To get through the desert in Breath of Fire 3, remeber these key points:

1) Only walk at night, and camp during the day. This recovers your HP and MP and conserves water.

2) When you get a message telling you to drink water, take about 15 steps, then drink ONCE.

3) When coming out of a battle area, always check which way you are facing before starting to walk again.

Also, the last dragon gene can be used and controled by combining it with the Radience and Trance genes. However, I found it was not worth the MP cost.

Erich Mende
Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Chimerasame:
As far as I know, this is good advice. Another person, Ryonin Zero, suggests to "wait until the fourth red flash" before drinking. I'm not sure if that might be related to taking 15 steps or not, but it's concievable the two could coincide.

And as long as we're quoting Goodkind... Verification of the truth of the words of the Book of Counted Shadows, if spoken by another, rather than read by the one who commands the boxes, can only be insured by the use of a Confessor...

It's been AGES since I've written to RPGamer's letters section...go figure. Anyway, I wanted to rant about the WonderSwan FF games Square is proudly showing off. Yeah, it's great that they're finally remaking FF games the right way (not just cheaply tacking on FMV like with FF Anthology). However, I think that their fascination with WonderSwan color is like a joke that's just not funny. WonderSwan color is supposedly able to display 241 simultaneous colors while GBA can display 65,536. Doesn't take a math whiz to figure out which is better.

Yeah, it's swell that FF1, 2, and 3 will be upgraded to FF4-ish capacity, but wouldn't it have been even more impressive to make them all above and beyond the 2D graphics found in FF6? Why wouldn't Square want to take advantage of GBA's power? Does Sony have Square on a tight leash and supposedly draws them away from the big handheld competition at Nintendo. I DON'T KNOW!!! All I know is that if Square doesn't develop for GBA, many other companies will...and those companies will be the ones on top in the handheld industry...not Square. But how long can they remake titles (FF1, 2, 3, Seiken 2) or make cheap offshoots (Working Chocobo) for a handheld only slightly more powerful than Neo Geo Pocket Color?

-Steve

Chimerasame:
Your name is Steeeve....
Ahem. Never mind that. As far as the points you bring up, they're valid, I think. However, they may not be particularly important. Look at the Playstation. Personally, I bought a PSX in order to play Final Fantasy VII, and I know I'm not alone in that. It's quite possible that the very fact that Square is making these games for the WonderSwan will help the system out quite a bit. Why they're not using the GBA, I don't know. Perhaps there's a limit to how much resources they want to devote to the remakes.. and coding something to take full advantage of the GBA would be more labor-intensive and not really worth it, compared with coding something to take full advantage of the WSC. That's just a theory, of course. As far as 'how long can they remake titles,' etc., I think Square can easily survive on the large amount of completely new games they make every year, and as long as they don't actually lose money on remakes, there's not much reason not to do them.

Hi,

Can you help me?

I can only buy one of theses games and i want your advises about them. Parisite eve 2 and Valkyrie Profile. Which one i should get if i want to play a real RPG. I hope you'll answer it.

thanks,
wolfbane

Chimerasame:
From what I hear...
Googleshng:
VALKYRIE PROFILE
VALKYRIE PROFILE
VALKYRIE PROFILE
VALKYRIE PROFILE
Chimerasame:
From everything I've heard about both games, I agree. Though, the first PE does look rather intriguing, and I intend to play it at some point, I haven't heard much good about the second. VP, on the other hand, has an innovative plot premise, innovative battle structure.. and GOOD-innovative, too, unlike a certain unnamed magic system that wasn't very entertaining, partially because it made sitting there in a battle drawing and drawing spells without actually fighting beneficial. But that's another story.

Finally! An RPGamer staffer who plays PC RPG's! Planescape: Torment has a plot deeper than that of Xenogears, Chrono Cross, or any Final Fantasy game. Hopefully it'll get the credit it deserves, because it's probably in the top 3 RPG's of all time, console or otherwise. Anyways, my question is: do you foresee a bigger future for non-Japanese RPG's, considering the quality of Planescape, Baldur's Gate 2, Diablo 2, etc?

Y'bhan Dari

Chimerasame:
I must admit I haven't played THAT many PC RPGs. There's Torment, and there are the Might And Magic games 3-6. Playing 4 and 5 together was really amazing somehow... if you install World of Xeen from the anthology, the world of those two merge and you can carry your party between the two games... and in spite of the fact that I was used to better graphics, sound, and story, it was one (two?) of the most entertaining games I've played.

As far as your question, my answer is Yes. Developers are springing up all over. Tons of people enjoy massive multiplayer RPGs not made by Japanese companies (or less-massive ones such as Diablo II, which you mentioned.) For a while at least, the major forces among console RPGs will remain located in Japan (Square, Enix, etc.), but as time passes, newer companies and developing teams (most of which will be based elsewhere) will surely gain popularity. I, for one, hope to make a wonderful game, though at my current rate of progress it won't be out for another fifty years. :)

I've noticed a bit of a pattern in Square's Final Fantasy games. FF1-3 were on NES, FF4-6 were on SNES, FF7-9 are on PSX, and FF10 and 11 will be on PS2. Given this data, does it make sense to assume that FF12 will also be on PS2, and FF13-15 will be on another platform, perhaps by a manufacturer other than Sony? Could this mean that Square will jump to Sega? or perhaps even Microsoft?

--
Chip Marshall <chip@chocobo.cx> http://www.chocobo.cx/chip/ Finger for PGP GCM/CS d+(-) s+:++ a18>? C++ UB++++$ P+++$ L- E--- W++ N+@ o K- w O M+ V-- PS PE Y? PGP++ t+@ 5 X R>+ tv+() b++>+++ DI++++ D(-) G++ e>++ h!>++ r-- y-

Chimerasame:
I've noticed that pattern before too, but it's not much to go by yet. Back before the PSX, I had a theory that Square wouldn't translate prime FF games. We got 1, then we didn't get 2 and 3. 4's not prime, so it came over, but 5 was, so it stayed. And we got 6. However, 7 broke the rule by being translated in spite of being prime, then they went back and translated 5, and now they might translate 2 and 3 as well. There goes that theory.

I don't know if Square's going to jump to anything, though I wouldn't be surprised at all if they start doing multi-platform releases. I don't know how different the machine language is for the various systems, so I'm not sure how easy it is to release a game, say, for both the PS2 and the X-Box. But it couldn't be too difficult, and would almost surely bring in a substantial number of sales.

Chimerasame:
I got a number of letters on this subject, and I'm sorry I can't print more of them. Since this is theoretically an RPG column, I figured it'd be best to limit this discussion to just one letter. I will offer some commentary about what some other people said, however.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure I'd play with 99 white balls, and I might play with fewer, though I'm not sure. I might come into $10 million some other way, you never know. ;>

Every since watching M:I2, I pronounce your name Ki(as in kite)-mare-ra sah-may. Just to let you know.

The Last Laugh:

Well, I suppose I mentioned before the strange situation regarding tomorrow. Yep, yep, it is strange, it is. Since it won't necessarily be me, I'll have to avoid bringing up some weird new philosophical topic for you to respond to. This column has seen a dearth of weird funny links/images/text files, however, so I'll throw in a gratuitous plug for The Sev Wide Seb, the biggest part of which is weekly comic strips parodying Star Trek and other sci-fi productions. Weird how, even though I love Star Trek, stuff making fun of it is hilarious. :)

In case I don't see you again, at least for a while, <Dr. Nick>Bye, everybody!</Dr. Nick>

Chimerasame