Hello and welcome. Thank you for taking the time to come check out the site, and this blog. For my first post here, I figured I’d do a retrospective on one of my favorite Japanese role playing games on the PlayStation: Breath of Fire 3 (BoF3) .
I don’t hear a lot of people talk about this game, which I guess isn’t that surprising, considering some of the competition on the PS1, but I would like to spread the good word!
BoF3 was released in September of 1997 by Capcom, the same year as one of the reasons why people probably don’t know this game very well. I didn’t play the game when it came out; it wasn’t until 2001-2002 that I played it…and I loved it.
It’s one of my most replayed games, and it got me to play the previous games in the series on the Gameboy Advance. I have yet to play BoF4 or any of the other ones after it because they lack what drew me to the first three.
Since I’m a character guy, let’s start with them first.
Ryu is a dragon, part of the race called the Brood, and the protagonist of the game. He's very much in the camp of silent protagonist, conveying his thoughts and feelings through actions and little visual queues. There's not a whole lot to talk about with his character outside of his determination to protect his friends and desire to find out more about his people.
Teepo is the same age as Ryu but is much livelier and more mischievous. He falls in with Rei and takes to thievery. He doesn't awaken to his dragon powers until much later, just like Ryu, but he finds out sooner about their people and takes a much different path.
Rei is a thief with a heart of gold and acts like an older brother to Ryu and Teepo. He terrorizes the local village but only because he needs to eat. -insert Aladdin comparisons here- He also has a mysterious other side much like Ryu and Teepo, which his tail and tiger-like appearance alludes to.
Nina is the princess of the kingdom of Wyndia. Sadly, unlike previous incarnations, she doesn’t have the wings of the kingdom's namesake race. Although, they hint at it with her outfit when she’s older, but the wings are more faerie than angel.
She’s spunky yet naïve and isn’t afraid to throw around her authority even though most people don’t take her seriously. That fact changes after the timeskip where she’s taken to her role as royalty, but she drops everything to help Ryu and their friends. She’s Ryu’s emotional core, and it’s hinted that her feelings are more than platonic but never explicitly stated.
Now, any party wouldn’t be complete without a nerdy tech person, and Momo certainly fits the bill. She, as well as her robot companion Honey, propel the group through the fascinating tech-y side of the game. Momo herself is a mousy bookworm and scientific genius following in the footsteps of her deceased father. I really like her character because she brings in some more lighthearted interactions and has a strong desire to learn and experiment.
The most bizarre member of your party comes in the form of Peco, a mutant onion-looking plant. A friend of Momo’s father runs a chemical-enhanced farm and is responsible for Peco’s, as well as other more hostile mutants’, existence. Peco joins the party after they rid the place of the hostile mutants. Unlike the rest of the group, he can only speak in incomprehensible noises like a Pokémon.
Garr is the last playable character that’s introduced. He’s the stoic badass that doesn’t put up with anyone’s crap. He’s the most creature-esque party member and looks like a cross between a dragon and a human, with wings and a short snout. He belongs to an ancient tribe of people that killed nearly all the Brood for their goddess, Myria, but he questions her reasoning and seeks answers/amends.
Now that the main players have been introduced, let’s move onto the overarching story. I’m going to brush over a bunch of stuff, especially the side-story events, or we’ll be here all day.
The game starts out following around a small dragon in a mine as the miners try to fight against it. This dragon, to the surprise of absolutely no one, is Ryu. After eluding captivity, he’s saved by Rei, who takes him in as he did with Teepo. The three form a close bond and go about their life of burglary and occasional monster hunting.
They cross the wrong person when they try to rob the corrupt mayor of the nearby village. He sends two hitmen, brothers Balio and Sunder, to deal with the trio, and they’re easily taken out, with their home set aflame. Ryu awakes by himself and believes Rei and Teepo are still alive somewhere; he just needs to find them.
Ryu travels to the city of Wyndia to search for Rei and Teepo and meets Nina. She agrees to help Ryu evade the hitmen that are still on his trail upon discovering that they failed. In their haste to escape, Ryu and Nina end up on the other side of the kingdom with little choice but to go back to the castle the long way.
They meet Momo and Peco along the way but are captured by the brothers and taken to a colosseum. This is where the game shows two of its many other Capcom game Easter eggs in the form of Chun-li and Sakura from Street Fighter in the arena crowd.
Garr is a fighter in the colosseum tournament and decides to help Ryu and co after Ryu shows him that he’s a dragon, on the condition that he’ll accompany him to a sacred temple in the east where Ryu can learn more about his people. Balio and Sunder try to stop them once again, but, with Garr’s help, the group defeats them for good.
On their way to Angel Tower, as Garr calls it, the group hits several snags. However, after a detour in a harbor town, they manage to make it through a dangerous volcano and arrive at their destination.
Once inside the tower, Garr insists that he and Ryu are the only ones to go ahead. This is where Garr reveals his true purpose and fights Ryu to the death. Ryu wins, and Garr realizes that the dragons he and his people slaughtered all those years ago didn’t fight back. The spirits of the dead dragons in the temple call out to Ryu, causing him to transform and disappear.
The game then skips ahead several years, and we find afamiliar scene: a small dragon running around the now-deserted mines. Garr finds Ryu and knocks him out of dragon-mode. The two join forces once again to go find the answer to why Garr’s goddess wanted to eliminate the Brood.
Ryu and Garr end up meeting with the rest of the members of the party, as well as Rei after so many years, and they all decide to go together to help. The elder of the village Garr used to belong to tests their conviction in battle before he tells them to go find their goddess across the sea.
They manage to get a boat after some drawn-out troubles and head north. A lot of this section of the game involves them wandering around, with a brief stop in the last Brood village where they learn of the goddess’ battle a millennia ago and that she’s returned to exterminate the Brood. Ryu’s resolve grows stronger, and they head out to the nearby haven of old technology said to be where Myria is.
Before Ryu can confront Myria, Teepo makes his grand re-appearance. Just like Rei, he didn’t die when Balio and Sunder attacked. He was convinced by Myria to live in seclusion to spare the world the Brood’s destructive power. Ryu refuses to join him, so he attacks the group and, of course, loses.
Teepo succumbs to his battle wounds, lamenting that he only wanted to be with his family: Ryu and Rei. With yet another crime to make her pay for, Ryu and friends make their way to Myria.
The goddess exposits that the only reason she had the Brood killed was to save humanity from itself. She tries to convert Ryu like she had Teepo, but he refuses. The group defeats Myria, and, with his mission complete, Garr fades away. Everyone else escapes Myria’s self-destructing home, and the story ends with the remaining members of the group in the desert, looking over a new dawn.
While the story itself might not be anything too original, the tweaks it throws into he mix, and the characters make it quite charming and engaging. I find myself fascinated with it each time I play. There’s just something about the whole mixing of different genre elements, with an emphasis on fantasy, that hits the sweet spot for me.
Garr is the single most plot-driving character in the game. Without meeting Garr, Ryu would never have gone on to do more than survive and look for his lost friends. He’s also my favorite character because I have a soft spot for these kind of mentors-seeking-atonement characters…and he hits like a truck!
With the characters and story out of the way, let’s move onto the gameplay.
BoF 3’s gameplay is split up into two large sections: combat and exploration. Let’s run through the combat stuff first since that’s my favorite and will take up most of your playtime.
BoF 3 is a typical turn-based JRPG: wait for your turn to attack, some semblance of traditional class for each character, HP and AP (mana). Some things that differ from most other JRPGs would be that you can position your team of three in ways that give some members more defense or attack; the fact that you can tailor your characters to how you want; the dragon gene splicing for Ryu; and the legendary auto-battle function that should be standard in every turn-based game.
There’s not much to say about the different formations besides that they exist, and I always put Ryu or Garr in front for boosted attack to shred things while I have more support-based characters in the back.
Each character has what I would say is a pre-defined class when they join your party. Garr’s a heavy-hitting warrior, Rei’s an agile thief, Nina’s a caster and so forth. You can, however, tweak their playstyles by finding the different masters around the world. These masters give you access to certain abilities, as well as stat boosts, that your characters otherwise wouldn’t get. Some of these abilities are highly recommended to make each character play at top form.
While most of them have some stat requirement to train under them, they’re not that restrictive (save for a couple) and gives you the chance to customize your characters. Want Nina to smack the every-loving crap out of things with her wand? Have her train under one the of the warrior masters. Want slow Garr to get some speed? Have him train with the agility master.
The real stand-out mechanic for the game is Ryu’s dragon transformations. In previous games, the main character could always transform into a dragon, but in BoF3, that’s taken to the next level. You can find dragon genes by exploring around the world, or by defeating certain encounters. These genes can then be used to transform in combat at the use of AP.
The kicker here is that you don’t just select the fire gene to become a fire dragon. I mean, you can still do that, and you will earlier on, but you can combine genes together to get different, special forms via splicing. It’s fun to experiment with mixing and matching all the different genes. There are some that are better than others and the possibilities aren’t endless, but it’s still something I enjoy messing around with every time I replay the game.
I cannot stress enough how awesome the auto-battle feature is. If you’ve played any JRPGs, you’ll know that sometimes you must grind or revisit lower-level zones, or you’re just tired of manually fighting for a bit. Breath of Fire 1 way back on the SNES had the feature, and it’s continued through all iterations. Whenever a game has this feature, I’ll admit I get a little too excited.
The boss fights in this game are impressive and usually have some kind of “trick” to them. One of boss that always comes to mind is this guy that summons two lava dragons that you fight on a bridge inside a volcano. The two dragons hit hard, so you’ll be drawn to kill them first, but the guy will just heal them to full. Take him out and then deal with one dragon at a time to win.
I find myself having a difficult time with a good portion of the bosses even though I’ve played the game so many times and know what to expect. One of the toughest bosses is a zombie dragon that only Ryu and Garr fight. Not only are you down one of your usual party members, but this boss likes to zombify and confuse you. I can’t tell you how many times I died to that boss when I was a kid. It’s the gatekeeper to the second-half of the game and wants you to know it.
The game-world of BoF3 isn’t quite as large as some of its competition like any given Final Fantasy. A lot of the open world is linear, following predefined roads or paths from place to place. However, there’s quite a few nooks and crannies with hidden goodies. The dungeons and other sections have a good bit more exploration to them, especially with the ability to tilt the camera to find things hidden behind walls or other objects.
To access these treasures/secrets or to progress past certain points, each character has a specific skill they can perform. Ryu cuts bushes with his sword. Rei picks locks. Nina can power up crystals with her wand to activate certain machinery. Garr pushes heavy boulders to create or open paths. Momo blows things up with her cannon or use her knowledge of technology to access things otherwise blocked off. Peco kicks trees to drop items or kicks rocks to break or knock down other things.
I won’t lie, it can be a bit frustrating when you go into a place, only to realize that you need X character to progress and have to run back to the overworld map or a save point to grab them, but, overall, having unique abilities gives the characters, and the game itself, a bit more appeal.
One of the things I mentioned above was the masters system. Except for a handful of the lesser/lower-level ones, the masters are all tucked away in hidden areas. One is in a small, hidden section behind the castle in Wyndia that you can only reach from the world map. Another is in an unassuming hut in the mountains that you must pay a large sum of money to before he’ll train you.
I feel as though these masters are necessary for a smooth combat experience. While it’s possible to beat the game without, I would suggest finding these guys asap and boost your character’s stats and give them access to powerful abilities. The game can be quite difficult, and you’ll be thankful to have any power boosts you can find.
Besides the masters and some good items, the other high-priority of exploration is acquiring all the dragon genes. Some can be found in dungeons or require puzzle-solving, yet some you can just stumble upon on the ground outside some abandoned fishing hut. It’s not the most engaging aspect of the game, but they’re very important and open up more combat options, which is always good in my book.
When you’re running around on the overworld map, you’ll also notice rings of flowers. These are access points to another side activity: the faerie village. After beating a rude Australian-speaking dolphin (the localization team went crazy), you’ll be tasked with rebuilding the village. You can ignore it as I've done on subsequent replays, but you’ll miss out on some good, but not necessary, items if you do.
I would be remiss if I didn’t include the most important (according to my friend) side-feature: the fishing minigame! I enjoy a good fishing time-sink every now and then, and, luckily, the one here is solid and with some funny, out-of-place voice acting. While the in-game benefits are minimal, aside from healing items and weak magic attacks, the game keeps track of your catches and scores them. So, if you’re into that, it can keep you going for more than just the fun aspect.
Lastly, I’ll briefly cover the music. A lot of the music in the game is good, but not a whole lot of it is memorable, even to someone like me who’s played it many times. The combat, overworld, and fishing music stuck with me. I can pick them out of something just by hearing them, and it always makes me happy.
All in all, I think this game is a classic PS1-era JRPG. The characters and story are entertaining, charming and engaging; great turn-based combat with it’s own twists; and some extras to keep you exploring and playing. If you can pick this gem up in its original PS1 format or digitally on the PSP/PS Vita, give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed.
