A true old-school favourite in every sense of the word, it seems like Final Fantasy games have been around forever. Since the heady days of 8-bit entertainment the series has stood at the top of the epic fantasy podium, and stayed consistently great: the recently released twelfth episode was widely hailed as one of the best games of 2006.

This particular game is a remake of the original Final Fantasy III that was released in 1990, and for this new DS version it’s been fully updated with sparkly 3D graphics and touch screen interface to bring it into the 21st century. Sounds like what gamers have been waiting for since the DS launched 2 years ago – a decent, portable role-playing game.

And that is what we've got, for the most part. There’s a lot to like here – the visuals are easily the best you’ve ever seen on DS, with some lovely pre-rendered video supplementing the fully 3D character models and impressive spell effects. The style is very Japanese – cute characters with big heads are the order of the day – but not excessively so, and you’ll soon realise that the childish visuals conceal a decidedly grown-up game.

More on the gameplay before we go any further. I mentioned earlier that this game is a 1990 release that has been given a fresh lick of paint for the DS. The bad news is that nothing else has been changed, and after only a short time playing you’ll realise just how easy the games of today seem in comparison – Final Fantasy III is very, very hard. It’s not just the ‘difficult to complete’ kind of hard, either: at points the game seems blatantly unfair. The artificial intelligence can be a real bastard, mercilessly exploiting any areas of weakness and punishing even the slightest lapse of concentration with instant death. In the game’s favour, the challenge makes a refreshing change to what we’ve come to expect in recent years, but at times it’s a deeply frustrating experience – a bit like having a friend who occasionally drops your mobile phone into your pint for no reason.

In fairness, the crazy difficulty level and random acts of digital cruelty are the only real drawbacks to what is still a very charming game, and a particularly welcome arrival on DS. What’s more, with a story mode lasting around 30 hours and extra content available to those with access to a wireless network, there’s plenty to recommend Final Fantasy III for gamers who don’t give up easily.

Final Fantasy III is out now for Nintendo DS