A look back at: Breath of Fire 3

Yep, another Breath of Fire game I look back on. Hey, it's the first JRPG series I ended up playing a lot of games from, certainly NOT gonna be the last. A look back at this is gonna be quite broad, because as a whole, this game has a ton of stuff to talk about.

What I liked:

The gameplay overall manages to be strong. We cut the party member size from 4 to 3, which I'm not really gonna voice an opinion on, but we also have new abilities that can be learned by examining enemies, plus there's ways to bring on new stat raises via the whole master/apprentice system. Also the idea of members who fall in battle immediately getting back up if the RNG decides so is another fine point, as if giving characters an extra chance (although it might not always work out properly if more than one enemy targets the weaker enemy). The dragon transformation here is the best in the series, being able to pick and combine genes and create different dragon forms is a remarkable effort. You have six characters for the party overall, and each and every one of them has something interesting about them as well, both story-wise and gameplay-wise. Just look at Peco, the onion that seems awfully useless given how he starts, but has automatic regeneration AND happens to tie in the plot at the last moment by actually being a communicator for the world tree. You look at other characters' aspirations, such as Garr's lamentations for his beliefs, Momo's continual scientific studies, Rei out for revenge, and heck, even the intro cinematic is a nice callback to the very first Breath of Fire. Oh, and the fishing minigame? Actually pretty good.

What I didn't like:

Yeah, so I said the fishing minigame is good. Unfortunately, that's probably the only minigame I like. See, Breath of Fire 3 is where I started hating RPG minigames, and this has some of the worst ones. Not to mention most of them are required, and quite a few sidequests* get on my nerves. What better way to get on a ship than train this nerd on how to beat up this bigger guy? Only you somehow STILL don't get the ship until after you go through this lighthouse. What's the deal with this damn rope minigame with the foreman being so balanced it's NOT balanced. Oh, nice boss fight afterwards. And the Shisu quest can go straight to hell, there's even another rope minigame to get from a well, of all things, vinegar. You know what? I'll put my grievances on the minigames of Breath of Fire 3 in a different post.

So the plot of this game is half good and half bad. The whole beginning is amazing, a dragon gets free, turns back into a human, and is taken by the thieves and raised as such. They do their things and all, then here comes Balio and Sunder, two murderous horsemen, completely ruining everyone's lives.

This whole part afterwards up to the Angel Tower? I love it. I love all of it. Most of it is of course trying to find friends and/or running from the two horsemen, but there's that lovely determination you can see in Ryu. He went from being a cowering kid with a small sword to someone who's destined to get his life back on track. He gets Nina, Momo, and Peco involved as he searches and stumbles along, eventually everyone gets captured and forced into an arena, where Garr actually frees them, obviously for his main purpose of slaying the dragon. This is also the last we see of the horsemen, who have been quite the villains for some time now. Eventually, the plot goes to Angel Tower, fighting Garr one last time before Ryu loses it. The time skip that follows shows how much I like Garr as a character in this game, as he's the first to rejoin and actually feel like an atoner. Put it simply, he wants answers to his own goddess as to why his faith wanted to murder all the dragons. The plot then basically involves finding more about the Brood (Ryu's dragon group) and the goddess Myria, and that's where the plot falls apart. From then on, it's reunion with friends who also are convinced to find out more, stupid quests, long-winded story stuff, and this rather sadistic desert. Was it worth it in the end? Well, we do get to fight Myria anyways (or not should you choose the alternate ending) but it's pretty eh overall. So yeah, Breath of Fire 3, very memorable for what it offers, even if it sort of falls apart later on with no getting back up. I'll write another blog post on these annoying quests/minigames later on.

*which aren't sidequests if they are required to proceed in the plot. A sidequest goes AWAY from the plot, and many FAQ writers seem to forget that. An example of a sidequest in this game is running the faerie village. I don't have to actually bother with that at all in this game.