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1998 was a slim year for Playstation owning RPG players. While Nintendo fans had the excellent Ocarina of Time and the wildly addictive Pokemon games, the Playstation owners had but three; the later renowned cult favorite Xenogears, the ground-breakingly cinematic Parasite Eve, and the somewhat forgettable, yet highly enjoyable, Breath of Fire III. Well, perhaps highly is overstating the matter, but Breath of Fire III is definitely a worthwhile game for anyone that's already played all the truly stellar games out there.
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Breath of Fire III looks basically the same as several other games released at the time, using sprites on a polygon background. Neither are particularly flashy, but they get the job done. There is a bit of a hitch with Breath of Fire III's execution though; the background is laid at such an angel that, combined with stiff character movement, makes walking in a strait line and facing the right direction more of a chore than it should be. There are also a few spots where objects obscure the players vision. Not a lot, but enough to irritate.
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Which is a little bit like the sound effects in Breath of Fire III. Many of them are voice samples... which were left in Japanese, and are never heard outside of battle. Although, I may not have noticed if I had, because I found myself frequently humming the battle music, even well after turning the game off for the day. I've heard better battle music, but for whatever reason Breath of Fire III's just stuck with me. The rest of the soundtrack was generally unimpressive though, leaving the game's audio unremarkable overall.
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Almost as though to make up for this, Breath of Fire III does spice up exploration with the occasional puzzle. However, they're of the "Examine object [obstacle] with character [someone]" variety, and do little more than force you to place certain characters in your party for certain tasks. This is annoying, because few dungeons include points where you can alter the makeup of your party, meaning you have to trek outdoors to get the necessary man or woman for the job. Why the developers didn't spot how much an annoyance this is and include the ability to alter your party on the fly is beyond me.
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What they developers did do well was create an ability system that allowed the player some control over the progress of the party, yet didn't penalize a player who didn't want to mess with it and just played the game. This is mainly achieved using Masters. By meeting certain requirements, you can get a handful of people to take your party members as Apprentices. An apprenticed characters stat growth is altered, and if they visit their Master periodically, they can learn new skills from them, though these range from 'handy' to 'useless'. Augmenting this is the Dragon Gene system. Like others of the same name, the hero Ryu can morph into various dragon forms. As you progress, you find a total of 20 different 'genes' that are combined to determine what kind of dragon the transformation results in. With the ability to combine up to three different genes at a time, that's a lot of variety. At the same time, though, simple one or two gene combinations are often perfectly brutal in their own right. Now, beyond all this Breath of Fire III uses tried and true turn-based combat, with a neat quirk that allows for characters with enough of a speed advantage to get free turns on the enemy/slower party members. Yes, this is hardly novel, and doesn't come up much to boot, but it's a good platform for the different ability systems to work on.
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What's nice is that the characters manage to be distinct in the process, both in turns of natural abilities and in plot. Breath of Fire III makes a solid effort of giving each character some screen time and a hint of depth, or at least personality. Ryu is something of a blank slate, being a silent hero, but his companions are reasonably interesting, and overall likable. A few seem to almost drop out of the story at several points (the heroine Nina is probably worst in this regard), but there's nothing that really drew me out of the game.
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The plot doesn't fare as well in this. Mostly because it's overall fairly standard, which made it harder to really stay 'in' the game. It started off more promisingly- Ryu, as a boy, is found by a bandit named Rei and his friend Teepo. Rei, being much older and a fellow orphan, feels compelled to take care of him, so he teaches him how to survive stealing and such. What was nice about this segment of the game was that it was amusing and felt very genuine. Later, the group becomes separated and a series of misadventures lead to Ryu stepping up to smite evil. Although this does progress logically enough, it also felt somewhat forced, probably because of the "it is your destiny" feel much of it had. Which doesn't make for a bad game, it just tarnishes the great start somewhat. One or two dropped plot threads don't help, either.
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Breath of Fire III is easy about 75% of the time. The rest of it is populated with bosses that require a fair amount of preparation, a few resets, and a dash of pure luck. Outside the main quest, there are a handful of major sidequests and a couple other odds and ends. They can eat up a fair bit of time if you let them, but they're still sidequests. Barely doing anyway, Breath of Fire III is fairly average in length, my final clock time being 31 hours.
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The ups and downs of Breath of Fire III balance each other out quite a bit, but at the end of the day I really did enjoy myself while playing it, and most people that enjoy a classically styled RPG should agree with that sentiment.
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