Final Fantasy III

I'm a big fan of the Famicom version of FF3, but this remake was disappointing. Despite some adjustments to certain jobs, damage calculation, and balancing, the strategic approach to the game is almost exactly the same as it was originally. There are a few new strategies you can employ, such as Viking-tanking, but this doesn't do enough to shake up the gameplay. I prefer when remakes do more to alter and expand upon the original, forcing you to completely rethink your strategy. However, in this remake you can play it exactly the same way as the original, using the same jobs in the same manner with the same equipment, and you won't encounter any hiccups. The lack of significant changes and originality is especially problematic since the remake is much slower and has several questionable features and adjustments. Here are some points that stood out to me:

-Battles are slower than the original. Magic casting animations in particular are extremely slow.
-After every battle you have to wait for the victory theme to play. Then, if a character gained a level or job level you have to wait for their celebration animation to finish with no way to skip it.
-Loading times are unreasonably long considering how small each area is. Simply entering and exiting a house in a town is a pain because of this. Talking to shopkeepers also has a load time. It takes forever just to do general party setup in a town.
-Opening the menu takes a full 3 seconds, plus another 3 seconds to close it.
-Text during cutscenes often cannot be skipped through quickly because you have to wait for character animations to finish before you can advance to the next text box.
-In total, the game is roughly twice the length of the original despite having the same amount of content.

-The status menu displays less information than the Famicom version. There's no way to see your number of chances to hit, accuracy, or evasion.
-I can't find any evidence that evasion even exists in this remake, making shields even more useless than they were originally.
-Low level stat distributions are nonsensical for many jobs. For example, black and white mages have better physical stats than magic stats until level 10+. Even at higher levels, stat distributions for most jobs are fairly even with stat bonuses from equipment being the main source of specialization.
-Adjustments to stat bonuses from equipment are largely nonsensical and seem to be simply scaled with the point in the game the equipment is acquired. This results in specialized equipment from the original such as Power Wrists and Protect Rings giving inferior stat bonuses compared to non-specialized equipment. There's no thinking involved in setting up your equipment since there are no specialized items and every new item is a direct upgrade.
-Spell charges are obtained at higher levels than they were in the original, but experience yields are not properly adjusted to scale. At several points in the game, this results in new spells being unusable by your mages unless you're overlevelled.

-Job adjustment phase is a ridiculously dumb mechanic, especially for a game that's designed around switching jobs to adapt to the gimmicks of each dungeon. Capacity points were a questionable system in the original, but at least they were in such plentiful supply that you never had to think about them, and each boss gave you more than enough points to prepare your party for upcoming dungeons. Job adjustment phase is much worse since you're now forced to grind battles just to get your stats up to normal each time you change jobs.
-The Thief's Flee skill is no longer a 100% chance to escape. In my experience it seems to be only around 50%. Say what you will about the defence penalty for trying to run in the original, but at least you could use a thief to run 100% reliably. Not having that guarantee slows the game down even further since you can't simply flee from trash mobs in a few seconds with a thief.
-Status effects are less useful due to decreased infliction chance and the decreased number of enemies per encounter. Spells like Confuse were very handy to cast on all enemies in the original, but now it's better to just attack or use damaging spells.
-The Blood Lance is even more overpowered than it was in the original due to changes to how much HP is drained by attacking. What's more, you can now buy Blood Lances, making a party of four Dragoons spamming attack an extremely powerful braindead strategy.
-The decreased number of enemies per encounter makes fights very simple and predictable. You're usually only fighting 2 or 3 monsters at a time, and often they're the same monster. The original had great encounter design, with thoughtful arrangements of monsters, but the remake's encounters are much more boring. I've heard some people complain about how monsters were buffed to account for the smaller number of enemies per encounter, but personally I felt that was balanced just fine. Encounters are still roughly the same threat level, and take the same number of turns to defeat, but they're a lot more predictable and boring when you're only fighting 2 monsters at a time.

-Even with the camera zoomed out as far as possible, the viewable area is smaller than the Famicom version. You can't see as far around your character, which makes dungeon navigation annoying.
-The new cast adds nothing of value to the game. The new scenes and dialogue between the party are trivial and serve only to waste time.
-The beginning of the game is slower due to having to collect your party members, and you don't even unlock your first jobs until later.
-Moogles appearing outside of Dorga's manor is inconsistent with the worldbuilding.
-Music sometimes misses the mark tonally, despite trying to follow the original compositions closely.
-New content is locked behind using the DS messaging system to contact other players who own the game, making it impossible to access for some. Even the Onion Knight job is now locked behind the messaging system, which is just absurd.
-No soft reset functionality.

If this were the only version of FF3, and the original did not exist, I might rate it more sympathetically. However, since the original offers a more satisfying experience and the remake doesn't make enough changes to stand on its own, there is little value in playing the remake. One positive thing I will say about the remake is that I like what they did with the final boss fight, but that doesn't make up for all the flaws. I highly recommend playing the Famicom game instead.