Topic: Breath of Fire III PSP in the US PS Store

Is anyone here looking forward to it? I know I certainly am. I received the game for my original PlayStation back in 1998 as a gift for graduating high school. I bought the PSP version from Amazon.UK back in the mid 2000s and it remains one of the only reasons I still play my PSP. Now that it's being released on the US PS Store, I will be buying it on Tuesday. With the freedom to play it on my Vita TV, I cannot wait. Is anyone else looking forward to this wonderment of RPGness from an age gone by? I know I certainly am. Now if Namco would release the PSP version of Tales of Eternia that was also released in Europe, I would be even happier.

@SaiyanFury: I think this games been available for ages. If its the one were you start as a dragon and escape somewhere then meet up with a bunch of village thieves when you turn into a boy. its still fun but has aged really badly.

I suppose I should have been a little more clear, I'm speaking to the game being released in the US on the PS Store. I suppose it's a matter of a point of view. I've been playing the game for almost 20 years, so it doesn't look bad to me. I still appreciate the sprite-based animation, and it's still one of my favourite RPGs of all time. Quite frankly, I wish more RPGs were like this.

I will be picking this one up. I remember playing the first one and beatong it on SNES and enjoying it and I remember renting this one a few times and enjoying it as well. It would be nice to beat it for once.

Is this said to be a re-release of the psp version or it's own new game? I have found out on PSN that it wasn't labeled a PSP game at all...

@SiameseHappyDays: This is the North American release of the PSP version of the game that came out in Europe back in 2005. It's not immediately labelled as a PSP game, but rather a Vita game as they (Capcom) most likely view this game as being played more on the Vita than the PSP. I can vouch that it not only looks good on the Vita, but on Vita TV it looks blocky and has blurry textures. That is the nature of releasing a game that was originally designed for play on an SD system such as the original PS console. Trying to play it in 720p, on the Vita TV, it looks pixelated and textures are blurry. Play it on the Vita, it looks much better. It's available for only 10 dollars and will command around 70 hours of playtime, making it a great value in my book.

@themcnoisy: I disagree. A game designed to play on an SD console, doesn't actually age or look worse. What makes it look worse are different display technologies based around high resolutions. I can play my original copy from my original PS console on my 32" 1080p telly, on my PS2 with composite cables (Yellow, Red, White), and it looks just fine because it's at it's native resolution without being blown up to a larger resolution. As a small technical exercise, lets examine this. If you take a lower resolution picture, say in 640x480 pixels, as most SD games at the time were in, and try to expand it's viewplane onto an HDTV with 720 or 1080 resolution, it will look bad. It will overstretch the picture to fit the high resolution screen, and it will look like crud. Play that same game on a much smaller screen, or in it's native intended viewing format of an SDTV, it will look much better. My point is, it isn't that the game has 'aged badly' as you put it, but the nature of display technology has come to a point where trying to play an older game, looks worse on a display that wasn't designed to display it. On the smaller Vita screen, the game looks almost indifferential from it's original SD roots. Even coming from PSP, it looks fine, especially on my original Vita's OLED screen. Just a small explanation of the differences in technology. Sorry for the decidely longer post here.

@SaiyanFury: What I meant by that was this;

As I never played the game when I was younger (although I have played other BoF games) I picked it up last year on the store. The opening is brilliant but without the nostalgia it didn't blow me away once you get onto the main map. I had to turn to an online guide early on as I lost track of where I had to go. I can see its appeal but if you need a 16 bit jrpg - ff6, chrono trigger, shining force 2 and Zelda a link to the past are all much better.

I bought this, but I wanted to ask...

Which platform is this release? It's rectangular like PSP releases are, but it's not a PSP release? Is it just a PSN game then?

@JaxonH: Originally it was release on the PS, but was one of the RPGS that was buried under the river of other RPGs that came out that gen.

@Tasuki:
But this Vita version... it's not a "PSone Classic" or a "PSP Classic" right?

It's just a game released on PSN

@JaxonH: I believe it's a PSOne Classic. It hasn't been updated or remastered or anything like that.