DC BoF3

DC's Amateur Spoiler-free Breath of Fire 3 Review

From the title screen after a naming your protagonist, the game starts and throws you into a world of dragons and magic. After a brief introduction the game truly starts as an rpg and gives you the basic options. Lets run over them quickly, Attack which is your basic attack costs nothing and deals damage based on your attack, defend which reduces damage taken but also makes your character do nothing, item which uses items to aid you in combat or change equipment. The other two options are more interesting than the rest, the first one being Examine, it lets you observe an opponent and learn the skill the oponent uses if youre able to learn it, the most basic exanple being Burn, a weak fire magic skill, the second one is actions, these are your offensive magic, physical attacks, healing magic, support and skills, the abilities you learned from enemies, you can use a special item to rearange and switch these skills in between characters, keep in mind your characters learn magic and abilities as they level up. Lets explain some character stats, there are several which are very simple to understand, attack which raises physical damage, intelligence which raises the power of magic, defense which reduces damage taken and agility which decides which character moves first and if it is high enough you may gain an extra move which is marked as Ex, after the turn ends, statuses over time apply(such as poison) and a new turn starts.Without spoiling much, every character is different and has their own motivation the other characters you meet also have their own motivations and serve as good motivators. Another aspect that needs to be addressed is character growth, around the world there are npcs who when their condidion is met will teach one of you characters, these are called masters and they change your stat growth, for example a certain mage will raise your magic points gained but reduce your attack gained per level, alongside that every couple of levels they will teach you a skill in addition, these can only be learned this way. Navigation is done in two ways the overworld where you move freely and instances which are areas you walk around with your party and can interact with things. From the overworld you can enter random encounter zones which can have random items, these zones are small and you can easily leave, you can enter fishing zones if you have the equipment for it, fishing gives you fish(duh) which are usable as items or can be traded with for other items, and finally at the press of a button you can start a camp where you can rest, save, change party members, look at masters and change skills. Lets touch upon the visual and audio design. The game is visually pleasing with hand drawn sprites, a simple resolution increase will go a long way, the music in the game isnt that special but to me the tracks do invoke feelings and memories of the game, they do fit the areas, and i still shed a tear on a certain track that i will not name because spoilers. The game lasts around 30 to 40 hours it could be more, i did some light grinding and my playthrough clocked at 35ish hours, there is sadly no post game but youre free to keep playing. The game has some challenging fights but they can all be taken care of with some planning and well executed abilites...of if it doesnt just grind a bit. My only issue with the game is that if you dont read the conversation you might be a bit lost on what you need to do or who you need to talk to, if youre lost id advise consulting a guide, but before you do, explore and try to find it on your own, it makes for a better experience. That would be it from me, hope this will make you check out the game and if i missed anything...whoops, as a last word i will just say, Trance + Darkness, Maryleep, it is up to you to figure out what it means...Good luck on your adventure young dragon.