Breath of Fire III

"Not Prefect, But Definitely Up There"

I'm as much of a fan of RPGs as anyone out there. So of course, I was one of the first people to buy Breath of Fire III for the Playstation. And after playing through it and putting it away for years, I decided to dig it out and give it another shot. Let's take a look.

Alright. So you've got a pretty standard story (at least as far as BOF games go). You're Ryu, last survivor of the Dragon Clan, a legendary race of people that have the power to turn into, you guessed it, Dragons! What's funny is that even though Ryu's the last of his race, there's a 'last of their race' Ryu in each BOF game after this one. Anyway, your mission is to defeat the evil Goddess of Destruction, Myria. Wait a sec... Didn't we already defeat her in the first one (though her name was changed to Tyr)?

Anyway, you'll meet up with multiple characters who join you on your quest, including a girl with a bazooka, a radish-looking demon, this game's incarnation of Nina, and a few others. Each character has an ability that you'll need at some point to get through the many dungeons in the world. In addition, you can do fun stuff like fishing and even become an apprentice to masters and learn their abilities.

Now with all that going for it, why the 8? What could be wrong with the game? How could Capcom mess up that perfect formula, albeit simple? Well, Capcom found a way.

See, it wasn't enough that you could turn into a Dragon by combining Genes (which is really cool, by the way), or the fact that the game is nice enough to keep the Japanese battle voices. No, something had to be done about the game potentially getting a perfect score. We couldn't have a perfect game. Because otherwise, nothing could outdo it (I'm not making this up).

So the first thing Capcom did, which seemed minor at the time, was took the awesome turn-based battle system and put about a half-second delay on EVERYTHING! Doesn't sound too bad, until you get more than one character. See, in BOF III's battle system, you've got icons that you have to select by holding the d-pad in the direction of the icon you're choosing (think Lufia). The problem isn't so much with selecting the commands though. Those are fine. It's with what happens AFTER you select the command that makes it a bad thing.

See, when the next character's command prompt comes up, the cursor actually takes that HALF SECOND to ROLL BACK to the ATTACK command (even if you're not pressing anything). And anyone that's ever played a turn-based RPG knows that when you're out in the field building up levels, you tend to get a case of happy fingers, where you button mash to speed up the battles. Now you can see the problem. If you're too quick to select the next command after selecting the spell, you'll select a spell with the next character. And since enemies can absorb certain attacks, you can see WHY this is very bad, and HOW it can put you into a situation. I don't know what Capcom was thinking here. All I know is that this was NOT a good idea.

Now the second part of the complaint isn't really with the overall gameplay. It's more to do with a certain area that everyone knew I'd eventually mention here. That's right! It's about the Desert! Now, don't get me wrong. I love going through deserts in RPGs. In fact, I think it should be REQUIRED to have at least ONE Desert area in an RPG. How could they make it bad? Once again, they found a way. And I've GOTTA salute them here (even though I'm razzing them for it), because I never would've thought of this one.

See, on the overworld, you see an isometric view of your lead character and a view of the immediate area. Nice and neat, no problems there. That is, until you get into the desert area. Then, you're switched to front view, and have to navigate by the stars. Doesn't sound so bad, right? It sounds like a cool little minigame. Well, navigating by the stars is about as broken as trying to land the plane in Top Gun for NES. The problem is that you have to line yourself up with the stars, walk for EXACTLY the right amount of time (and I mean EXACTLY). Then you have to turn and navigate with ANOTHER star for the rest of the trip, until you see the town. And if you're even the slightest off or not totally lined up, you just won't EVER hit the town. The game gives you the impression that you're close, but... no. You won't ever get there. You could be walking for three hours and not get there.

And to top that off, the game will randomly force you into battlefields with relatively easy enemies. But once you leave the mini-areas, you're back out on the desert and worst of all, you're turned around! So not only do you have to remember where you are, but you have to turn and re-face the right star. And there's a fake star out there too, just to screw you up even more. And if that wasn't enough, sometimes the game will advance you in a random direction upon leaving by just a few steps. This isn't that hard to correct, IF you catch it right away. But you'll probably not even notice it, since each part of the desert looks identical to the other.

So, just thought I'd warn you that the game isn't perfect. Overall though, it is a really great game, and if and when you get through the desert (it's toward the end, so you don't have to worry about it for a long time), the game IS very enjoyable. There's Dragon transformations, evil goddesses, crazy DBZ-Fusion monsters, and all sorts of other weird stuff in the game. Definitely check it out at the very least. It's worth playing through at least once.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/30/07