Did any of you crazy bastards managed to get their hands on a copy?
I did. I’m at the base of Mt. Hobbs. Initial impressions are favorable. They’ve avoided a few things I had been afraid of. The interface is quick (I’d feared menus would load clunky, as they do in some games). Summons do a breakaway screen like VII, but are skippable with the press of a button. The Quicksave option will no doubt please Cid. The layout of dungeons remains the same so far. There’s a neat feature where a map is drawn as you wander a dungeon. When you’ve filled in a floor 100%, you get a little bonus (think Star Ocean 3, but not tedious and with useful, varied rewards). So far it’s been things like a few potions or other normal items, but given this is the hard version those are really helpful. Turns aren’t messed up like in the GBA, so you don’t demolish everything before the enemies get a single turn in.
This is definitely the hard version, I repeat. If you haven’t played the SNES one without savestates, you’ll see why it’s hard. The minimages in the cave between Kaipo and Damcyan were tearing me apart. I had to just run from them 'til I got Tellah. They buffed up the bosses a bit, which is cool. The Mist Dragon was prettymuch the same. The octopus hit harder the fewer tentacles he had left. Antlion now switches between physical and magical counterstances depending on the color of his eyes. I look forward to seeing what they’ve done elsewhere. Rydia now has a companion summon which can fight in her place when summoned. You select its skills from ones your party members already know. You raise its stats through simple minigames available at fat chocobos (there’s one in Kaipo). At my place, there was only one, a simple math game that let you improve the summons intelligence stat. Oh, and Cecil’s Darkness ability is different. Instead of being an all-enemies wave of darkness that depletes your own life, it’s now a buff of a sort. You use it on one turn and Cecil becomes surrounded by darkness. Your attacks from that point will be stronger and each attack will deplete your HP (but never by a crippling amount). Edward has MP-free songs to sing that actually help. Three cause harmful status effects with a decent rate of success, the fourth gives a Regen effect. For that last one Edward gets locked out of doing anything else for minute or two while he chants and keeps the spell going, but it was actually pretty good for the Antlion fight.
Voice acting has been good except for one Red Wing who overacted his one line. “YOU SPOONY BARD!” isn’t vocalized, but retains its position of honor.
Battles and movement happen on the top screen. During battles the bottom screen has your party status, enemy information, spell information, and other useful stuff like the elemental alignment of your weapon (if it has one, like Cecil’s swords). During map movement the bottom screen has a useful minimap that shows stairs and chests. Secret passages aren’t shown, thankfully.
So far it seems like they treated it right, remaining faithful while tweaking a few things here and there. There’s enough new material (besides the graphics) to recommend it over previous versions.
No. 
I wanted to get it from my local game store since I had credit there, but the shipment hadn’t arrived yet. I would have gone to Best Buy to get it, but I want to use my credit… plus, I can get Best Buy cards from work and I didn’t have any on me. :\
I’m trying to think ahead about how to distribute decants…
Well, I’m sold. I’ll get it whenever I get the time/money in the future, it’ll probably be my next game purchase.
Edward has MP-free songs to sing that actually help.
But! This changes everything!
The Quicksave option will no doubt please Cid.
Most definitely. 
Although I didn’t think they’d leave it out considering it’s been in all their other handhelds.
There’s a neat feature where a map is drawn as you wander a dungeon. When you’ve filled in a floor 100%, you get a little bonus (think Star Ocean 3, but not tedious and with useful, varied rewards).
AWESOME! I love it when that happens - that was seriously the most fun part of SO3 for me. 8D
Unfortunately I’m only a quarter of the way through FFTA2, so it’s going to be a LONG while before I can pick this up…
Day two report. A few things have become more apparent. Rather than copying the difficulty settings of any of the previous incarnations, this version seems to have been retooled. The Lodestone Cave, which I usually find to be a big pain in the butt, wasn’t a problem at all. The Dark Elf was nicely balanced, constantly putting people in the yellow and keeping the outcome in some doubt. The only other thing to say would be that I feel I’m acquiring gold rather slowly. I’m probably not going to be able to buy much when I hit the dwarf kingdom.
I have a question about giving out decants, since you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve lost some characters for good… after you give decants to those characters and they leave, do you get those abilities back for other characters to use? I’ve been reading around, and I know that you can get additional decants from the departing characters if you give them some in the first place, but it’s been a little unclear to me what happens to those original ones.
The Augments (Decants) given to departing characters are gone forever, you get the replacement ones in their stead.
Non-plot spoilers: In a New Game + though, you get a second copy of every Augment from the first time through, and the ones used previously stay used, so you can put the Augment used on lost characters on other ones as well. So if you used, say, Auto-Potion on Porom, the second time through you’d get a second Auto-Potion to use on someone else, but Porom would also already have it when she joins.
Also, I’m really liking the game, my only problem is that money is way, way too slow to get. It took me like 50 battles to get enough money to buy Paladin Cecil his first gloves. That’s silly.
Man, I really hate grinding for cash. I’ve never played Hard-Type, how much harder is it really?
I just got to Troia and I haven’t really had any money issues. So I dunno.
I was short on money from Mysidia to Baron, but after the Dark Elf’s cave the problem cleared up. Raiding the Troian treasury and old Eblan Castle took care of everything.
If I remember the PSX version correctly it at that point of the game where if you aren’t spending time to grind for levels that’s where you really start to feel the burn. I made it alot easier on myself during my second playthru by going back and grinding a bit on Mount Ordeals.
Safe Travel Augment = God. It makes the game sooo much less frustrating, in particular in dungeons where the encounter rate is way too high, like Sylvan Cave and Sealed Cave. Plus it carries over to the next playthrough, which is nice cause you can’t get it till the end of the game almost on the first one.
I just bought it… best game ever… like I always said.
Okay, asking the people who’ve played it: I bought and loved FFIV Advanced, and couldn;t get far in FFIII DS. is it likely I’ll enjoy this game? I still hold some bias against the look of the graphics, but aside from that, is it a good enough game to warrant me buying it again?
Draw Attacks + Counter on Cecil is pretty much the best.
Draw Attacks + Counter->Kick on Cecil, more like. Take that, every battle with multiple enemies
Did anyone else notice that the new translation draws some quotes from a few different places? I jut got to the underworld and Tellah just told Golbez’ words were as empty as his soul - a clear CV SotN reference There are a few like this up to now.
Well, I’ve gotten my ass kicked twice so far, once by Mombomb “TIGHTEN OUR DEFENSES!” casts protect everyone dies
And the second time by Milon. Damn thing counters with Slow all the time >_<;
Paladin time has been mostly “The sword sound effect sounds so blah.”
Another interesting borrowed tidbit: Yang calls Cecil a “Blackguard” (D&D’s Anti-Paladin, basically.) at one point.