This game is really really great. Aside from Final Fantasy IX which is SPECIAL AND MAGICAL AND YOU CAN'T TARNISH MY MEMORY OF IT* it's probably my favorite Final Fantasy game. If it were released on the NES in America and I had it as a kid it'd probably be my favorite NES game too.

Final Fantasy III basically ignores Final Fantasy II's changes to the franchise (unique characters, performance based character growth rather than EXP) and expands on the original Final Fantasy's gameplay instead. The best addition is the fact that you can change your job at any point, which is something that always felt 'missing' from the original. Rather than picking your job at the outset and getting a single upgrade later, you instead get about 6 new jobs to choose from each time you get one of the four elemental crystals that divide the game into chapters.

An interesting addition to the DS port, and honestly one of my favorite features, is the "job level" system. Essentially, after a specific number of turns (the amount depends on the job) your job will level up. A job's level is used as a multiplier in every single aspect of battle, so even the lower-teir jobs can become powerful end game worthy jobs if you stick with them long enough. On top of that, if you get a job to level 99, you unlock a "mastery item" that only that job can equip. Weaker jobs get better mastery items, so generally speaking any job can be a contender if you stick with it long enough, and are only really separated by their inherent abilities and MP profile.

Usually in Final Fantasy games I find magic users to be the most interesting from a gameplay perspective and warriors to be more interesting from a story perspective, but generally boring in combat. But that's not the case here! Non-magic users are actually pretty neat in this game, largely due to the ability to equip multiple weapons and the special effects of weapons. On top of that, weapons sometimes are imbued with spells and can be used by anyone who can equip them (regardless of whether or not they are equipped) to cast spells without using MP or 'using' the item. For example, anyone who can equip Defender can use it to cast Protect as many times as they want. Because of all the cool special effects weapons have there are a lot of different strategies you can implement with your fighters.

For example, my Knight was better at dealing damage than my Red Mage, but since my Red Mage couldn't equip stronger swords but could inexplicably equip the STRONGEST swords (Excalibur, Ultimate Weapon, etc) I let him have them both and instead let my Knight use two weapons only he could equip: Ragnarok and Blood Sword. Ragnarok is the next strongest weapon that the Red Mage wasn't using, and Blood Sword is pretty weak but steals HP. I would probably be dealing more damage overall if I gave Ultimate Weapon and Excalibur to my Knight and let my Red Mage use whatever is left, but the upside of this setup is:

• My Red Mage can deal really high damage without wasting magic, letting him save MP for timely Cures and Raises and even getting to use Libra (scan) without losing a round of healing from my White Mage.
  
• My Knight's Blood Sword automatically heals him and compensates for the extra HP lost by his "cover" ability (automatically takes damage for 'critical condition' allies) keeping his HP practically full all of the time
  
• My Knight's constantly full HP and "cover" ability makes my Red Mage's "raise" actually useful since revived allies are vulnerable until they are cured--perfect for reviving my White Mage in emergencies
  
• My Knight's ability to heal himself means he isn't dependent on Cure magic, which means he has no reason to not constantly cast "Reflect" on himself--which is great considering his mastery item, Save The Queen allows him unlimited casts of 'Reflect'. This means in rare cases where a boss casts a spell on the entire party and it kills everyone, Reflect could leave my Knight standing, where he could use a Phoenix Down (with cover) to revive a proper healer.

This paradigm was something I was able to pull off intentionally later in the game with the random party set up I had, but I'm sure there are a lot of other complex strategies that could be achieved with parties I didn't even bother trying. There are over 20 jobs and I earnestly used less than 7 of them. And even then, near the end of the game I found my Black Mage (who later became a Magus) to be relatively useless because I was dealing such high damage with my fighters--I'm sure I could've done more if I had bothered looking into a different job for him that better fit my Red Mage, White Mage (/Devout), and Knight.

Oh yeah, the story! It's pretty good I guess! It's a rudimentary NES story injected with subtlety in the remake. I kind of like it better that way! The four characters (who were generic in the NES game) don't really get to have melodramatic teenage soap opera plots, HOWEVER, they are sort of really well fleshed out 'between the lines'. A handful of carefully chosen cutscenes are added or modified to accentuate each character's personality in a way that seems actually relevant to the overall story without being heavy handed. If you watch the game's opening movie each of their personalities is pretty well conveyed through their animation.

The story is basically that four kids on a floating continent are tasked by a crystal to venture down to the world below and restore the natural order of things. After saving their own world they are able to convert their tall ship into an airship and fly off the edge of the world. What they find below is a pretty comprehensible storyline that goes something like this if you really care about the details:

Click to read spoiler

The Magus Noah was the greatest magic user in the world, able to use both white, black, and summoning magic. When he died, he left his three students Xande, Doga and Unei three gifts. Doga was given his magic; Unei was made the guardian of the dream world, sending her into an eternal sleep; Xande, an immortal, was given the gift of mortality. This pissed Xande off and he drained the light from the Water and Earth crystals, throwing off the balance of nature and causing a 'flood of darkness' that froze time on the planet's surface, save for the floating continent and a few mountain tops. Xande hoped time would be frozen forever, ensuring he would never die. The Wind and Fire crystal were hidden on the floating continent, and the Wind crystal, aided by The Great Will (destiny) ensured that four children would meet it so that it could bless them with the light needed to activate the other crystals and restore the balance of nature.

Anyway, this is a great game. I beat it at about 40 hours, mostly because I ran out of things to do other than fight the optional super boss, who required too much level grinding for my taste. I probably could've beaten it in 30 hours or less, but I decided to max out my job levels first. Fun game.

* I played IX before VII

I've only just started this game, and may not progress as quickly as I hoped. It might just be me, but this game is pretty difficult. I've only come across one Phoenix Down so far, which is kind of a pain, as one of my party members is dead. Things that have struck me so far: the revamped graphics are pretty decent, strictly turn-based combat is pretty different from ATB, and unique weapons like the 'Wightslayer' are neat.

The only lame thing is the prospect of either restarting entirely or trying to level enough to beat this dungeon with three party members.