Final Fantasy III : The Gullibility Test

Final Fantasy III, remade, rehyped, reheated, remarketed and eventually reissued for Nintendo's graveyard of shuddering undead remakes, is the latest game-shaped practical joke from Squeenix's nostalgia division. The punchline is, bluntly, that we are being made nostalgic for a game we never played, a game that was not even translated for American or European release and only has relevance as the precursor of another Japan-only title (the fifth in the series).

This gnawingly difficult and frustrating effort is lovingly modelled on the original, to the point that it translates all the quirks and failings implied by the prehistoric NES technology to the relatively lovely and well made DS interface and presentation. This is amazingly stupid. Considering the game looks so much like the, by now also antique, nineth Final Fantasy title and borrows a bunch of features including the Mognet, why try to trick the gamer that they are playing something classic when what we infact have is a brand new Final Fantasy, completely crippled by a thoroughly redundant levelling system.

As for the job system, it inspires respect from those who spend hours slaving with Tactics or V, but here is it is a burden. When you've completed one job, or rather if you have that much patience, you have no option but to start afresh with another, from zero with none of your new abilities carrier over. If you consider this great gameply, I guess you'd also think that Final Fantasy VII would be improved if the materia suddenly vanished as soon as a character mastered it.

Another joke at our expense here is that Square has spent millions and millions of dollars on disembarking from the Final Fantasy devices and cliche, desperately abandoning the irritation of random battles and D&D inspired classes, power levelling and missable quests and items. And, after finally getting away from these things, they serve them to the fans and expect us to pay for the honour of digging through their trash.

Readers, you are better off with Tetris. Five out of Ten.