Reduced difficulty could be a deal breaker for me. I wish they would allow an original difficulty option. That was the most disappointing thing about some of their other ports, the dwarfed difficulty. SE can tie this up in shiny new graphics but if there's limited playability then I don't see the point. I will definitely wait for impressions on enemy/combat balance from reliable fans before diving in.
Well, doesn't that give you pause? Cuz that's what turn-based combat without movement, circumstantial modifiers and other tactical complications need: less challenge! Unjustified bitterness aside (and who knows, perhaps the difficulty has been increased instead. One man's playability is another man's inability), together with FF V or VI, the original FF IV was the last pure FF game I ever enjoyed. And the iOS version seems supremely well adapted to the mobile paradigmwatchamcallit. Square have really been up to quite a lot of silly tricks on this platform, but FFT (which contained no small number of interface and port silliness itself) really has left me forever biased in favour of one of the developers I always shunned back in those desktop days of yore. Now do the one with the mini-mechs, Square!
Instead of using the wide screen to show more environmental details like in most games, Square Enix decided to just stretch the characters to fit on the iPhone 5's screen. As much as I love FFIV, I think I might have to pass... Comparison (iPad on top, iPhone 5 on bottom):
When I played the DS, it had a map on 1 screen. Does this one still have a map so you could see where you're walking ? Also only $1 off is a sale ???
Haha silly square, but then a sale is a sale no matter how small. Guess you can't expect a company that charges $150 worth of iap to be too generous.
I'm going to hold off buying the game right now on the off-chance that the price does drop suddenly within the next day or so as a belated (proper) intro sale, given that $1 off does seem a bit weird. Already getting the caramel popcorn ready for the inevitable tears and tantrums from the early adopters if that does happen, though.
It gives me pause, although in this case there may be some merit toward reducing the difficulty, depending on HOW they reduced the difficulty. For one thing, it's an ATB game, not turn-based, and even with wait mode on, you still lose time in part of the menu selecting. One problem I had with the DS version was that I could be very fast in my selection but still have to party get wiped out before it could actually do anything. The only way around that was just to grind more than I think was necessary in a game with so narrow a quest path. The original version from the 90s wasn't that harsh, and I'm talking about the Japanese version, not the easy-type released in the US. I doubt this will be easier than the original, simply because it's a port of a much harder version of the game to begin with.
Awesome that its universal, about time SE! Wish they'd apply it to all their other games which make me question my purchases like Chaos Rings 2 for whenever I get an iPad, I want to play the game but I don't want to buy it again just so I can play it on a bigger screen with optimisation Annoyed that NZ gets the big game releases first on iTunes, who cares about NZ???
Final Fantasy III was first reduced, from $15.99 to $11.99, on December 11, 2011 then again recently to $8.99 on December 7, 2012 (but is no longer discounted). FFIII was first released on iOS March 23rd, 2011.
It's up in the PH appstore, you just need to search for the title in the appstore, or you can copy the NZ link and replace the NZ with PH in the address bar.
I contemplated getting FF3 when it was $9.49 recently but I never really liked it when I played it on the DS - forgettable characters & story, very unforgiving battles & general boredom were my main complaints. Plus it had that annoying separate purchase if you were thinking of getting it for iPhone or iPad
@xinay999: thanks for the tip. For some reason this wasn't shown when I browsed through square enix's games. Downloading now =D
