Final Fantasy III: The Ending of An Overlong Deprivation

So today after work I went up to Mall St. Mathews in Louisville to figure out a good way to blow some of my Christmas money. I walked up and down the mall at least twice and visited several stores - GameStop, Campus Wearhouse, FYE, Hot Topic, even Taste of Kentucky, and more - examining what they had and prices thereof. I finally decided to start with two UK tees at Campus Wearhouse, where they had a buy-one-get-one-free sale. I had long before grown out of most of my former Wildcat wear. Eventually, I decided to get a video game... but which? I then recalled a resolution I had made some time ago, that one day I would buy and play a Final Fantasy game. You see, I have never played a Final Fantasy game in my entire life. I've seen it played, but never truly played it (well, there was a demo at Walmart for about ten minutes in middle school, but that doesn't count). I'm sure all you fellow gamers out there are ripping your hair out in disbelief as you read this. :-P

Anyway, since I am not a Sony gamer and thus have none of the Playstation consoles, I went to the next best thing: the Nintendo DS. A little backstory can supplement this... the original Final Fantasy game and the next few following were released for the NES and SNES in the 80's and early 90's. Then Square Enix started producing the next ones for the Playstation and its later generations. However, after the Gameboy Advance and, later, the DS surfaced, there arose a movement to bring back the original games for Nintendo handhelds. FF1, 2, and 5 are out for the GBA, and FF3 and 4 are on the DS. I hear that FF6 is planned for release in the next couple of years.

Anyway, my only handheld is the DS (which happens to be the most popular system in production worldwide currently). I had seen FF4 at Sears in the other mall nearby last week, and at the St. Mathews GameStop they had FF3. Since it was the earlier game, I went with FF3.

Now there's something interesting about this game... Final Fantasy 3 was the only Final Fantasy released only in Japan. It never made an appearance stateside. However, in 2006, Square Enix remade it with updated graphics and other aspects in English (and Japanese, I assume) for the Nintendo DS. From the screenshots I've seen, it looks pretty sweet.

Apparently, there's a catch. According to IGN, the early Final Fantasy games were known for being rather difficult, requiring some good prowess in strategy. Some parts were even described as masochistic. And I am a rookie FF gamer... a mere lowly newb.

Somebody pass the dramamine, cuz I think I might be hurting soon.

Still, I hear it's a great adventure, and I shall thoroughly enjoy this challenge and the undoubtedly awesome story for which the Final Fantasy franchise is known. I'll have to wait a bit since my DS Lite is back in my dorm, but when I get back... Between this, school, and my friends, I will be a very busy man.

This is gonna be so good.