horrible loophole in the original where the player could change to monk class one fight before level up, reap the HP gain of a monk stat boost and then change back again (eventually ending up with He-Man white mages with 9999 HP).

New Features

FF3 features only four sidequests, and three of these aren't even optional if you're a summoner (Bahamut, Leviathan and Ashura). The DS version adds a new boss called Iron Giant, which is good. Sadly, da IG must but unlocked by fiddling endlessly with the Mognet system from FF9 which has been slapped in with an added realtime element to make it even more of a timesink. To make matters worse the Onion Baby class (which requires heavy duty levelling and was always its own reward) has been made a secret, unlockable only by sending and receiving Mognet messages with real people using Nintendo Wi-Fi.

No thanks. Sidequests are meant to be about adventure, treasure hunting, attention to detail, hard work and big rewards - not tedious twidding with badly-shoehorned extra content. 1/10, Square.

This formula - the original ingredients tweaked for extra perfection - is powerful stuff and should hook anyone who loves a good bit of dungeon hacking. Unfortunately, it also proves to drag the game down in equal measure in the later stages. Around half way through the game the player finds himself trapped in the "Betrayal at Salonia" scenario, where Garuda (a monster controlling the royal family) must be despatched in order to continue.

The Garuda stage is one of the most oppressive and irritating setpieces in RPG history, coming a close second to the section of Phantasy Star 2 where the player must walk across an electrified floor losing HP with every step while being attacked by monsters he cannot fight (he's handcuffed) to escape from a prison satellite which is plummeting out of orbit after being arrested for saving the world. To cut a long story short, the only way past Garuda is to swallow one's pride, turn the party into Dragoons and just pray that enough of them will get into the air before he stomps the party flat.

This section is made all the more painful by the presence of Prince Arse (I'm not kidding, the japanese is "A Ru Su," his name is Arse). For those of you who played FF4, Arse is the proto-Edward and my GOD is he a waste of mind. His sole function is to make your levelling up as tedious and time consuming as possible by periodically jumping into the battle, shouting "Leave it to me!" and then lengthily casting either A) A spell that misses, or B) a spell that does 200 damage (if you're lucky).

Once Salmonia is clear then faster airships, beefy weapons, open-ended adventure and yet more classes are opened up to the player. This is a shame, because it's at this point that the game effectively ENDS. All careers are made to live in the shadow of the tank classes. Ranger? Fighter that does less damage and dies more easily than a Warrior. Viking? Fighter that does less damage and dies more easily than a Knight. Dragoon? Well, you get the idea.

Even attack magic becomes superfluous. That ultra-hard fire dungeon you were holding out for where all your characters could smugly put their feet up while the mage racked up an almost pornographic damage bonus using cheap ice spells? Not here. That hard-as-fuck lych that you were waiting for so you could unload Firega and burn him to a crisp? He's not gonna come walking round the corner. In the first half of the game there's some stages where you have to shrink yourself and walk around travel-sized. (BACK OFF!) There's also a boss that uses Wallchange so you have to scan his elemental weakness and hit him with the appropriate spell. Yes, you need magic for those. After that your offensive mage is just a fighter who dies in two hits and has limited ammo - right up until you get Bahamut. (I mean, hell, you don't NEED Bahamut. You could roll with two or three tanks and a healer. Still, having a Final Fantasy final boss fight without summoning Bahamut would be like having a frat party and not inviting Willie Nelson. It's practically become a superstition.)

In this way, staying faithful to the original game design proves to be FF3's biggest draw as much as it's biggest flaw. It's a solid game - solid as hell, for the last dungeon still ranks as one of the nastiest in RPG history - but for god's sake don't put it next to the material Enix was releasing at that time. If you're not already into Final Fantasy or retro RPGs, this is unlikely to convert you.