It's a bit of brilliant timing that brings Final Fantasy III to Wii this week. Nintendo's current home console and its lack of new role-playing games has been under fire now for seven days straight, asthe Operation Rainfall fan campaign has tried its best to get the Big N to bring fresh RPGs to the aging system. The companyresponded negatively, no doubt adding fuel to the fire of an already heated debate and ensuring those same fans will keep shouting from the rooftops about Xenoblade, The Last Storyand Pandora's Tower for days, weeks and months to come.
Then, very quietly, Nintendo slipped this game into the Wii Shop yesterday. It's almost too perfect of an illustration of the company's current woes – fans are starved for epic adventures and crying out for them today, and here's perhaps the one game that best reminds us of the days long past when Nintendo systems were actually the place where such RPGs would arrive.
The Big N is whispering, "See? Remember the SNES? We had lots of great RPGs back then, please play them again." And the fans are screaming, "Why are you just looking backward? Why can't you be that company again? Why can't we revisit these great older games and have all-new experiences too?"
Final Fantasy III then, separate from the circumstances surrounding its re-release, is itself sitting quietly and once again telling its incredible story for anyone willing to listen.
Then, very quietly, Nintendo slipped this game into the Wii Shop yesterday. It's almost too perfect of an illustration of the company's current woes – fans are starved for epic adventures and crying out for them today, and here's perhaps the one game that best reminds us of the days long past when Nintendo systems were actually the place where such RPGs would arrive.
The Big N is whispering, "See? Remember the SNES? We had lots of great RPGs back then, please play them again." And the fans are screaming, "Why are you just looking backward? Why can't you be that company again? Why can't we revisit these great older games and have all-new experiences too?"
Final Fantasy III then, separate from the circumstances surrounding its re-release, is itself sitting quietly and once again telling its incredible story for anyone willing to listen.
Take that, Kefka!
Final Fantasy III (also known as VI in the true lineage) is an SNES masterpiece and the best game in the Final Fantasy series. That point's been debated elsewhere, so I won't spend the rest of our time here trying to convince naysayers again. But even those who argue for other series installments taking first place always concede that this game is among the greatest Squaresoft has ever created.
Its story is incredibly compelling, as a tale of a band of rebels uniting to oppose an oppressive empire in a world where magic is long thought lost. You begin playing as Terra, a "witch" who somehow still wields magic spells in enslaved service to the Emperor, and the plot follows her liberation from that slavery, her encounters with new allies who've never seen real magic before and her quest to join up with the rebel group plotting how to undermine her former captors – and that's all just in the first couple of hours.
Final Fantasy III is ultimately a 60-hour journey or more, during which time a wide array of heroes and villains step into and out of the spotlight, you work to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of magic in the world and more. I'd say more, but for fear of spoilers for those who've never played it before I want to keep things vague – this is an adventure I wouldn't want to ruin any part of for those setting out on it for the first time.
This Wii edition is an excellent version to choose for your first FF3 experience, too. As with all Virtual Console releases, it's a direct emulation of the SNES title we first saw released back in 1994. That means it's still got the old "III" name instead of the modern "VI" one and it doesn't have any of the newer additions made to subsequent re-releases – the FMV cutscenes from 1999's Final Fantasy Anthology or the new dungeon, revised script and extra Espers from 2007's Final Fantasy VI Advance.
What it does have, though, is a couple of simple additions that make this otherwise-untouched emulation my favorite version of the game so far. The Virtual Console's standard Suspend Point feature is a highlight in lengthy dungeon sequences here, as you no longer have to worry about getting to one of the sparse in-game save points to take a break from your quest – just hitting the Home button makes the emulation do the work for you and adds extra accessibility to this classic.
Battling aboard the Phantom Train.
The new controllers are unexpectedly beneficial too. This is the first time this game's been playable with an analog stick on a Nintendo system, using either a GameCube or Classic Controller. It seems like a minor thing, until you recruit martial arts master Sabin in the storyline – he's a character whose special battle techniques were uniquely influenced by the fighting game craze of the early '90s, so you have to enter in Street Fighter-like button commands to trigger his most brutal assaults. These analog sticks make some of his moves feel easier to perform than the old, D-Pad-only SNES pad, as it's a lot more fluid to spin the stick around in circles and make quarter-circle rolls than it was trying to execute the same motions on a piece of cross-shaped plastic.
Re-experiencing Sabin's Blitz techniques is just one of the joys of playing through Final Fantasy III again on Wii. Getting drawn into random battles, then outrunning enemies' chance to strike in the Active Time Battle system is great all over again. All the other characters' unique techniques, like Edgar's arsenal of tools, Cyan's chivalrous sword strikes and Gau's wild-boy enemy copying are fun once more. Equipping Espers, teaching magic spells to these men who freak out so greatly in the early-going of the story and watching them launch their own mystical bolts of lightning and blasts of fire – and then seeing them further achieve such mastery so as to summon forth huge, intimidating, screen-filling beasts in battle feels just as exciting today as it first did 17 years ago.
Wait, was that giving too much of the story away for newcomers? Dang. Just go play it already, it's wonderful!
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