"Breath of Fire 3" - part 4

Oh yeah! I almost forgot about the faeries. This should have gone into yesterday’s post but I’ll file this one under, better late than never.

The enduring legacy of the “Breath of Fire” series is the faerie village concept first developed in “Breath of Fire 3”. To be fair, the implementation of managing a small community was also present in previous installments of the series but in those cases it was always a tad spectral in execution. There was nothing remotely interesting or particularly demanding of the player in those older village mini-games and the feeling of overseeing the growth of the settlements always felt like one’s grip on things was a bit loose.

This problem was remedied of course with the introduction of the faeries in “Breath of Fire 3”. Once the player had advanced to a particular stage of the game they could then assist the buggers by overseeing their productivity and telling them what to do.

There’s nothing immediately useful about the town, but as more and more effort and time is devoted towards its success, the more rewards the player will reap. Rare items can be acquired, games of chance can be played, there’s even some nifty ways of earning money from the sickeningly cute little sprites.

Before the player can start raking in the benefits they have to first figure out some of the basics. Each faerie is born with various gifts: some are strong, some are smart, etc. Depending on what kind of stats they have will largely affect the outcome of the tasks you have them perform. In order for the village to begin to blossom you have to take care of basics like hunting for food and building new homes. A trivial task to be sure, until the player comes to the realization that the faeries can die!

Yes, if not properly trained the faeries can die, and not just from starvation mind you; if you send a weak faerie out into the wilderness to slay deer for meals there is a chance they may never return. Even the supposedly “strong” ones have their bad days and end up riding the long black car to their new exciting cloud cushion in the sky. There’s risk involved sure, but once you figure out a decent enough strategy all will start running smoothly.

Similar to the fishing game this is one of those side missions that the player will actively and eagerly look forward to. There’s something cathartic about taking one’s mind off slaying gods and demons to simply sitting down for a little bit of R&R by simulating the abusive commands of a slave driver against a community of tiny cute woodland critters. If that wasn’t enough, the promise of amassing great amounts of wealth and rare goodies is also rather pleasing.

I honestly can’t tell you how much fun this feature is and I’m sure Capcom was well aware of its popularity since it was included in the following sequels. No, it’s not as involved or complicated as, say, “The Sims’ but you know what? The faeries, with all their cute and adorable anime-esque grotesque cuteness are still not nearly as annoying as those artificial NPC drones. Also, my Sim never sold me axes and plate armor.