Final Fantasy III finally hits North America sixteen years after its Japanese debut. Serving as both publisher Square Enix's first Final Fantasy on the DS and the last of the old Final Fantasy games to hit North America, this remake of the long-lost entry mixes modern graphics and old school gameplay, complete with all the tedium and frustration.

At least Final Fantasy III features improved graphics. Sharp 3-D polygons replace the small 2-D sprites of old, allowing for much more detail in the world. Fortunately, instead of pursuing the more realistic look the series took after Final Fantasy VII, III recreates the classic light-hearted feel of the original through the over-sized heads and simple faces. Cut scenes in particular benefit greatly from the boost, the constantly changing facial expressions adding an immense degree of charm and personality to the main cast, as illustrated by Arc's obvious gleeful hop when he gains a level.

Apart from the fancy graphics, there's not much to separate Final Fantasy III from the recent Final Fantasy releases on the Game Boy Advance. For better or worse, both the turn-based battle system and the random encounters remain unchanged from past and future iterations, which will leave fans delighted and others turned off by the redundancy of fighting unseen foes every few steps.

In its defense, Final Fantasy III's battles are a bit more involving than a traditional Final Fantasy game due to the game's unforgiving nature. Enemies often put up one heck of a fight. Combined with the game's lack of save points within dungeons, this forces a much more tentative and tactful approach than rushing blindly into a newly discovered cave unprepared. However, this also leads to some of the game's more frustrating moments, as there comes a point within dungeons where a party has sustained too much damage to either retreat or defeat the boss, resulting in many hours of lost gameplay.

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