"The only good thing social media has done is pressured games to implement dog petting."

-some rando on Twitter. Still true.

Here are all the games I beat in 2020 ranked from least favorite to favorite:

16. [Borderlands 3 DLC] Bounty of Blood
15. Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim
14. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
13. [Borderlands 3 DLC] Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot
12. Ys: Memories of Celceta
11. Phantom Brave: We Meet Again
10. [Borderlands 3 DLC] Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck
9. [Borderlands 3 DLC] Guns, Love, and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock
8. Helltaker
7. Final Fantasy V Advance
6. The Last Story
5. Sin & Punishment: Star Successor
4. Super Metroid
3. Xenoblade Chronicles
2. Shantae and the Seven Sirens
1. Spelunky 2

Welcome to the club! You'll have to tell me what you think when you're done.

You wanna borrow it?

I'd probably die of happiness if that happened. Sadly, it seems like Capcom doesn't give two shits about any of their IPs outside of Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom. I'm surprised Mega Man 11 even happened.

I dunno, I may take up the mantle of vault hunter again, who knows.

So, Breath of Fire III. Despite the upbeat soundtrack I mentioned before, there's some dark stuff going on there. The setting is a bit disjointed though. It's a fantasy setting but there's actual computers and high technology (not to the extent of FF7, for example) running around. Momo even uses a bazooka to fight. I guess the saving grace is that all the technology stuff is leftover from "The Techno Age."

As far as the story goes, well... I don't know if I'd be doing you any favors by going over too much of it, especially if you plan to play it yourself. I'd say that it feels like it's all over the place sometimes, and plot points that I thought might be important later turned out to be completely unimportant in the long run. And some stuff, in my opinion, just is not explained well at all.

The battle system is pretty good compared to the previous two, though I'll always rankle at game series that take away the fourth party member. Turn based, naturally. If a character's agility is high enough, they get an Ex Turn, which is pretty nice, especially during boss fights. One rather annoying aspect is the weight system, which you might remember from Breath of Fire IV. It works okay in that game since your characters only wear three pieces of gear. The weight system in III is pretty much identical, only that each character can wear up to six pieces of gear, and characters infrequently gain Agility during level ups. I found it tough to balance that out in the beginning stages, before finding Masters to augment their stats.

As far as the transformation system goes, the Dragon Gene thing is really robust. But that comes at a price. There are 18 different genes available to use, and you can mix any combination of up to three of them. Some are pretty obvious as to their functions (Fire, Thunder, etc etc). Others, not so much. There's one called the ??? Gene, it's symbol is (?), and the description is "Mystery effect ... ???" There's an Unstable Gene which has the same description but does something different. The sheer number of combinations means you can pretty much make any type of dragon transformation you want, but unless you use a guide, it's going to require a LOT of trial & error to figure out what combinations work best and which ones just end up yielding a Whelp transformation. The game does keep track of the most recent combos, and you can save a few combos you like, which helps.

Also of note, the Skill learning system is present in III as well. But, it's nowhere near as convenient as it is in Breath of Fire IV. If you recall, in IV, all you had to do was defend with a character and there's a chance they'd learn any learnable enemy skill. And, the enemy inspection and Skill name window would highlight any learnable Skill in blue, so you'd know if you were wasting your time or not. In III, there are still many learnable enemy Skills, however, there's no way of knowing which ones are which (again, unless you use a guide). Also, you have to have a character observe a specific enemy in the hopes they'll use a skill you want, rather than defending and having access to any enemy wielding skills in combat, so your characters are essentially left open to attack when you're hoping to learn new Skills.

So overall, what are my thoughts?
Plot & Setting - kinda all over, but specific links to the first two games are nice.
Combat system - fine, for the most part, minus a few hiccups.
Controls - very customizable, which is nice.
Transformation system - robust, but lacking in explanation.
The opinion on the matter: This game is enjoyable but flawed. I would definitely recommend a playthrough, of course. But I think the QoL improvements and more focused story of IV make it a better title overall than III.

Hm, I guess that makes sense. I suppose that one line from EvoLukas just didn't register with me, or got forgotten about with the big emotional payoff followed by the Tower and BIGGER NUMBERS. But it would explain why C'tron was surprised Lea knew the sign for stars...

Been watching some streams of Spelunky 2, and it looks quite a bit harder to my eye than the first game. Good luck navigating those ruins.

I definitely need to thank you for it. I probably would have let the game sail past my radar and not given it a chance without the gifting, and having done so I can definitely see why you were singing its praises.

One: 5-0 of course, always winning! But really...I don't know how. The first two dungeons I must have barely come in under the wire, I got so turned around in some of the puzzles. But I guess I could wrap my head around the shock/wave gimmicks a lot easier, I had a better time in those.

Two: Um, should I? I had been getting "secretly evil" vibes off him for a bit but then he just left the plot only to show up post-credits referencing something that I couldn't remember. It seems there's still stuff being added to the game, is this supposed to be a tease for the future?

Evan, AKA Dethevans, AKA St Eva. AKA defeated. I apparently got the good ending too, so go me.

So far, Breath of Fire III has a much cheerier tone, overall. Even the music that's supposed to convey sinister or dark situation has a somewhat upbeat sound to it.