In battle you can switch your leader around quite easily, but when you go into the magic menu everything pauses until you choose a spell, which gives the user more time to choose what they want. After selecting an enemy to attack, a blue line will point over to them, giving a path for that attack. If an enemy gets in the way (at least with long-range weapons) they will be the ones that are hit instead, which can make battles a bit more of a challenge.

For further changes in the series, it has become a bit more difficult to obtain gold directly from slaying enemies. You will still get things like experience, and license points. Of course I do not need to explain the experience points, but for license points you will use them similarly to ability points from the other games. You will acquire spells from using these points, in conjunction to the armor you have, to unlock the spell for normal use.

Graphically it does look a little dated, at least in the battle system.. The voice acting is above average in the game, while of course the cut scenes are quite gorgeous, which is pretty much what you could expect from a game in the FF series. I suppose I could just forgive the general look, since it is an expansive world, but it just looks like it still needs refinement. Hopefully this will be resolved when the game is released.

Currently the game is 80 percent complete according to Square Enix, so it should not be too much longer before we can play it in North America. Since I was only able to play it for a short while, I cannot fully divulge how the storyline goes. Look for this game to hit North America in October of this year.

Final Fantasy III

This is the one that seems to have evaded the North American shores for what seems like forever. Despite how many Final Fantasy compilations that came out for the different systems, this game always missed to be among the missing in North America. Some have even called it the best-told video game of the series, but some may even be confusing it with another FF game FFVI, which was also named FFIII in North American for the SNES.

This is not a retro styled port, like the others that have been released to the GBA. This is pretty much a retelling of the game, with bonus features. While it was originally designed for a totally different system (Famicom), one that did not have the capabilities of the NDS, it has been moved to the very portable system to allow for a totally new experience. It is probably why they have created a whole new style and world to play it.

The battle style is pretty neat, taking advantage of the bottom touch screen. You have two ways you can attack your enemies, either by selecting it with your d-pad and buttons, or using your stylus to click on the enemies to attack them. It does save a bit of time to just mill through the regular grind of an RPG, so this is very welcomed feature. In normal play though the top screen either is blank, or shows a map of the world. On the city landscape though, you may navigate your character by using your stylus as well, so you just have to press and hold in the direction you want to go in.

For customization of the characters, you do have a job system to help tailor the characters. This will lead to a custom experience perhaps even like Final Fantasy Tactics, or FFV, but without playing through the entire game it is hard to say. Though each character gains new abilities or commands depending on the job / class they have been selected for.

In the end though FFIII is quite fun, and I am very interested with what else will be added, since it can use the NDS’ microphone and a few other of its key functions. I am curious what type of mini-games they will put in as well, considering what could be done with the touch screen. Final Fantasy II is slated for a September release.

Final Fantasies

Square Enix has certainly gone Final Fantasy crazy, and why shouldn't they? It is one of the best selling and most popular franchises ever and extending and expanding these franchises could be a good thing. I've left out quite a few other Final Fantasy titles that were show or revealed at E3 including FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Crystal Bearers for the Nintendo Wii, FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Ring of Fates for the DS, in-depth details about FINAL FANTASY XIII and FINAL FANTASY Versus, CRISIS CORE -FINAL FANTASY VII for the PSP, and Final Fantasy IV & V Advance for the Game Boy Advance. That's a whole lot of Final Fantasy no matter how you slice it! Whether or not all these games will prove to be overkill or not remains to be seen, but a good portion of them sound promising. – Gordon Edward.