Breath of Fire III

While my experience with turn-based RPGs is vast, my history with the Breath of Fire series is short: in 1996 I borrowed Breath of Fire II from a friend who urged me to play it. My time with it was limited, and I recall reaching a point where I kept dying over and over on regular mobs. Soon after, I returned it to him. I was intrigued, though not enough to push further.

Recently I decided to give the series another go, this time jumping straight into Breath of Fire III, which is often touted as one of the best (if not the best) in the series. Earlier this year I played through Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, a beautiful and fun game, and I couldn’t help but compare the two experiences. As much love as I have for this recent DQ remake, I found the adventure to be marred by the oversimplification that was designed in, resulting in a game that holds your hand too much and makes combat so easy that any semblance of strategy is lost. With BOF3, on the other hand, you have a game that truly challenges the player. This is a proper, classic RPG where save points are limited, health and ability points do not refresh when characters level up, and a player must think carefully about how they spend their money to upgrade and replenish their items. Even a standard battle has the potential of wiping out your party, so you have to pay attention.

While this was a refreshing reversal from DQ7R, it also comes at a quality of life cost that I appreciate in modern RPGs. In this game you won’t find a quick healing shortcut, the ability to speed up combat, or a robust in-game explanation of how masters (the mentors who grant special abilities and change your attribute allocation when you level up) work. As is the case with many retro RPGs, the player is expected to read the manual thoroughly and, at times, consult a guide for additional support. The former is an expectation we all lived by at the time, whereas the latter is where BOF3 comes across as overwhelming. For example, there are moments in this game where understanding how to progress is obtuse to the point of frustration, such as how the game requires you to figure out that pushing a rock isn’t sufficient to smash a glass of a greenhouse. No, you have to run towards the rock and then push the action button at the right moment. Up until this point, character specific actions (e.g. swing sword, pick lock, shoot magic wand) were all stationary activities, making this rock hurling task a puzzling moment. (Pun intended.)

BOF3 also loses some steam with character gates. Quite often there are moments where a particular character (or characters) must be in the party in order to advance a dungeon or town, and, while at times obvious, other times it’s not. I found myself backing out of zones to change my party line up just to return back to the place I was blocked. 

This also leads me to my second criticism of pacing, which is combat. While combat is often strategic and engaging, battles tend to drag out and overstay their welcome. Random encounters trigger frequently, and since you are always in desperate need of those experience points, running is the fools option.

In many RPGs, the story starts small and increasingly becomes more grand. While this is true in BOF3, the curve is much flatter, with the stakes barely increasing over the tens of hours this game requires to complete. The game starts with a series of unfortunate situations and digs in with its themes of pain, isolation, and oppression. These themes, while strong at first, aren’t given much opportunity to mature, resulting in an experience that has the player coasting along a meandering storyline with a few plot turns sprinkled in. The hero's journey doesn’t even feel like his journey at all, as one of his counterparts drives the plot forward (a quest to ask “God” a question), with the hero along for the ride. If, instead, the plot thickened earlier, the hero was more center stage, and the story had a stronger layer of complexity to it then a big impact could have been delivered here. That, plus, if the game trimmed some of the fat, such as having to return to masters across the map to gain their skills, then the story could have progressed faster. (Oh, how I longed for the masters to join me at camp.) 

Next, let’s focus on where this game shines the most: visually. For a game released in 1997, BOF3 is an artist feast. In fact, compare this game to sprite work many years later and you’ll still respect BOF3’s superiority. The character design, including their portraits, are memorable and appealing, inclusive of how some of the characters age up, requiring unique sprite sets later in the game. The animations are fun and thoughtful, adding charm. And the bosses and dragon transformations are stunning. (I’ve been told Breath of Fire IV pushes the visual boundaries even further, and I’m excited to check that out.) What kept combat fresh in the later hours of the game was witnessing the incredible visuals that came in the form of new enemies, new skills, and new dragons.

The sprite work is complimented nicely with the 3D environments. Here we have a game that is brave enough and wise enough to retain its sprite-based roots as it enters into the PlayStation era, recognizing that the combination of meticulously crafted 2D sprites married with 3D environments is the perfect blend.

Towards the end, I felt burnt out on this game. Still, I remain hopeful that BoF4 is more of my flavor.