Grade: B+
Time Spent Playing: 25 hours
Like most people who aren't Japanese or bored psychopaths, I never played the original Final Fantasy III. If my time spent with FF5 is any indication; I probably would have hated it. To be frank, I didn't expect to enjoy this game as much as I did. I thought I was getting into a grinding, dungeon crawl with free form gameplay that will leave you naked, bruised, bloodied, and dying of pneumonia if you didn't choose your characters' vocations wisely. I was right.
But somehow, I liked what this game was serving up. From the no-fluff opening on, I had a ball piloting my mostly personality vacant warriors toward their collective destiny. After some splendid revolutions in RPG combat over the last few years, going back to basic turn taking should have been a chore. It wasn't. Maybe it's the handheld format or the simple fact that genre staples become staples because they work so well. Though, around hour twenty I started to feel some fatigue with the game, so basic turn based fighting does have its limits.
The story that's here is impressive. The events your party is swept up into hits on some interesting concepts and the characters that befriend you often meet sad and tragic ends. In contrast, your party of characters are pretty dull unless, like me, you groundlessly attribute personality to them and decide your party of savvy transvestites are out to stop Xande because he wears pleated khakis. Fashion faux pas!
I suppose the graphics are nice, but when all the art from Amano showcases an imagination many times greater than the game artists', you can't help but wonder what splendor a fully realized adaptation of his vision would amount to. I never understood why Square employed him only to water down his creations into standard manga fare.
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