Breath Of Fire III - Japanese release

To be honest, up until a week ago, I had not played any of the BOF
releases, though I've seen a lot of email in the past about one version or
the other. And when I had first seen the game, with the cover drawn by
that guy (I don't know his name, and I'm not really worried about it) that
has done the artwork for so many of Konami's releases (I think). This, of
course, depends on if Konami is the ones that have been doing all of those
Street fighter arcade games... Well, as you can see, I don't play many
fighters. But I have played huge number of Rpg's on the computer and
console systems (dating back to the nes days). Anyway, I'm digressing. The
gist of this is that I wasn't to sure about the purchase of this game at
first, especially since it looked like it was aimed at a younger crowd
than FFVII was... But I bought it. 

Damn, it's a good game. It *is* aimed at a younger crowd, but there is a
lot of tongue in cheek types of humor, and a lot of in-jokes for the
japanese audience. The plot moves along quite well, and who ever was
directing this project has impeccable timing, with little or no parts that
are too long or too short. They didn't cut any corners on this game.

The characters are hand-drawn, living in a 3-d world. And very well
animated, also. Every character has several different expressions and
movement, which are a delight to watch. As a friend in the industry put
it, Konami's flexing their 2-d muscles. The characters are designed by
somebody else than the above mentioned "that guy", which I commend, given
that his illustration would be hard to translate well into the character
sizes that are used. Character sizes are just right, bigger than the
traditional snes icon characters, but not so large as to fill the screen.
And they do have a dash button also, along with a setting for permanent
"dash" for those impatient ones among us. The characters are at um, normal
height in the dungeon/town/forest scenes, and revert to a scrunched
big-head version for walking around the outdoors.

There are 7 characters (at this point), of which you can only carry 6
around with you. The main character is always in your party, and you can
have 2 others. You can switch outdoors, but not in dungeons or towns,
except under special circumstances. You wander with those 3 characters on
the screen, with 1 leading and the other 2 following. They all have their
strengths, and weaknesses, and many dungeons depend on you picking the
right party. In the first half of the game, it will automatically switch
to the characters you need for a dungeon, but later on, you have to make
your own choices, and you can find that you've brought along the  wrong
characters to complete the dungeon, and have to go back and switch. The
main character also has the ability to change into a dragon (which is why
this is called BOF), up to 18 different combinations, but not at first.
You have to find various dragon genes, scattered throughout the game, and
then figure out how to combine up to three of those genes to various
effect. Actually, it may be that theres just 18 genes, and the amount of
combinations is up to your combination abilities. The only problem with
this is that it takes a certain amount of your main characters AP points
(or magic points) per fighting turn, to remain in Dragon shape, not to
mention attack (though most of the breath/claw attacks take no points).
It's definitely something you save for the end boss... 

The outdoors, dungeons, forest, heck, everything, is done in 3-d. There's
no static, 3-d pre-rendered backgrounds ala FFVII, but polygon areas with
textures. Quite nice, gives a much more open, airy feel to the game. And
also gives you the ability to interact with your background. You can cut
down bushes, kick trees and rocks, blow down doors and move large blocks,
depending on the character used. Not quite as much as Zelda, but still
interesting. Quite a bit of puzzles and dungeons do depend on figuring out
what to move, and who can do it. To be fair, they generally give a good
indication of who's needed for each area beforehand, but then you do have
to read Japanese to a fair level to get this information. One feature I
like is that when you camp to replenish your characters health/magic, it
gives you the option of talking to all of the other characters, who'll
remind you of your next objective, or at least give hints. Useful if your
stuck, and forgot what the last town said to you. 

The dungeons are not large, but they are not quick, small ones either.
Once you know exactly where to go, you can zip through them, but if you
are there for the first time, looking for treasure, they are about 30
minutes to an hour apiece, in general. They feel just about right, in my
opinion. The encounter rate is completely predictable, since it's really
not random. Generally you encounter an enemy at a pre-set distance
travelled in a dungeon. You can't really avoid it (though you can run away
from a fight), so in some dungeons where you are travelling the same
sections at the same pace over and over again, you will encounter enemies
at the same spots. There isn't a huge amount of enemies, only like 4-8
enemy variation (at most) per dungeon. The limitations of hand-drawn
animation, but to be fair, all of the enemies are drawn and animated well
also. The outdoor encounters are great, you have the choice of checking
out an encounter, which is signified by a "!" over the characters head
every once in a while. If you ignore it, nothing happens, you keep going
on, but if you check it out, you pop into a generic outdoor block, and can
pick up a treasure while fighting off various enemies. Perfect if you want
to level up, or if you just want to get somewhere. 

The fights themselves are fairly traditional, you go at different turns,
depending on the speed of the character fighting versus the enemy. Along
with the traditional fight/magic/item/guard options, theres an option for
watching the enemy. Your character does nothing but watch during that
turn, but if the enemy does a special attack (or other special) the
character has a chance of learning that special move. Once you've learned
it, you can write it down (if you've got the skill ink) and transfer it to
other characters (but only one character can know any 1 skill at a time).
You also can pick up various skills from various masters, who you meet
throughout the game. Putting yourself under a master gives you bonuses and
minuses on your abilities every time you level up, and once you level up a
certain amount, they will also give you a new skill, to a maximum of 3 new
skills, reached after about 10 character levels. The skills range from
very usefull to almost useless, and will work better for particular
characters than others.

You also have an option of fishing at various points in the outdoors. You
need the equipment for it, and the right lures, but it's worthwhile, since
the fish you catch generally have various healing abilities, making for
non-cost potions, and also can be traded for various items (in fact, some
of the most powerful weapons/armors/accesories are only available in this
manner). The fishing is quite fun, though a bit mindless. At least on
puzzle, you have to fish, but in general, it's just an option, not a
necessity. You also have the option of building a town, but I haven't
figured it out yet, so I cannot say much about it.

All in all, I've got about 45-50 hours into the game, including fishing,
and I've enjoyed every minute of it. The puzzles are hard enough to make
you think, but not so hard as to frustrate you endlessly. Japanese ability
helps enormously on this, though, since they will give hints to puzzles,
but you do have to be able to read them... The story is engaging, and
while at first you may think it's designed for a younger audience, it
gradually grows more mature as the characters mature and progress. It's
not perfect, the speed of the cd access does show up once in a while, but
it's not annoying, imo. While the plot is linear enough, you do have
different options on where to go and when, so it feels well balanced. Over
all, this game is very well balanced. I liked the characters, unlike FFVII
(well, I did like Cid and Yuffie, but that's about it), but that's
probably because I like more traditional RPG's in the first place. This
fairly pure swords and sorcery, with a bit of high-tech thrown in, but
only as you get toward the end (sort of a high-tech world that has gone to
low-tech, I gather). The main character never talks, just all the
characters respond to something he's said, which you can fill in
yourself.  The japanese in this game is geared to a younger japanese
audience, so there is much more hiragana/katakana than Kanji, though a
knowledge on Kanji is still necessary. Still, much easier to read than
FFVII, and the characters body language helps. (you should 'ave seen the
expression on Deas face when I made an indecent proposal, or at least
that's what her reaction (positive) seemed to say...;) 

Overall, after playing Beyond the Beyond, FFVII, Saga frontier, Arc the
Lad, and several computer rpg's, I would rate this as the most enjoyable
of the console games played. It doesn't top out the computer games, but is
near the top. The atmosphere, when I think about it, is very reminiscent
of Dragonquest V, which is probably one of my favorite games. I would
confidently reccomend the purchase of this, but only if you read Japanese
at at least an intermediate level. 

Paul Hansen

Polar Bear Graphics "in that cold spot called Tokyo"