The third game in the Final Fantasy series. This one never made it to America. (although, there were emulation groups that managed to translate some/all of it.)

This one started to take on the feeling of the FF series that we're familiar with, however, it's still a LOT like FF1.

The above screenshot was taken from a translated ROM.

You start by naming your 4 main characters. They're cookie-cutter characters. You can make them into whatever you want them to be. They start out as generic adventurers, with no skills, but soon you get a crystal's power, and gain the ability to change classes.

It's another game in Japanese. :-) However, it was carried along rather well, as you could tell where you had to go, most of the time. Most of the story was confusing though.. there was no reason for some of the stuff, without knowing the story.

The gameplay in FF3j is turn based, where you put in commands at the start of the battle, and then, depending on your relative agilities, took your turns attacking.

If you happened to attack an enemy that had been killed, they finally added the feature where you attack a different enemy. Another little feature they put in, was a little number above the enemies' heads, showing which character has already been chosen to attack it. (all 4 can attack the same enemy)

Further into the game, when you get the really big airship, it starts off attacks for you, with a big explosion, to make enemies easier to kill. (this feature was brought into Final Fantasy Legend 3, with the vehicle that attacked in battle for you too, and then in FF6, it got incorporated into Setzer's slots, and in FF7, in Cid's limit break)

One of the biggest changes in this game, was the ability to change classes. There were over a dozen classes possible, Knight, Dragoon, Archer, several mages, Paladin, etc. Each class had its own selection of weaponry and armor. Each class had a separate skill level. You could reach level 99 in a class, which increased your number of hits, and your damage, and how often you hit.

To change class, you needed to accumulate "Capacity points" that you got at the end of each battle. Changing from one class to a similar class took less capacity points than changing from a fighter class to a magic using class.

Also, they took a majority of the magic system from FF1. You got a certain number of spells depending on your level, and the level of the spells. (more level 1 spells than level 8 spells.) One major change, was the ability to swtich magic from one person to another, like Materia. There were no skill levels for magics.

At several points in the game, "Non-Player characters" would join your team, but only for story events, never in battle.

Basically, like most other RPGs, you fight a lot of battles, gaining Experience to gain levels. There are added things to gain now, with the class system: Job Points, increasing your Class level, and Capacity points, allowing you to use them to change class. You could only have a max of 255 capacity points. I didn't find money hard to come by, but I spent a long time building up ;-)

Exploration of the world was easy enough, and you went through a bunch of vehicles. A ship, airship, canoe, a transforming ship that could become a sailing ship, submarine, and airship, and a speedy little airship, and a battleship. In some areas, you had to fight in the air, and in these cases, the battleship offered some attack power >)