Game Review #3: Breath of Fire III

When someone says "JRPG" to you, what do you think of? Long games of monotonous turn-based battles mixed with predictable plots featuring characters that are pulled along the path of the story with no apparent choice, as if they're forced to do the stupid shit you see.

Despite this, we seem to like them. I can't explain why I like gameplay where it's walk to area, press X until fight is over and repeat until next plot point, but a bit of me hates it because I tend to be grabby about any RPG I can get my hands on. Lately I've stopped going after the bad JRPGs and gone with a few good ones; this is one of them.


For those of you who don't know this series, the premise is pretty simple. You're a silent hero named Ryu who's race has the ability to turn into dragons. You spend the entire game going around teaming up with other anthro characters such as winged girls and wolf men to defeat the looming evil that for some reason persecutes said dragon race.

The concept is simple, but I felt that Breath of Fire III lacked something that other JRPGs tend to have: a clear villian. Most of the plot is dedicated to Ryu, the last of the Brood race, journeying to ask God about a whole bunch of stuff. You find things out along the way but nothing is ever really resolved until the final area of the game, which made me wonder "Where's my motivation?" a lot.

It felt really drawn-out and tedious in going after this goal but luckily the gameplay more than made up for it in my eyes. Even though it played like a typical JRPG combat-wise, the systems attatched to it made it fun and more in-depth than the average Final Fantasy.

One such system is the "Master" system. Scattered around the BoF3 world are a bunch of Masters who you can apprentice your characters to once you receive their approval (such as paying one all of your money once). Each Master adjusts the stat growth at level up, like a wizard giving more Intelligence but taking away Strength, and have a set list of Skills a character can learn after gaining a determined amount of levels. This allows the player to develop their characters how they want, which I more than took advantage of.


The aformentioned Skills are also an excellent bit. Very similar to Final Fantasy's "Blue Magic", where certain enemy spells are learnable and usable by certain characters, Skills are a little bit more open. Any of the characters you get can learn a skill by using the combat menu choice "Examine".You can only learn each Skill once, though, and only one character at any given time can have a Skill. I tend to love Blue Magic systems, so this was very attractive. I just wish that 8/10 of the skills weren't so useless.

Breath of Fire III also has my favorite mini-game I've played in an RPG yet: Fishing. With an easy-to-learn yet challenging system and the bonus that each fish has a purpose as currency and a combat item, it made it addictive. Spend some time fishing, buy a good weapon you can use until later when you can buy said weapon normally.


So not only could you get excellent equipment (including some of the best stuff for Ryu near the end), but some of the harder fish to catch were really useful in combat. In other JRPGs the player would tend to hoard items like a Mega Elixir because of how rare they were and hard as hell to acquire. With enough patience and skill in fishing, the player could have an entire bagful of excellent healing items, and didn't have to feel remorse if they wasted one because there were always more to catch.

For a game released in 1997, it looked rather good to boot. The game may have been 2D-sprite heavy, but the enviroments were built on a 3D-plane that the player could navigate which led to some interesting locations. Add the fact that you could hold R1 and adjust the camera to look around obstacles you normally couldn't see through and it led to some challenging puzzle-filled dungeons and a lot of hidden items.

Those same puzzles would have been tedious and boring too, but luckily the music of the game was excellent and totally helped with the atmosphere of each dungeon. I absolutely love the overworld theme as Adult Ryu, and the end credits song was awesome.

Overall, I love this game. It may have taken me 95 hours to get everything and, before level-grinding to get the last things, being in the high-thirties by the time I got to the final location but the way it was constructed didn't make it boring like a lot of RPGs I've played. If you're looking for a good JRPG to sink time into, get this. It'll be worth it, even if all you do is fish like I did.