Breath of Fire 3
Reviewed by Dyson Turner
Despite what you may have heard from others Breath of Fire
III is an outstanding RPG. There hasn't been in an RPG in a
while that kept my interest as much as this one did. Almost
all RPGs have their flaws and this one is no stranger to
that of course it is flawed of course it has some
uninteresting points and you may feel like the game is
trudging on. But once the story kicks in, the game tends to
become special to you. This game surely did that for me and
every time I play it I'm intrigued at what will happen to
the characters, the plot twist the things they go through.
This is a very underrated RPG and I feel as though no one
gave it a chance. The graphics may have been on the cutesy
side but still you have to get over that and look at this
for what it really is, an awesome battle system deep game
play and an excellent story.
My first impression on BOF3 was depressing one I was
slightly disappointed by the 2D graphics and the small
sprites. It took me about two hours before I ignore that and
got wrapped up into the deep story that I knew was soon to
unfold. Then the game play and some of the features and
things that you could do with the game really grabbed me. I
think what made me love this game so much is that it was
intriguing game play and a fabulous story. That is the main
focus of RPG's since the very first one over 15 years ago
not graphics an interesting story carried this medieval/neo
futuristic RPG. The story which is the main part of the game
was told well and the game lead you to think many
conclusions as you went on and to see them shattered in
perfect story book fashion makes you really love this game
even more.
Then I liked at the game on the outside. The small sprites
the cartoon enemy and the constant townspeople repeat may
have made some cringe but I looked past that eventually.
Then I listen to the beautiful and at some place
happy-go-lucky music it was really good music and I haven't
heard a bad song in the entire game. This really makes the
game more interesting and more fun to play. Because the
composers took advantage of the mood and look of the game
and they changed the music accordingly. First impression
this was a very nice game but it could only get better,
Story 1,000,000/10
This game had a fabulous story and one of the best stories
ever told so far in my opinion, the basic story was this.
There was an ancient clan of dragons who had tremendous
power. When the clan was at full power they were suddenly
wiped out. Across the world the only remains of the dragons
were there chrisms that held power no one could understand.
One day in an old mine some workers came upon a huge chrism
that had a dragon in it. The dragon escapes and attacks
several of the miners. The dragon was captured and escaped
his cage. The dragon had a human form it was a boy named
Ryu. The young boy finds friends around his age and they
take him in. This is where you come in and guide Ryu through
his young life and try to find out more about him and his
clan. Well here is a small briefing of some of the
characters you can use.
Ryu- Leading character he was born a dragon, and he is of an
ancient clan. He is a nice mix of everything power speed
magic and intelligence. Ryu uses Curative magic.
Rei- One of the friends of Ryu. Rei is older than Ryu and
stronger than him and he will take Ryu under his wing. He
recruits Ryu when he finds him early in the game. Rei is the
fastest character in the game and every thing else is medium
and below average. Rei uses lightening magic.
Teepo- The other friend of Rei, Teepo is a lot like Rei but
doesn't posses the heart of him. Teepo is a braggart but an
overall cool characters. Teepo posses a good magic side but
is basically weak when it comes to attacks. Teepo uses a mix
of magic.
Nina- Princess of Wyndia, Nina joins the quest near the
middle of the game. She is caring and she is pretty noble
for her young age. But you can tell she just wants to be a
normal kid. She is gifted wit magic but is weak with attacks
and defense. Nina uses a mix of magic.
Momo- A young engineer Momo is very smart and is always
thirsting knowledge. Momo doesn't care for trivial matters
but when it comes to machines she is very good at them. Momo
has a very high intellect which makes her a good character
plus she is a lot stronger than Nina. Momo uses curative
magic.
Peco- A small onion mutant. Peco speaks in his own little
language and no one has deciphered yet. He is quiet most of
the time and he likes to sleep. Peco is has the highest hp
and if you work with him he is one of the best fighters in
the game. He has status changing magic.
Garr- Winner of all in recent memory Fighter's Tournaments.
Garr is a large fellow, very noble and quiet most of the
time. He is feared by most because he is very large. He is
the most powerful character in the game and has a high
defense. But he is very slow and does barely any magic. He
does basically fire spells.
This has got to be the only RPG to have a cool sounding
story even before you play it. That is the main reason I
bought it because normally RPGs have the oddest stories
ever. The story surprisingly gets better and deeper than
what I described shortly about it there. Lots of plot twist
you meet different characters. I also like the fact that
during the story all the characters get their fair share of
the limelight and none of the characters have a bad story.
Even though of course this is a 6 character RPG one is bound
to suck and well sadly that is the case here but story line
wise none of the characters in the game are bad. All have
interesting stories of course Ryu has the best story it is
to be expected because he is the main character.
Overall I was quite fascinated by the games story. It was
not that the story was necessarily better than anything else
on the market. But I have to say it was not up there with
some of the best of course I heard better stories in other
games. This one is up there with them though and this is a
decent story and it was done well by Capcom. Even though
Capcom is known for their great fighters they churned out a
great story with their RPGs. This one is a fine example of
that and this in my opinion is one of the best stories ever
told it was moving and it was done well.
Visuals 7. 0/10
The graphics on the other hand were less than great and they
certainly did not measure up with the rest of the market.
The graphics could have been way better than this they
resemble a cute little comic book style, Although some of
the boss enemies make up for the rest of the graphics. The
bosses were done very well and the larger ones had great
detail and they looked like something you would find in an
Anime Cartoon. Although the boss graphics were done well you
can't say the same for the character design. The characters
lacked detail they were small, too small. But later in the
game when some things happen they will look better but still
I think the character size should of been quite a bit larger
and that goes for everything else in the game.
Most things just weren't large enough, but even so the
graphics stayed cutesy even If they were large. The
backgrounds inside towns and caves I have to say were pretty
decent. The caves and such were large and they had details
in them, and like shifty walls and floor planks that use to
be paths. They really tried hard to make for the overall
graphics by improving your surrounding. The same thing for
the forests in the game they were improved as well, and they
looked great. Large trees and shrubbery surrounding really
made the game look overall better.
Then there was the real bad one thing I hated about modern
RPGs is the fact that they use a lot of town folk repeats.
What I mean is this when you go into a town you will see
characters then in the next town you will see the same
looking people used again and again and in m opinion this
showed a lack of talent. I understand it would be hard to
give every character a new graphics but this was ridiculous
because this game reused this tactic over and over. And I
don't mind it once in a while but all the time tends to get
on my nerves. Then you had the regular enemy design. Much
like the characters they too were small and lifeless in the
beginning the later enemies however tended to look better.
Overall the game in terms of graphics lagged behind the rest
of the video game world, and overall it just didn't cut it.
I would have liked larger characters less townspeople
repeats and better design normal enemies. Then you had magic
and special effect design. This on the other hand was done
quite well. The magic spells and stuff were cool to look at
and they were in 3D. Boss design and background design makes
up a lot in this game in the graphic department but that is
not enough to really save the game from what happened in the
graphics. But still graphics are just not the main focus of
the RPG others things are and sense everything else was done
well they skipped out on giving us something better than
this to look at.
Audio 10/10
This game had some fabulous tunes. The music in this game
was a real shine of the game besides the other things like
game play and story. All the tunes were mostly happy go
lucky but some of the music in the game resembled the way
Capcom usually does it with dark and awesome music. They
didn't skimp on anything here great music always entices you
to play the game more than usual and makes the game overall
more enjoyable. The game has a whole lot of songs as well
you will rarely hear repeated songs I think maybe 4 are used
more than once but those are the best songs in the game. I
particularly like the world map theme the battle theme and
the theme of the first town. These are in my opinion award
winning pieces of music.
The sound effects were pretty decent as well there was a
wide range of effects to listen to while you played the
game. Some good well most were good like yelps when you hit
enemies and when you hit them real hard critically they
screamed louder which always cued you that the character was
pissed. The enemies made noises as well when they got hit
hard and when they died. There was some typecast Capcom
audio effects to be found in the game but in my opinion this
wasn't much of a problem. Basically this game had some
pretty good sounds and overall I was quite impressed with it.
Over the music and the sound in this game were decent.
Capcom usually does a good job and it's safe to say this
game is no stranger to that, BOFIII did well in the sound
department. I had no complaints about the music heard on the
game because there was plenty of variety in the music and
great tunes to be listened to at all times. When I look back
on it there wasn't any bad tunes at all in this game and the
game did shine pretty brightly in the music. I guess since
they didn't do much work on the graphics they made up with
sound. Even though many feel visual will always have more
impact in Audio in this case they broke from that old adage
and they came up big with this one. Sound effects and music
were equally great and bottom line this game had some of the
best music on the market.
Game Play 10/10
This game was for one player only. There were 7 playable
characters throughout the game and 6 were useable at one
time. All of the characters like most RPG's had their basic
set of abilities that wouldn't be changed. Like many other
games in general each character had skills in weaknesses
some were more powerful and some were better at magic. Each
character learned spells differently for instance Ryu,
learned mostly curative spells and so did Momo. The other
characters learned different spells than these. Also like
other RPG's each character had their own set of weapons that
other characters couldn't used. Well Rei and Ryu could do
use some of the same weapons but that's different.
The main focus of this game was the dragon, and the dragon
Ryu had a pretty simple system of using his Dragon power.
The basic idea was this Ryu would find Chrysm Chrysm hosted
the spirits of old dragons. They granted Ryu the power of
the old dragons, that was the basic idea. But the cool part
comes in when you mix different genes. By mixing genes you
get cool mixes of dragons some not so cool and some give you
nothing but a lot however do. Mixing Genes and recording
your findings is the easiest way to find out what is good
and what however just doesn't work. Dragon Genes were found
all over the world, and you had to search them out some
times you would stumble upon them while others were hard to find.
Besides the Dragon Genes there was another cool feature in
the game called Masters. Masters was found all over the
world, the main idea of masters were simple. You would find
one and one of your characters would become his apprentice
by becoming an apprentice your master would teach you things
you may never learn from a monster. Some masters as usual
would be better than others and some would seem useless or
like they didn't know what they were doing. Another way to
learn skills was through monsters like I mention above. It
was sort of like Blue Magic in a way because you would
examine a monster and if the monster hit you with an attack
you could learn.
You also had plenty of side quests and fun things to do if
you decided to take a break from actual game play. One of
these were the Fairy Village, the Fairy Village was a place
where Fairies lived your job was to manage them. By managing
them you would assign fairies to jobs like hunting building
running a shop and other things. When the village got bigger
then you could assign Fairies to doing fun things like
playing a game with you giving you a present of foretelling
your future. Besides this you could fish, fishing wasn't as
relaxing as it was in real life because it became quite a
chore if you got caught up in it. You could fish for the fun
of it and try to catch fish so you could replenish health or
AP or you can go for rare fish to get a lot of Zenny.
This game also had some other fun things you could do but I
won't get into that right now. I consider this a basic RPG
where everything is task and Point A to Point B related.
Everything is basically spelled out for you because you sort
of have a guide in the game. By using the Camp feature and
speaking to the members of your party they can tell you if
you don't where to go next. Or what the party is about to
get into or what some important character has asked of you.
That in my opinion made this game seemingly aimed at
beginners because an advanced player can pick up on where
they have to go next without having to speak to the members
of your party.
The magic system on this game besides the Dragon Genes is
like that of most basic RPGs. It's the type where at certain
levels you gain a new spell or ability like I mentioned
earlier spells depending on the character you were using and
what they were naturally good at. Each character seem to
have a natural power in them that allowed them to do the
magic they learned. Nina was the only character who didn't
really have a set of magic and she was good with all of
them. The other characters were only good at certain stuff.
Some magic spells could be learned through examining enemies
so that sort of balances out weak magic characters.
Overall this is a great RPG to play lots of things to do and
lots of innovation. The game is big on side quests and
thankfully you have a lot of them here, and that is the main
focus of the game in my opinion. If the game play is great
then it effects the whole game and it's safe to say this
game doesn't short us on excellent game play. It provides
fun and challenging and interesting plot. Cool things you
can do with the characters and a lot of things you can do
will easily provide you with over 50 hours of game play if
you were like me and wanted to do everything. The difficulty
basically depended on the person who was playing I think for
most advanced RPG players this game will fall into the hard
column. The game is long for being a one disk game and there
are many bosses that will challenge you and be a threat.
This game requires one block of memory.
Overall 9. 0/10
Even with some of it's small flaws BOF3 is one of the best
RPGs to own on playstation. I think if people would have
gave a chance and they wouldn't' have given up on it many of
my colleagues would feel the same way. This is a game that
has an excellent name and it has the making to become an
excellent series. Even though some may argue that this game
is too far-fetched and too predictable I happen to beg to
differ. The story isn't at all far fetched and although some
plot twist were seen coming a lot weren't. Some times you
thought something would happen and it didn't I also like how
the game evenly distributed the plot twist and sudden parts
of the story. How they didn't jumble it all together and
confuse you, they made it make sense and that's a hard thing
to do when playing RPG's today.
The Fun Factor on this game is medium. Like most RPG's there
not always fun although I love the fishing side quest it's a
load of fun. But from an overall standpoint the game isn't
very fun. Don't get me wrong the game is not boring either,
the game is very interesting. But sense most RPG's are
tedious most of time with leveling up and having to get
through a dungeon it sort of loses the fun. RPGs are made to
tell stories and to give good game play and that is exactly
what this game does it isn't made to be fun. But even though
the game provides some fun when you don't focus on the
actual game itself and focus on the side quest, and some fun
parts of the game.
The Replay Value on the game is low as well. You see RPGs
aren't made for replay I mean how many times do you read a
long and involving book? Not that much after you finish
reading it and that's the same deal here. You make pick this
one up again when you are bored and might play a little bit
of it to relive some of the feeling but I doubt you will
want to beat it again. So yeah it has replay value but not
enough to keep you playing the game again and again unless
this happens to be the only RPG you own. Plus the fact
everything links together so there isn't much to be
forgotten in the beginning, because I know myself that
sometimes I play RPGs to see the beginning again.
Overall the graphics on this game was its lowest feature.
The characters were too small and there were too many redoes
of other townsfolk. This upset me but the great backgrounds
and boss design made up for it. The sound was out of this
world beautiful music played through out this game and it
was much to my liking. The game had great and interesting
game play, lots of fun things to do and finally a great
story to make the game even more interesting. There wasn't
too many faults I found with the game except a few so
basically this is a great rpg.
Well then there was the problems which I will explain very
briefly. One of these was the fact that the controls had a
sort of a sluggish response rate. Quite a few times while
playing I notice that the buttons just didn't do what I
wanted them to, I know I press the buttons fast but then I
see nothing happening or sometimes you can't go back and
change stuff. Then there was the 3/4th over head view which
I didn't care for.
Other than that and the graphics this game is done
reasonably well. In my opinion you can not go wrong by
getting this it is truly one of the best games that I ever
had a chance to play or experience and it's quite a good
game and you will really like it. I know I did even though
in the beginning it may seem a little slow to some of you I
advise you to give it a chance. If you already had it and
sold it or gave it away I advise you to get it again and see
for yourself how good it is trust me you won't go wrong and
you will be happy you did. If you give this game a chance it
will come through for you and you will think this game is
great just like I do. The only reason I would advise getting
it if you are a 3D nut or you like really good graphics
because this game is lacking. But on the other hand if you
like a deep and intriguing story very interesting characters
and a lot of fun then you can't go wrong with this.
Overall: 9 out of 10
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