6) Final Fantasy III
It took Square Enix sixteen years to make it so, but Final Fantasy III finally made its way to Western shores in the fall of 2006, not as a home console release, but rather, an addition to Nintendo’s then newly-established market winner, the DS. Oh, how times have changed; imagine if the West been forced to wait more than a decade for Final Fantasy XV to ship overseas. There would have been hell to pay, especially considering the awfully protracted period of time it spent floundering in development hell.
But hey, better late than never, and I suppose Square’s deserving of forgiveness at least somewhat, as the version of Final Fantasy III we eventually received turned out to be a belter of a remake. In fact, while the core narrative remains largely untouched from the original, essentially every other component was drastically overhauled for the DS version, a necessity, considering the archaic nature of its NES origins. Along with some fine tuning of the now-trademark class and job system, the four main characters, previously no-name adventurers, were given names, identities, and, most importantly, a three-dimensional world in which to live.
In the years since then, Square’s ported the RPG to practically every platform under the sun, including iOS and Android, so if you’ve yet brave the World of Darkness and give its denizens a good hiding, you’re hardly short on options when it comes to a device of choice.
