I see the light!

Square-Enix had an early version of their DS release of Final Fantasy III at E3, and I had an opportunity to sample the short area that was set up. The party consisted of four characters, each having four commands at their disposal: attack, magic, item, and guard. Most of my gameplay was against a few normal enemies, which were disposed of quite easily, but I did observe a few cinematics. Keeping in mind that this is an early version, the game played slowly and the animations were blocky.

Anyone else remember the Brownies?

Story scenes were a little better done, and one included the Final Fantasy staple - the crystals. Magic is done in the old NES style, with different spell levels each having their own number of limited spell castings. The game was normally only on one screen at a time, but switched to using two for menus. Characters also have two separate levels: character levels and job levels; the difference and usage was not explained in the demo. Overall, this release will be very familiar for fans of Final Fantasy.