Final Fight was one of Capcom's most popular series in the 90s. It helped pave the way for some of their other titles such as Street Fighter II, and some of the characters even appeared in Street Fighter themselves. It still remains a fan favorite even now.

For its 20th anniversary this year I decided to do this blog entry that showcases all the games. The Final Fight series deserves another look after all these years.

Final Fight

The first game, Final Fight, was released in December 1989 internationally for the CPS-1 hardware. It was headed by Akira Yasuda (Akiman) and Akira Nishitani (NIN-NIN). The game, while it was still in development, was a Street Fighter sequel entitled "Street Fighter '89."

Street Fighter '89 was kind of different from the Final Fight we know and love now. This game had Joe from SF1, a kickboxer, as the main character, along with an unnamed wrestler (who became Haggar later) and an unnamed Japanese fighter (who became Guy). The promotional art was slightly different as well.

SF'89 was showed off at trade shows, and ultimately got positive feedback, but most people (including some higher-ups at Capcom) thought it couldn't really be called a sequel to Street Fighter because the structure of the game was vastly different than that of SF.

Thus Capcom began some retooling. They changed Joe's name to Cody and gave names to the other two playable characters. They gave the game a different story. The mayor's daughter had been kidnapped by a gang and it was up to the three fighters to save her. The gang was named the Mad Gear gang after a Capcom arcade racing game. The city it took place in was named Metro City and had some parallels to New York City. Capcom also gave the game a new name--Final Fight.

And when it hit arcades in 1989, it was a huge sensation. Sure it wasn't quite as groundbreaking as Double Dragon, but it offered an array of vast improvements over other beat-em-ups at the time, such as an enemy life meter, tighter play control, and more accurate hit detection, among other things.

This story about three fighters scouring Metro City giving bruises and beatdowns to every ruffian within a ten-mile radius ended up being something to write home about.

Final Fight's arcade release had six stages, each with dozens of enemies and a boss at the end of each one. One thing that made the game stand out were the actual designs of the stages. The Subway stage was incredibly well-designed and had the feel of a real urban subway, with thugs and all. The Industrial stage was full of flash and fire. The graphics were vibrant, with large, detailed sprites and backdrops.

The bosses were pretty cool designs too. Sodom is a wannabe-Japanese fighter, and Rolento is a corrupt military general who'll stop at nothing to achieve his goal of total domination.

Sound-wise it pushed the CPS-1 to its limits, which wasn't bad for hardware that hadn't been out very long.

As for gameplay itself, the game had two buttons, an attack button and a jump button. If you pushed both at the same time you could do a room-clearing attack called an "Extra Joy." Both Cody and Guy used spinning kicks while Haggar's was a lariat.

Every character had one combo they could pull off with several presses of the attack button, a throw, and a jump attack. Haggar was the only character in the game to have a jumping throw, which was a piledriver. This allowed for multiple ways to beat down the individual gang members. The game also supported a two-player mode where you could bash heads with a buddy.

Each playable character had his own style. Cody used brutal kickboxing techniques, was the second-fastest character, and was the best with a knife, Guy used speedy karate techniques, and Haggar had his brute strength and stamina to help him through the game, though because of this, he was the slowest character in the game.

Fun Facts:

-The arcade version has a glitch known as the "Infinite Combo Glitch." Pick Cody, punch the opponent three times, turn around, punch once, then turn back and repeat the cycle until dead. This glitch was parodied in Cody's A-ism super in Street
Fighter Alpha 3.

-The enemy "Two.P" was named after the second-player character of another Capcom arcade title, Forgotten Worlds.

-Most enemies in Final Fight are named after bands or singers (like Poison and Roxy, Damnd, Sodom, and in the later SNES port, Billy and Sid, who were named after Billy Idol and Sid Vicious), and one was named after a late pro wrestler (Andore). Abigail was named after an album by King Diamond, and has the same face paint.

Final Fight (SNES)

The success of the arcade game prompted Capcom to release a port of the game for SNES. The game was released as a Super Famicom launch title in Japan in December 1990, a year after the arcade version hit. The US version came out in November 1991, and the European version's release was in 1992.

For its time, it was a decent port. It included most of the enemies, animations, levels, and characters. However, there was quite a bit missing from the port because of the limited amount of space on an SNES cartridge at the time. These missing features are:

-The Industrial Area stage and Rolento (the stage's boss)

-Guy (he replaced Cody in Final Fight Guy, however)

-2-player support was cut down to 1 (to make room for the enemy lifebars as well as not having enough space on the cart)

The US version was edited when it hit due to Nintendo's "family-friendly" policy at the time. Blood was taken out, Poison and Roxy were changed to Billy and Sid to avoid violence against women (even after Capcom Japan explained that Poison was a newhalf and not technically a woman), and the Whiskey and Beer items were changed to Vitamin-E and Root Beer. The thug saying "Oh! My god!" in the bonus stage was changed to a different voice saying "Oh! My car!" Two bosses were renamed as well. Sodom was renamed Katana and Damnd was renamed Thrasher. Also, the Japanese version had Jessica in a bra in the intro, which was painted over for the other releases. This edit stuck with every other non-Japanese release of Final Fight 1 as well.

Some additions were made, however, such as the game having an opening song (whereas the arcade version didn't) and the soundtrack was remixed to accommodate the SNES's sound chip. The difficulty was much higher than the original due to the shortened player lifebar. There were also two options modes added (one default and one secret).

This port went on to be the best-selling one, at 1.56 million copies sold.

Final Fight Guy

Final Fight Guy was an SNES-only port of Final Fight. There are a few key differences between this game and the original Final Fight port:

-Cody has been axed in favor of Guy as a playable character

-The title screen has been changed to read "Final Fight Guy" instead of just "Final Fight"

-The story was changed to say that Cody was in Japan training and that he must save Jessica instead

-The ending was changed to have Jessica catch up to Guy instead of Cody like in the first port. However instead of being kissed he just says good luck to Jessica and walks away.

This port was released in 1992 in Japan and 1994 in America. In America, however, since Final Fight 2 and Mighty Final Fight were already out by the time this game showed up in the US, and were arguably better games, FFG was distributed only through Blockbuster rental stores. As a result, it's an incredibly tough-to-find game and costs for it have skyrocketed.

The game remains largely the same as the other FF1 port in terms of Nintendo-sanctioned edits and gameplay.

Final Fight 2

Final Fight 2 was released on the SNES in 1993. It was part of an exclusive deal Capcom had with Nintendo to continue releasing Final Fight games for their platforms (this was largely due to Sega's rival series, Streets of Rage).

The game takes place several years after the first one. Cody is on vacation with Jessica (later retconned as him being in jail in the Street Fighter Alpha series), and Guy has gone off to train. Mad Gear has fallen under new management, and they
kidnap Guy's master and Guy's fiancee.

Maki, Rena's sister, calls Haggar and tells him what's going on. Carlos, Haggar's friend, comes along with him to meet up with Maki to mutilate the Mad Gear.

The gameplay remains the same in this installment for the most part, but there is now support for 2 players, and Guy and Cody are replaced with Maki (Rena's sister) and Carlos Miyamoto (a half-Hispanic half-Japanese fighter), two fighters with their
own unique styles.

Where this game differs from Final Fight 1 is that it all takes place not in just a huge, sprawling metropolis, but it takes place all over Eurasia, from Hong Kong all the way to Japan. It had a very international feel in this regard. The stages were
Hong Kong, France, Holland, England, Italy, and Japan. The last stage pitted you against the game's last boss, a kabuki karate fighter named Retu. The only returning enemy type from Final Fight 1 were the Andores. Rolento, a boss cut from the SNES version of Final Fight, makes an appearance as "Rolent" in this game as the boss of the Italy stage.

As for the three playable characters in this game, Haggar received some slight improvements here. His priority on attacks has been beefed up, and his jumping piledriver from the first game is now a spinning piledriver. Maki is the female of the group and has the fastest attacks but lowest defense and power (like Guy in the first game) and Carlos was the average character with average speed and attacking power.

The graphics and sound are typical fare for a Capcom game, and stages and music have a less urban feel due to the actual locations you visit throughout.

Like the SNES Final Fight, Final Fight 2 has some edits for American and European audiences due to Nintendo's policies. Wong Wong, the boss of the Hong Kong stage, wielded a meat cleaver in the Japanese version, which was taken out for other releases. Also, the two female enemy types, Eliza and Mary, were changed to male ones named Robert and Leon respectively.

Fun Facts:

-Chun-Li from Street Fighter can be seen in the background of the Hong Kong stage eating what looks like ramen.

-Toshio Fujiwara (Megaman X, Makaimura series) was the producer for this game. He also produced another Final Fight game called Mighty Final Fight.

Mighty Final Fight

Mighty Final Fight was released on Famicom in Japan 3 months after Final Fight 2's release, but in the US a month before the English version of Final Fight 2 hit. It was another Nintendo-exclusive game. It was largely a parody of its big brothers, but added its own flair to make it stand out from the other Final Fight games.

For starters, the story has been changed. In Mighty Final Fight, Jessica is kidnapped by Mad Gear, but it's not for revenge on Haggar. No, this time it's because.....Belger is in love with her! So the trio of Guy, Cody, and Haggar must save her again and stop Belger from trying to take over the world in the process. The intro to the game also has Cody, Guy, and Haggar with highly exaggerated facial expressions (along with Cody being hit by his own punching bag).

Like the SNES port of Final Fight, there is no 2-player mode; MFF is a 1-player game. Also like its big brothers, Mighty Final Fight has two buttons, an attack and a jump. You can pull off the usual Extra Joy attacks and combos here, but they're all kind of exaggerated to fit the game's tongue-in-cheek style.

Where this game differs on the gameplay front are its level-up feature and its new special attacks. The level-up bar at the bottom of the screen has six segments. When you beat up the number of enemies it shows on the bottom right of the screen, your character levels up and can take and dish out more damage. The special attacks are done by pushing forward+attack, then quickly hitting forward again.

Cody's is an uppercut that sends out a wave, Haggar does a body slam, and Guy has a fancy kick. These do not take away HP unlike the Extra Joy attacks and can be done whenever you want. Also, expanding on Cody's knife expertise in the first game, every character has a preference for a certain weapon now. Haggar's preferred weapon is a mallet, Cody's is still the knife, and Guy's preferred weapon is a shuriken.

The characters are still the same power and defense-wise. Haggar is still really slow and powerful (but takes the longest to level up fully), Cody is still the middle fighter (takes the second-least amount of points to level up) and Guy is still the speedy fighter who lacks a little bit of power (takes the shortest amount of time to level up).

The sounds, music, and graphics are very whimsical and upbeat compared to the other Final Fights. All the characters and enemies are rendered in chibi style, and punch and kick with stubby limbs. It was and still is very funny to watch these
little guys beat each other up. The music is very upbeat but still keeps that urban feel, and the stages are designed very
brilliantly.

A lot of the enemy types and bosses from the first game show up here, except for Rolento, Edi E., and Bill Bull. Oddly enough, this game has a female enemy type (Poison Kiss) that was left unedited in all the releases.

Speaking of enemies, some of the bosses have either changed attacks or appearances to reflect the style of the game. Katana has a recurring role, and Thrasher has some funny quotes. Abigail's choke grab now has him kissing you instead of throwing you (hahaha). And the biggest kicker of all is that Belger is a cyborg. Who saw that coming?

This game would go on to become a cult favorite.

Fun Facts:

-Mighty Final Fight was included in Capcom Classic Collection Mini Mix for the Game Boy Advance. It's a port of the NES game but it has more graphical flicker than the original.

Final Fight CD

Final Fight CD was programmed and published by Sega under license from Capcom for the Sega CD. Its release was in 1993. It was an enhanced port of the arcade game. Not only did it include all the features of the arcade game, including 2-player
play, the Industrial stage, and all three playable characters, it also included a new Time Attack mode, voiced cutscenes, and a remixed soundtrack.

The new Time Attack mode gave the player a time limit, and an unlimited wave of enemies. Your goal was simply to top your previous amount of enemies beaten. It provided a nice diversion from the regular game.

Every cutscene had added animation to accommodate the amount of voices and to flesh out the story more. The voices were great for their time but are now considered a mixed bag, especially when it comes to Haggar's voice. The music was remixed, and a couple tracks even had some vocal clips, like the West Side stage's remixed song. Final Fight never looked and sounded this good!

The actual game itself was also enhanced and changed in a few ways. Cody's infinite combo glitch is now near-impossible to pull off, and the difficulty seems slightly harder than the original arcade game (but not quite as hard as the SNES port).

Unlike the Nintendo games, Poison and Roxy were left as females/newhalfs for the releases outside Japan, but their outfits were given digital paint to cover up certain.... *ahem*..... "parts."

Fun Facts:

-Final Fight CD was made by Sega to help draw in customers for the Sega CD and to take a little of the spotlight off Nintendo's console, the Super Nintendo.

-Final Fight CD has redbook audio, meaning the CD's soundtrack can be listened to in a CD player.

In the next entry I'll be covering the rest of the games, from Final Fight 3 all the way to Streetwise, as well as some other stuff.

The project I described in my last blog entry is somewhere around half done now. It's a blue/white quadruple-paneled catalog with the website name, an eye-catching picture of the logo, and a description of some of Capcom's products. So far I've had a ton of fun with it. It'll be posted up after it's done, but I think it looks pretty good so far, if not a bit bare. Has a nice little picture of X & Zero in there, some of their games such as Breath of Fire III, Capcom Puzzle World, and more.

Showing up in quite a few of Capcom's earlier games, the Yashichi, which looks like a pinwheel with an orange (or red, depending) circle behind it, is one of Capcom's oldest and most useful powerups.

However, it wasn't always a powerup. In Capcom's very first arcade game, Vulgus, the Yashichi was a deadly enemy. Now, to those who played Vulgus after playing another game where it shows up as a powerup, it probably came as a huge shock to see that something so useful could be so.....painful!

In Exed Exes, a later Capcom game, it fulfilled the same role. Capcom would break this tradition with the release of SonSon in 1984. The Yashichi in that game gave you bonus points. Another benign role would be taken in Gun.Smoke-- that game actually offered two types of Yashichi, the red one, which gives you a free life, and the blue one, which gives you invincibility for a few seconds. Pirate Ship Higemaru's version gives you bonus points, but in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1, it also unlocks Higemaru's art gallery.

There are many games in which the Yashichi shows up. Many, many games; probably too many to list here. It appears in Mega Man as an item which gives you all weapon energy and life back, which is probably the most-known appearance of it. Other Mega Man games like 8 and Battle & Chase would have cameos from it. Games like Final Fight and Street Fighter II would also have appearances from this elusive icon.

The last documented appearance of it in a more recent game so far (as in, not a ported game) seems to be Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge. It shows up as a menu icon.

Now, why am I doing this blog entry? It's basically because the Yashichi was the first memorable icon of any Capcom game, especially if your first Capcom title was Vulgus. For others, they may remember it from another early game. In a way, them putting it into so many games is a reminder of where and how Capcom had started in the video game industry (before they were a game company, they made coin-op games). Its appearance usually does have a meaning behind it.

So next time you see one in a game, think back to the first time you saw one and what you felt when you picked it up. You knew that it wouldn't be an ordinary powerup, and that it would become an icon for the company itself.

-capcommunist

I know nearly all of us here have some really good memories of playing Capcom games, or maybe even finding a game that you wanted but could never find before. Here are some of mine.

First is how I found out about Project Justice. About May 2001 or so, I went to the newsstand with my parents to pick up some new comics. They had the new Tips & Tricks issue there; I forget exactly what games it covered that month but I remember the Project Justice logo was on the front cover. When I saw the logo, I thought, "oh great, another lame shooting game."

Of course, I'd played Rival Schools extensively by that time, including the most recent one (that I knew of), Seishun Nikki 2, but plumb forgot that the credits of Rival Schools said Project Justice on them (I'd never known that a true RS sequel had been released at that time in Japan), so I was in for a huge surprise once I got in the car.

Okay, so I open the magazine, and start flipping through it furiously. I catch a short glimpse of who I thought looked like Shoma from Rival Schools. Sure enough, I flip back to that page and it was indeed Shoma I saw! And all the other Rival Schools characters! And a girl wielding a violin as a weapon, which was the funniest thing I'd ever seen!

I freaked out right then and there. My parents thought I was being killed or something. The English Dreamcast release was coming in June or July, apparently, according to the guide. We get home, and I just keep looking the article/strategy guide over wondering if I'm dreaming or not.

My best friend at the time had gotten a crapload of money somehow, and wanted to get me a birthday present that week since my 13th birthday was in three months. Remembering that Tips & Tricks said that PJ wouldn't be out for a while, I asked him to either get me Power Stone 2 or Skies of Arcadia. He said "okay" and hung up.

A few days later, he calls back and says that the store he went to didn't have either of those two games. I groaned at this point. But then extreme happiness came later when he said he picked up a cool-looking fighting game called Project Justice. I thought I'd misheard what he said, so I stopped him and asked him to repeat the name of the game. "Project.....Justice." I really wigged out when he said this and thanked him profusely!

The next day came and he brought the game over. We spent all day playing it and unlocking characters, laughing at the new team-ups and party-ups, and the new characters like Yurika and Momo. I was so grateful I even let my friend do the majority of the play by himself that day since he wanted to unlock people. That was truly the best memory I'd ever had of a Capcom game. I got the Japanese version later just for the board game mode.

Breath of Fire III I had a weird history with. Around September '98 or so, five months after it got a US release (and exactly a week after my tenth birthday), I saw the game at Blockbuster for--wait for it-- only 6.99! Needless to say, I picked that up with the quickness for I loved the first two games.

I take it home and have fun with it, the characters, the gameplay, everything about it was captivating. It made me wonder why Blockbuster sold the game for so cheap. But at first, I had a ton of problems trying to beat the first parts of the game (especially McNeil's mansion which gave me the most trouble when I was younger), and ended up restarting it once I got to the lighthouse because I didn't know how to power it.

Once I restarted it, I stuck with it and eventually beat it and it became pretty much my favorite Playstation title so far. I had a lot of great memories of both playing it and from actual events that happened in the game. It remains my favorite RPG ever.

Playing Street Fighter III: 2i was somewhat of a love/hate thing for me at first. I loved the new, even deeper gameplay (that was improved from New Generation), but hated how I'd either get whooped by the AI or by other players. I stuck with the game, though, and became a bit better. My main characters were usually Sean and Ibuki, who coincidentally were found later on to be two of the best characters in the game.

Learning how to parry was somewhat of a milestone for me, especially since I was only 10 when I learned how to do it. I knew it was in NG too, but never really learned (mostly because I didn't get to play NG so much). I'll never forget the first time I parried a Hadoken using Sean. A few months later I'd go on to parry a full Shinku Hadoken out of reflex with Dudley. That blew me away.

It made me want to practice my parrying and combos even more, the same way SF2 and SFA make you wanna learn their respective systems. Needless to say, when SF3TS came out one-and-a-half years later, I was willing to try to learn the new characters, and later, how to kara throw (found out about kara throwing thanks to a Tips & Tricks issue from 2001 or so). Third Strike became one of my favorite SF games, and one of my favorite fighters period.

These are just a few of my best memories of playing Capcom's games. If anyone has any to share, feel free to. :) I'll add more of my own later.

-capcommunist

When Capcom put that five-word phrase onto the front of the American BoF3 box, they sure as heck weren't kidding.

Ah, Breath of Fire III. What can be said about it that hasn't been said already? Beginning development in late 1996/early 1997, this game marked a time in which Capcom's ingenuity in the RPG genre would pay off for once. BoFs I and II were severely underrated, but at least this one got its due as time went by.

Released in 1997 for Japan and 1998 for America, this RPG was notable for quite a few reasons, including:

-Lush graphics in which the characters were 2D and the backgrounds were 3D. Capcom made sure they could pack nearly every detail needed into every inch of the graphics.

-The Master System gave players a new way to train up their characters. Do you wanna sacrifice magic power for brute force, or will you take a more balanced approach? Want certain characters to learn certain moves? Apprentice them under different masters for tons of different options.

-The Dragon Gene system, which allows players to make all sorts of dragons each with their own stats and special attacks. This truly added kind of a curiosity element to the game.

But all this was bundled together with a deep story, great soundtrack, and awesome characters. Seriously, this time the saga of Ryu and his pals was truly a cut above the rest, especially for its time. Eschewing the standard "burning town, chosen one" story you can find in just about any other Japanese RPG, BoFIII told the story of Ryu and how he got through his hardships, figuring out more about himself and his clan (the Brood) over a number of years (all of the young characters become grown up about halfway through the game, after the fight between Ryu and Garr).

And what hardships! The game starts off with two guys talking in a mine, riding a mine cart. They find a baby dragon encased in a crystal (this turns out to be Ryu). The two guys, Gary and Mogu (you may recognize the name Mogu from the first BoF game, but this isn't the same one), use some dynamite to blow up the crystal. Ryu awakens, gets mad, and pretty much burns them to death while being controlled by the player. Ryu's only mission at this point is to escape the mine. As a cute, green baby dragon, no less.

After passing all sorts of scared miners (one even wets his pants as he mentions himself in the game), he ends up near the end of the mine, but ends up fighting a builder (at the player's control). Before he can use Whelp Breath to finish the builder off, somebody in the mine distracts him by yelling, and he's hit with a crane, caged, and put on the back of a train.

Outside, Ryu wiggles free of the train and he and the cage fall an indeterminate amount of feet to the ground. Rei, a Woren tribe warrior, finds Ryu naked in the forest. He carries Ryu back to his house, where his cohort, Teepo, lets him become a thief along with them. Ryu finds out his own name (and has a rather weird, elaborate prophetic dream), and the three go to start committing crimes.

One rather memorable crime they commit is when they try to mug someone on Yraall Road. Specifically, they have Ryu do it. Of course, he's reluctant to do it; however, Teepo pushes him out into the road from the bushes. Ryu stumbles and runs into Bunyan, a big, menacing lumberjack (who oddly enough looks like Hagrid from Harry Potter, or rather Hagrid looks like him). After a rather unsettling threat towards Ryu and his thieving buddies, Rei decides they'll pay Bunyan back for the threat, so they break into his house to get food. Once they get their spoils (a pack of beef jerky), all three hear the door opening. Rei, being somewhat scared, decides to check out what's going on.

A very funny yelp later ("BUHIIIIII!") Teepo and Ryu go up to check on Rei. Instant blackout. Total flipping darkness for two seconds. When Teepo and Ryu come to, they notice that they're tied up and that Rei's gone. Bunyan explains that he sent Rei to Mt. Glaus, and tells Ryu and Teepo to chop wood to pay off their debt and to "do some honest work for a change." After this, Teepo decides they'll go to Mt. Glaus to find Rei. This is one of my favorite parts of the game 'cause it definitely shows how long Capcom had to think about writing a great story, and how far they were going to go to write one.

Of course, just because I stopped listing hardships doesn't mean that there aren't way more of them. After going to Mt. Glaus they kill a Nue, a chimera-like creature and find out it was just trying to feed its babies. Ouch. There's also the part after this where they break into Mayor McNeil's mansion at the request of a cloaked fellow named Loki, which turns out really bad as they earn the distrust of all the villagers, and get stalked by these two crazy horsemen for a good chunk of the game.

Outside of the one part that I said was one of my favorites, I have a slew of others. Training a lanky bookkeeper named Beyd to fight a sailor named Zig to earn his childhood friend Shadis' hand was very memorable for me. Also, the Contest of Champions was well-done, and the fight between Ryu and Garr much later on before the time skip is another point of interest for me. If I rattled off every event I liked, this post would be far too long. :P

Aside from the story being on point, the characters are awesome too. You have Ryu, of course, who's of the Brood clan and basically a silent hero outside of having a few yells in battle (though he speaks in the game, it's not seen or heard by the player, yet the other characters react to what he's saying), and has a ton of dragon transformations. Rei, the thief from the Woren tribe who can turn into a Weretiger and has a will of steel, Teepo, the mysterious warrior whom actually is the basis of one of the best plot twists in the game, Nina, a cute little princess who's hankering for some adventure, and you meet other cool characters like Garr, Momo, and Peco throughout your adventure.

My favorite characters besides Ryu would have to be Nina, Garr, and Rei. Garr is my standout favorite because of what he was sent to do: kill Ryu. As one of the Four Guardians, it was his job to kill Ryu as Ryu is a member of the Brood (the Four Guardians specialized in killing the Brood). In a twist of delicious irony, Garr beats Ryu to near-death in the tournament, joins up with him to fight Balio and Sunder, and stays pretty much an MVP in your party for most of the game, then it gets to a certain point and he decides he wants to test Ryu's power (basically his own roundabout way of saying he's gonna kill him). Some circle of life, huh? Where's that song from The Lion King when ya need it?! :P

And yet another great point to the game is the gameplay. The new additions make the battles great. The new Dragon Gene system allows players to pick and match up to three genes to make any of a wide assortment of dragons. This keeps battle fresh and is actually quite useful at certain points of the game. And I just love the designs of the dragons, specifically Tiamat, which IMO is the coolest-looking one out of all of them. In addition to this, there's also the Master system, where one can apprentice any character under any of them and their stats raise or lower depending on the masters themselves. Characters can also gain new moves this way. This makes the game nearly infinitely replayable. The boss fights are just awesome. I remember the first time I fought the Dragon Zombie in the Dauna Mine. Good times.

The soundtrack is one of the best I've heard. There's a dichotomy of opinion as to whether the soundtrack is genius or it sucks, but I'm personally in the former camp. I love this game's music. The boss battle theme is one of the very best I've ever heard, and In The Morning, Nina's theme, is one of my favorite character theme songs ever. The whole soundtrack just sets the mood for the entire game.

All these things culminate to make Breath of Fire III my favorite RPG ever, and one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. I know when I'm bored or depressed, I pop this game in for a good time. It truly is the classic role-playing game.

-capcommunist