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[Lothar]

I played a little bit of it this summer, but the encounter rate was driving me crazy... I also remember that running away wasn't a great idea since every new area would throw at you pretty strong monsters, so you had to grind.

I think I was just at the beginning of Momo's Tower.

Does it get better about this? Did I fail to notice something really stupid that would have made walking around less painfulthe combat easier? I loved BoF IV and I really want to love this game too, but I can't be bothered with the grind anymore.

Is BOF 4 not the same as 3 with its encounter rate? I never played 4 because I didn't like 3 at all. The encounter rate was brutal. Those godawful required mini games. That tedious as hell desert which may be the worst area I've encountered in a video game. It even gave you wrong directions to get out of it.

 

[cireza]

Hmm...

I should maybe give this RPG a shot

 

[Fou-Lu]

Is BOF 4 not the same as 3 with its encounter rate? I never played 4 because I didn't like 3 at all. The encounter rate was brutal. Those godawful required mini games. That tedious as hell desert which may be the worst area I've encountered in a video game. It even gave you wrong directions to get out of it.

Encounter rate isn't something that typically bothers me, but I believe it is much lower in IV than in III. It does still have some frustrating mini games, but not as bad as III IMO.

 

[Paltheos]

Is BOF 4 not the same as 3 with its encounter rate? I never played 4 because I didn't like 3 at all. The encounter rate was brutal. Those godawful required mini games. That tedious as hell desert which may be the worst area I've encountered in a video game. It even gave you wrong directions to get out of it.

IV's not as bad about it IIRC. III's encounter rate can be pretty rough though. Thankfully it can be manipulated! Because battles take place on the field you're exploring and that this is done by slightly repositioning your team, running along many edges has the unintended side effect of preventing random encounters entirely until you're out in the open again. I'm not sure whether this effect is amplified by having multiple party members or big ones (Garr) in your party though - It's been a while.

Edit: Walking steps around this too. A common strategy is to run along the walls and walk as soon you hit an obtuse angle or need to cross an open passageway.

 

[microfolk]

Is BOF 4 not the same as 3 with its encounter rate? I never played 4 because I didn't like 3 at all. The encounter rate was brutal. Those godawful required mini games. That tedious as hell desert which may be the worst area I've encountered in a video game. It even gave you wrong directions to get out of it.

As Fou-Lu and Paltheos said BoF IV feels much more reasonable regarding the encounter rate. The mini games are plentiful and not always that good and yeah, I think it has something like the desert, even though you can pass through it really quickly if you understand the directions well enough and stick to them.
The thing that captured me the most of BoF IV though it's the atmosphere, it's just oozing charm and magic. From what I've played of III it's the same thing here too, even though I strongly preferred the korean (I hope I'm not remembering wrong) setting of the fourth chapter.

IV's not as bad about it IIRC. III's encounter rate can be pretty rough though. Thankfully it can be manipulated! Because battles take place on the field you're exploring and that this is done by slightly repositioning your team, running along many edges has the unintended side effect of preventing random encounters entirely until you're out in the open again. I'm not sure whether this effect is amplified by having multiple party members or big ones (Garr) in your party though - It's been a while.

Edit: Walking steps around this too. A common strategy is to run along the walls and walk as soon you hit an obtuse angle or need to cross an open passageway.

Oh my, this is definitely useful to know. Thank you!

Well, you get stronger characters. From Royal Tomb to Momo's Tower is probably the weakest your party ever is compared to the enemies, as you only have Ryu and Nina, and if you apprenticed Ryu to Mygas and screwed up his ATK, you're really having to slog through the battles. From momo's tower onwards, you'll pick up three characters in fairly quick succession and can have three heavy hitters in the team if you want. But yeah, BOF3 has a pretty high encounter rate. Nowhere near as bad as BOF2 though. I remember the forest near the colosseum being pretty brutal.

Thank you for your answer too, I guess I'll come back to the game soon enough and push until the end of the Tower then. I want to do my best to go past the encounter rate because I can see that behind it there is a masterpiece ready to be loved.

 

[DragonQuarter]

I bought this twice (physical on the psp, then digitally on psn so I could play it on my Vita), but I haven't started it yet!

OMG START IT!

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

Thank you for your answer too, I guess I'll come back to the game soon enough and push until the end of the Tower then. I want to do my best to go past the encounter rate because I can see that behind it there is a masterpiece ready to be loved.

Good luck.

You probably know this by now, but the lizards, armor bots and proto bots, which you fight quite a lot in the tower are very weak to lightning, so Nina's magic does good damage to them.

I think hyper bots may be resistant/absorb though, can't remember for those.

 

[DragonQuarter]

Resurrecting this for this recent translation of an old interview with the BoF3 devs from the Breath of Fire III Memorial Book:

Source

One choice section:

Opening with a phantom narration

- Anything interesting happened during development?

Ikehara: Nobuyama voluntarily sneaked in a narration during the opening's text scroll. Everyone was really in an uproar when a strange voice showed up during bug checking.

Nobuyama: I thought it was interesting (laughs). Since I thought it'd be wonderful if it had a voice, I asked the programmer to keep it secret from Mr. Ikehara. Making the system took up two days. I wonder how it'd have been received if it was used. But right now, I think it ended up much better without it (laughs).

Kitabayashi: That's because everything would have to be changed when the intro narration was inserted. Since that was a serious issue, it was rejected.

Ikehara: Speaking of rejections, the player character was more like that initially. As the hero grew up it would become more and more different each time, and depending on the way he could become a bad person, or even a girl. But because of time circumstances and other issues, this idea was nixed.

Kitabayashi: Initially, I made an estimate for capacity based on the SNES "Breath of Fire II". But doing it that way was a mistake, the total ended up not matching up my expectations at all. Since that was a serious problem, I had to cut down several elements, until I felt it was doable. With all the content from the initial design plan it wouldn't have worked out even now.

Takenaka: But doing it in that way, with that many characters and variations, a single playing time would end up being half of what's currently, since this only works in short stories. This type of changing patterns is best used for repeated playthroughs.

Ikehara: Even the allies were twice in number. For example, the main villains from the first half, the horse brothers, were originally player characters. I might have used other things like a mole, it'd have probably been fun. However, to some extent I knew I wanted to make the production’s volume in a way I could feel a response, and eventually I settled on its current form.

Balio & Sunder were originally going to be playable. D:

 

[Fou-Lu]

I can't imagine how you would justify them being playable!

Cool interview though! Thank you for sharing.