History Videogame / BreathOfFireIII

* NotCompletelyUseless: Durandal's Backhand can't finish off an enemy. Aside from the fact that you have to learn it to unlock Hondara, most players would write it off as useless...but when training Beyd, you want to injure him without knocking him out, so Backhands are a good way to train up his HP and Defense.

The third game in the long-running EasternRPG series ''Franchise/BreathOfFire'', released on the UsefulNotes/PlayStation in September 1997 in Japan and April 1998 in North America. It was later ported into the UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable system and released in August 2005 in Japan and February 2006 in Europe, with [[NoExportForYou no North American release.]] (Until 2016.) As typical for the [=BoF=] series, several characters from the earlier games are reinvented here.

* GoodVersusGood: Ryu [[PhraseCatcher is not a bad dragon]], and is a consistently heroic individual who makes the world a better place. [[spoiler: Myria is a goddess who has spent her existence protecting humanity from danger and providing it with technological and magical aid through chrysm and the technology of the Black Ship. Unfortunately, she believes that dragons are inherently dangerous to the world, which is why she wiped them out in the past, and will do the same to Ryu if he doesn't agree to be sealed away in her version of Heaven. [[WorldTree Yggdrasil]] also disagrees with her methods, because keeping the Desert of Death away from the lands of life prevents life from recolonizing it.]] There is no wrong choice here, just an open debate, and it's ultimately up to the player to decide which side is in the right,

* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: You're restricted to only using 3 out of the 6 possible party members at a time and can only change the party composition inside a dungeon within a specify type of save room, which are rare.

* LethalLavaLand: Mt. Zublo.

** Somewhat subverted in that [[spoiler: Teepo]] becomes an enemy you must kill later in the game.

* MissedHimByThatMuch: Never stated outright, but implied with Ryu's search for Teepo. Talking to NPCs in Windia [[spoiler:After Ryu, Teepo, and Rei are nearly killed by Bailo and Sunder]] hints that Teepo tried to steal in Windia but was driven off, so Ryu and Nina follow along behind to a house that Teepo supposedly stopped by, but talking to the people inside shows that he just left. At that point Balio and Sunder show up and capture Ryu and Nina and drag them off elsewhere. [[spoiler: Dealing with the two of them is likely why Teepo gets so far ahead of them that never meet again until the endgame.]]

* SpritePolygonMix: The enviroments and spell and attack effects are largely polygonal, while all the player characters, monsters and NPCs are sprites.

* OffModel: For such a beautifully animated game, anyone who looks at the artwork and then the in-game spritework will find it jarring that Ryu, Teepo, and Nina basically barely resemble their promotional artwork at all. While Ryu's post-TimeSkip self looks on-point, his child self has completely different clothes and an almost jelly-esque poo hair shape, and Teepo gets long hair and an outfit that looks it has a skirt. Nina's young design has somewhat accurate clothing, but her hair style is pretty different, and after the timeskip her ''entire design'' is completely different. This is the most blatant when you get the ArtShift in the ending, as Nina suddenly barely resembles herself from the past couple dozen hours. Part of the problem stems from the fact that these three characters had all their sprites done with ''concept'' artwork in mind, which varied wildly from the promotional artwork used for the face portraits and everywhere else surrounding the game.
** Rei also shares this problem, albeit mostly because his hair style in the first half of the game doesn't really match up with his face portrait. However, there's no real artwork of this younger version of himself to compare it to, and he actually is dead accurate in the second half of the game.

* KansaiRegionalAccent: The Dolphin boss speaks in a Kansai regional accent in the original Japanese and was even called the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Kansai Dolphin]]. This got turned into a Film/CrocodileDundee-esque Australian accent in the English version.

* AllInARow

* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit

* ArtShift: The final scene of the game ditches the in-game models and depicts the characters in their promotional art appearances (see the page picture). This is mainly only a problem for Nina, who looks [[OffModel almost nothing]] like her artwork in both halves of the game.

** Kaiser form, while insanely powerful, will guzzle your AP up so quick you'll barely get any use out of it, especially if you use the Infinity/Trance/Radiance gene combo to get it at maximum power; this costs a staggering ''53'' AP just to initiate, and another 27 each turn; that's 80 AP just for a single turn in a game where, late-game, most players will barely have over a hundred for Ryu! On the other hand...

* BarefootCartoonAnimal: Garr.

* BossBonanza: In the Myria station. There are plenty of new bosses. But given how some of the bosses are inside some segments of the station itself...it might not qualify specially in the end where you get to the inner laboratory where you face the Experiments which are mostly a BossRush per Capcom's tradition but they included a few new one (a Dodo-like bird).

* CantDropTheHero

* ConvectionSchmonvection

* DerelictGraveyard: Steel Beach.

* EliteTweak: The Masters system.

* FourIsDeath: The Guardians.

* GenocideBackfire: [[spoiler:Myria thought the dragons would be a menace to the world and ordered them killed.]]

* GoodVersusGood: Ryu [[PhraseCatcher is not a bad dragon]], and is a consistently heroic individual who makes the world a better place. [[spoiler: Myria is a goddess who has spent her existence protecting humanity from danger and providing it with technological and magical aid through chrysm and the technology of the Black Ship. Unfortunately, she believes that dragons are inherently dangerous to the world, which is why she wiped them out in the past, and will do the same to Ryu if he doesn't agree to be sealed away in Heaven. [[WorldTree Yggdrasil]] also disagrees with her methods, because keeping the Desert of Death away from the lands of life prevents life from recolonizing it.]] There is no wrong choice here, just an open debate, and it's ultimately up to the player to decide which side is in the right,

* HiddenElfVillage: The Fairy Village.

* JustLikeRobinHood: Deconstructed. A mysterious cloaked man hires Ryu, Rei and Teepo to break into the mansion of their town's corrupt mayor, steal his ill gotten gains, and return them to their rightful owners. The townspeople are ''furious'' that the trio not only stole from their mayor, but implicated all of them in the crime by giving them the stolen goods. Not only that, but the mayor manages to have the last laugh by hiring [[KnightOfCerebus Balio and Sunder]]. [[spoiler: [[LaserGuidedKarma Karma]] eventually catches up to Loki after the TimeSkip when Rei mauls him to near death, [=McNeil=] gets arrested by Wyndia for smuggling, and Mikba (Leader of Syn City: Balio and Sunder also serve him) is killed by Ryu and Co.]]

* MadScientist: Dr. Palet.

* MissedHimByThatMuch: Never stated outright, but implied with Ryu's search for Teepo. Talking to NPCs in Windia [[spoiler:After Ryu, Teepo, and Rei are nearly killed by Bailo and Sunder]] hints that Teepo tried to steal in Winda but was driven off, so Ryu and Nina follow along behind to a house that Teepo supposedly stopped by, but talking to the people inside shows that he just left. At that point Bruno and Sunder show up and capture Ryu and Nina and drag them off elsewhere. [[spoiler: Dealing with the two of them is likely why Teepo gets so far ahead of them that never meet again until the endgame.]]

* SetAMookToKillAMook: The "Influence" Skill marks one target which all low-Int enemies will attack until death.

* SpritePolygonMix

* ThatsNoMoon: During their trek through the Desert of Death, Ryu and company see a small sand dune and decide to climb it to get a better vantage point. Before they could even get near did the sand shift, revealing a monster underneath.

* MissedHimByThatMuch: Never stated outright, but implied with Ryu's search for Teepo. Talking to NPCs in Windia [[spoiler:After Ryu, Teepo, and Rei are nearly killed by Bruno and Sunder]] hints that Teepo tried to steal in Winda but was driven off, so Ryu and Nina follow along behind to a house that Teepo supposedly stopped by, but talking to the people inside shows that he just left. At that point Bruno and Sunder show up and capture Ryu and Nina and drag them off elsewhere. [[spoiler: Dealing with the two of them is likely why Teepo gets so far ahead of them that never meet again until the endgame.]]

** The introduction scenes for the Dolphin and Ammonites bosses are straight-forward references to the one iconic scnee from ''Film/{{Jaws}}''.

** One of the late-game weapons is the Heat Shotel, a reference to the Sandrock Gundam's WeaponOfChoice from ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing''.

* TookALevelInBadass: After Ryu first encounter Balio and Sunder, his attack animation changes from terrified flailing to confident striking, reflecting his period of toughening up after his life starts to suck.

** The name and the appearance of Super Combo skill is similar to, you guessed it, Super Combos in VideoGame/StreetFighterAlpha, which is fitting considering the Sakura and Chun Li cameos mentioned above.

* BossInMookClothing: The Archmage and Berserker, probably the best known examples on the whole series. The [=GooKing=] may also count, specially when it's [[UnstoppableRage angry]].