 The 2 Breath of Fire games on Super Nintendo have their ups and downs, sure the translations in both are pretty bad and they're both grind heavy games, but each are worthwhile playthroughs that do a great job representing that era of roleplaying games, with the 2nd game in particular pushing the boundaries of what's expected in an RPG both in terms of story and gameplay. As you know, obviously many franchises continue beyond the 16-bit era to varying degrees of success, like the Mega Man X series, for instance. Started off great with X4, and then, uh, not so great with later games. So how did another Capcom franchise, Breath of Fire, fare on the PlayStation with Breath of Fire 3? I should mention first very quickly that you do not have to play the first two games to get into Breath of Fire 3, that's not to say that there isn't value to be had from playing them since there's plenty of references here, but they're certainly not required to follow the story. The game once again stars the silent protagonist Ryu, who's once again an orphan, and yes, he's still part of the brood race, meaning he's a human with the ability to transform into a dragon. This time around he's dug up in a mine, and goes on a rampage before getting captured, and then escaping. He's later found in the woods by a humanoid tiger dude named Rae. He and his companion Tipo are thieves, going from town to town stealing armor, weapons and food. Ryu gets roped into it, and things get taken a little too far when the boys steal from the town's mayor. They justify it by saying, hey, he's corrupt, only to find out that he's corrupt because he's part of a huge crime syndicate. Whoops. So of course, since this is a Breath of Fire game, houses get burned down, as revenge, and the boys are left for dead. Ryu survives, but there's no trace of his friends, so he sets out to find them, meeting new party member, I mean friends, along the way, all while trying to avoid the syndicate henchmen that are after him. In addition to Ryu, Rae and Tipo, there's also Nina, who fills the frustrated princess quota, Momo as scientist, Gar, who's like a tank, and Peko, who's, uh, an onion. Sure, okay. So yeah, this is all well and good, but have you noticed a lesser emphasis on, you know, dragons and stuff so far? Granted, the game opens with a dragon torching a bunch of minors trying to dig up chrysum, or fossilized remains of dragons. But man, oh man, this story takes a long time to get going. It's seriously not until about 10 or 12 hours in when things really start moving, as Ryu attempts to find out the true nature of his dragon clan with some legit twists that are really well done. This story has some surprising emotional depth going into some serious themes that I won't spoil here. But I will say, when you finish Breath of Fire 3, the story is going to be the first thing you think of. There's certain lines and certain scenes here that will stick with you for a while. It's just that it takes a long friggin' time to get there, so you gotta be patient. And yes, if you're playing on a PlayStation, there's plenty, and I mean plenty, of load time to sit through. Oh, and real quickly, I gotta make sure I mention that no, Ryu is not a child the entire game. There is a time skip later on. Moving on to the combat, it's surprisingly very straightforward. It's typical turn-based combat here with random battles, although there's only three characters in your party now instead of four like in Breath of Fire 2, and there's only seven total playable characters to choose from instead of eight. But yeah, you visit villages, buy new weapons and armor, all that good stuff. I know some people might expect to franchise making a leap from fourth to fifth-generation consoles to have some innovation. I mean, just look at what games like Xenogears or Grandia were doing. But the game structure and the combat, for the most part, is standard stuff that you're used to seeing. There are some wrinkles, however. For instance, while there may not be a timer by each character to determine their turn, the character with the higher agility stats will get extra turns during combat. There's also the Observe option, which allows characters to learn enemy skills just by watching. It doesn't work for every skill, but it's still pretty cool. All formations are important here as well, since they can alter character stats, like to use an obvious example, the defensive formation is great at protection, but your overall agility is going to suffer. And the most notable wrinkle here is the Master System. You can have party members learn from other characters you meet throughout the game, and they alter the way that you would normally level up, so you can either choose to increase your strengths and say to hell with your weaknesses, or try and strengthen your weaknesses for a more balanced character. To give you an example of how this works, here's a woman you meet in a coffee shop named Delonzo. She'll agree to train you if you have at least 15 weapons in your inventory and provides an accuracy boost and can teach you skills like steel, but it comes at a cost of losing overall hit points and ability points, so you gotta decide if it's worth it. And in this case, yeah, it absolutely is, especially for a character like Momo since it'll help with her bazooka attack. So yeah, while the combat itself is traditional, the character and party development is something different and it's reasonably well balanced. Of course this being Breath of Fire, there's lots of other stuff to do here too, just like the second game. For one thing, this is one of those RPGs where you can find stuff anywhere, so it's always a good idea to take a moment to check cabinets and shelves and such for items. You can move the camera around too, which is helpful. Unfortunately, if you're a lunatic like me who has to check everything, that makes this playthrough a lot longer than it probably should be, but whatever. The fishing is back and better than ever, this time with the ability to trade fish for equipment, which is cool. You can build and run your own fairy village, similar to the town building aspect in Breath of Fire 2, where you give towns people jobs. It's crazy. There's a hide-and-seek minigame, there's side quests to find rare weapons and armor, there's a lot of stuff here. As far as the visuals and sound go, I mean, you're watching a video, you can see the game, you can hear the music. This game is stunning and the music is awesome. And most importantly in an RPG, the battle theme isn't that annoying, and that goes a long way toward making this one playable in long stretches. I appreciate that this game still used hand-drawn sprites, it's aged so much better than some of that early 3D stuff of the era, and I also really appreciate that there's no battle transition stuff here. When you run into a random battle, you fight them right then and there. In 2016, Breath of Fire 3 got a re-release on the PSP with some minor adjustments, like a wider aspect ratio, and having the fishing minigame accessible from the main menu. That's the version that's available right now on the PlayStation Network. I should also mention very quickly that if you want to know more about this game, and the rest of the Breath of Fire series for that matter, I recommend SuperDerek's review of it, where he gives his interpretation of the story. It's well worth watching. So yeah, what's interesting about Breath of Fire 3 is that it doesn't take the same ambitious leap forward a lot of other PlayStation RPGs like Final Fantasy 7 were taking, and that's definitely not a bad thing. Breath of Fire 3 feels familiar and uncomfortable, while still introducing a couple new gameplay elements here and there, and while it may not have the same grand scope some of its peers had, it's still a rock solid game with a good story that delivers. So while stuff like Final Fantasy 7, Xenogears, and Chrono Cross should be commended for their vision and groundbreaking ideas that help move the genre forward, I think Breath of Fire 3 should be commended as well for carrying the torch and sticking with the fundamentals of what makes a role-playing game fun in the first place. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.