Final Fantasy II is the proverbial "fish that got away." For reasons unknown, Square Enix never brought the game to North America, and gamers missed out on a small slice of the Final Fantasy pie. Sure, plenty of other great Final Fantasy titles have left their mark on this side of the world over the years, but fans continued to think about that one that "got away." Even though it took Square Enix nearly 16 years to bring it stateside, it might not be that farfetched to say that it was almost worth the very, very long wait.

Once you get by the beauty of the game's graphics, you'll note that this Final Fantasy experience (although freshly developed specifically for this dual screened hand-held) sure plays a lot like the early Final Fantasy series. The game isn't just a straight port, nor a half-hearted homage to Final Fantasy III - it's a no holds-barred old school role-playing game with all the trappings from the early games delivered with wonderfuly crafted characters, beautiful environments and slick effects. And what do we mean by trappings, you say? Why, all the things that that you'd want in a Final Fantasy game, of course!

While your main characters aren't quite as generic as they used to be (they all have names -- which you can change -- and light back stories), they do follow the usual saviors of the world plotline you've come to expect. These would-be saviors utilize the classic job system, starting with the basics - white mage, black mage, red mage, warrior, thief, monk, etc. Much like Final Fantasy I and II, players will be able to grow these characters and try their hand at more potent jobs, eventually leading to uber-high level varieties that offer powerful skills and magic that is worth the effort it takes to get them. Final Fantasy III offers around 22 job levels to choose from, many of which will be familiar to long time fans. Players start out with the basic job class of Freelancer but as the story unfolds you'll get more paths for each character. You'll want to mix these jobs up so you have a well balanced party, but experimenting isn't all that dangerous because changing jobs is as easy as pie..

The new Final Fantasy III also honors the original style of the game with small city locations populated by straight talking non-player characters that don't trap you into lengthy conversations. Final Fantasy III is not about the talky-talky, though there's enough dialogue and plot to keep the gameplay flowing. This gives players more time out in the grasslands, wilderness and underground catacombs slugging it out with all manner of evil creatures. Simple is good and for some role-playing games it's for the best.

At it's heart Final Fantasy II is a simple dungeon crawl with random battles, plenty of loot and even more perilous moments to deal with. The game can be unforgiving at times (save often!) but even that lends to the original nature of the game. The game uses a random encounter system as you would expect from an early Final Fantasy title, but these battles truly are lightning quick. If you're strong enough, you can plow through a random battle in 10 - 20 seconds with ease. Of course, those wanting every battle to be more tactical can certainly take their time as every thing is turn-based. But it's very cool that you can simply slam through a random battle in no time at all, especially considering that you have all kinds of special effects and extra animation in there.

We keep mentioning presentation and it's admittedly a very important part of the game's appeal. There's no denying that many of the role-playing games that we idol worship offered great gameplay.. and awful graphics. Final Fantasy III delivers that gameplay in spades and does it with such a slick package that makes every aspect of gameplay fun, beautiful and engaging.

Final Fantasy III lets you use the touch screen to control a good portion of the game but traditionalists will be happy to know that you can use all the other buttons to direct your activities in the world if you so choose. The game retains the traditional menu system in combat which you can control using your stylus and when exploring you simply hold the stylus on the screen and move it around to get your party going. The control scheme works pretty well no matter how you tackle it, though using the touch screen is a much easier way of doing things. While exploring towns and dungeons players can also zoom in for a better view, which is handy in this new 3D world created . When you do that you get a better look at the NPC's, objects and other attractions and it all looks pretty crisp even close up.

There are so many cool little touches that both long time fans and new players will enjoy like in-game plot sequences, full motion video, some familiar heroes that are a trademark of the series and music composed by Nobuo Uematsu that provides some nice ambience as you travel overland and underground. And of course, we can't leave out the beloved Moogles. Moogles are used much like Square Enix's massively multiplayer online role-playing game, allowing players to send mail to real players using the Nintendo's Wi-Fi capabilities or to in-game NPCs you've encountered in your adventure. This system also hides a number of unlockables that players should be pleasantly surprised by.

As you can probably tell I truly enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy III. Square Enix really has a good sense of what works great on the DS. The DS needs more innovative and fun games like Final Fantasy III and Rocket Slime, and Square Enix is doing its part to make that happen. At the end of the day, Final Fantasy III comes highly recommended to role-playing gamers that want old school style with new school flair. Buy it, play it, love it.