You didn’t miss anything. I thought SF3 one of the most boring RPG’s I’d ever played at the time. It really doesn’t possess that SF spirit of I and II that made the battles tense/dramatic/fun, too many changes I surmise and the production values were low. It’s the only RPG I ever sold after playing because it was that bad–and I’ve been buying/collecting games since before the NES. So I really could care less about the other scenerios at this point in the game…
Hm, yikes the harshest I ever read was that SF2 was simply better, I can’t understand you saying SF3 was outright boring or bad.
The first hour or so is a bit boring, yes, especially since you’re bombarded with names and places during the long chat with Benetram…but it kicks up pretty fast IMO.
I thought the fights felt more driven, more specific which I welcome in this sort of game. IIRC SF2 had lots of “random travel battles”.
The story was very interesting as well IMO, especially if you played STHA before it.
The battles in general…how can you say fighting Fiale (especially if you wanted the key he carries), the Golem(keeping your force on their feet while being bombarded), Basanda, hell even trying to save the refugees…are all not “tense”? Or dramatic, fun?
Well to each his/her own, though it’s a shame you couldn’t enjoy it. 
The day may be coming a little closer where you have to get that modded Saturn Solo…
15 years later work is still going on the Shining Force III Translation project! The project lead has just posted an update to crowd fund the final translation push:
http://sf3trans.shiningforcecentral.com/2020/02/20/progress-report-feb-2020/
Hopefully the target will be met and perhaps the work finished in time for the annual year-end patch release!
I ended up patching the originals a few years back and had played through them and it seemed to work well. Did they ever remove the restriction for having to use original copies? I never understood why they had that requirement when other fan translations seem to get along fine without restricting it to retail copies. I feel like it was a bit of paranoia on their part. It’s not like Sega is trying to re-release these or anything. They’re effectively abandon ware.
We will hopefully get to play Scenarios 2 and 3 in English sometime in the next fifteen years. But I’ll probably play these on an emulator, rather than a modded Saturn. Did Saturn emulators even exist fifteen years ago?
Giri Giri was around in like 2000, SSF is just as old but the current state of emulation is near flawless.
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