Breath of Fire III

"My poor underrated Breath of Fire III..."

This is the most underrated chapter of the Breath of Fire saga, why?, I have no idea, for me Breath of Fire III is awesome, fun, long, and interesting, I don’t know why so many people dislike it so much, I think the series is getting better with every new chapter, and this is a prove of it.

Story 8/10:
Nice plot, well made, interesting and with good plot twists.
The plot follows the BoF II story, I am not going to tell anything because I would spoil the cool opening of the game, as well as the BoF II ending, but the first part is certainly wonderful.

Graphics 9,5/10:
The graphics are not gong to blow you away, but they fit the game perfectly. The mix between 2D characters and 3D backgrounds is perfect too. The 3D backgrounds, viewed from a nice ¾ perspective, are very solid and have a lot of details, all the forests, cities, caves, etc are extremely well made, it is a pleasure to walk in such beautiful places. Even if the backgrounds are in 3D you can not rotate them (well, yes you can, but only a little, very little), which is GOOD, I hate those rpgs where you can fully rotate the camera, I found that something very annoying, here you wont have to care about that. I think rpgs don’t need 3D graphics, but if they have them, this is the way to do them.
As I said before the characters and enemies are in 2D, the first ones are just ok, but the enemies are great, specially the bosses, most of them rule, with huge and with totally cool designs.

Music 7/10:
Nothing really special, good music, that’s all.

Gameplay 10/10:
Quite different from the previous games.

The battle system has changed a bit, but fortunately the turn based random battles are still there. The battles remind me a lot to Mario RPG, where there is a button to attack, another one to defend, cast magic, etc.
The combats take place anywhere on the map, you are not going to enter any special scenario or anything, it is more or less like Chrono Trigger, and as the environments are so beautiful the battles are very nice, I like them even more than in BoF II
Now it is also possible to acquire abilities to use during the combats, there are two ways to gain this abilities, the first one is to steal them from your enemies with a special command; the second one if by finding Masters. This Masters are scattered around the world, once you find one you can become his (or her) apprentice and learn new abilities.

The world map has changed too, now there aren’t enemies on it, which makes
everything easier and less annoying.

Ryu’s transformation ability works basically in the same as the shamans did in BoF II. You will have to find some kind of crystals (called Genes) during your quest which will let you become different kinds of dragons. You can combine a top of three different Genes at the same.

There is part of the game that really piss me off, it is when you have to cross a desert, there is guy there who tells you how to cross it, but his directions are wrong, and this desert is incredibly long and tedious, do not keep trying, go get a FAQ or you will be stuck there forever.

Characters 9/10:
It seems that the responsible for them changed in this third part, and not for good. Here they aren’t as detailed as they were before and have a much childish look, with more rounded faces. They aren’t bad by any means, but compared with the flabbergasting designs of the second part now they seem pretty bland.
Ryu and Nina, as always, are the same from the previous games in terms of plot an everything, Ryu is still the descendant of an ancient brood of half dragon half humans, and Nina the descendant of Windia, the rest of the bunch is very peculiar, with talking animals (and vegetables) and things like that, they are very funny and very likeable though. Also unlike BoF II here the characters have a much more defined personality, nothing like Final Fantasy VII but good enough.

Replay Value:
We still have the fishing game, the possibility to create a fairy colony (replacing the town building feature from BoF II), and the task to find as much Masters and crystals as possible to acquire all the special abilities; the shamans and the hidden character are now gone, and there is only one ending, but the fairy colony, the Masters and Gene system are enough to keep you entertained for a long time once you finish the game.
Pretty high replay value as you can see.

Breath of Fire III rules.

””My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry.””

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/12/03