Final Fantasy III excelled where Final Fantasy II failed, a fun gameplay. You'll get here an enjoyable gameplay with great innovations compared to its predecessors. Now you have the job system, which is excellent here. On the other hand, the story and characters are very simple once again.

The best thing about the pixel remasters is their faithful recreations of the classic FF games with QoL updates and new features that add to the games, making them more accessible to a modern audience. FF3 is no different in this regard. The original NES release had this awkward and asininely complicated mechanic where swapping jobs (a mechanic that's meant to be done pretty often) used up a resource called "Capacity" that was replenished very slowly after battles. It was dumb and I'm glad it was removed in favor of freely swapping jobs to match the situation at hand. There's also an auto-battle feature, like the other pixel remasters.

However, Vanilla FF3 kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks and that's exactly what this is. The story is boring, the characters are barely one-dimensional and the gameplay isn't something to write home about. Nothing new minus a couple QoL updates like auto-battle and features seen in the other Pixel Remasters like a bestiary, a music player and an in-game artbook. Which are very cool, but not enough to justify buying this over the 3D Remake.

The 3D remake addresses the practically non-existent player and supporting characters and by proxy, the story being incredibly boring. The gameplay didn't change much, it's still a turn-based JRPG with a vaguely D&D-like spell slot system for casting magic. The 3D Remake still kept an awkward job swapping mechanic, this time just reducing your stats for a set number of battles after swapping, but I think that's made up for by a story and characters I somewhat care about.

Honestly, just go play the 3D Remake. It's better in every regard and the only things you're missing out on are the features seen in other pixel remasters.

I just don't fw it.