I haven't played BoF1 or 2.
Like BoF4 (which I rated 6/10), I found this game to be a very average game, except this had a few things that knocked it down to below average. There were two instances of entertainment buzzkill -- getting the boat needing to do a few awful mini-games and crossing the Desert of Death (who in their right mind would think that people would enjoy spending a good 45 minutes doing almost nothing but pressing forward and watching your character walk across sand??? Not to mention the directions written down for you are wrong, which, by the time you realize it (assuming you went by them instead of what you were originally were told (I took a break from the game after entering the Desert, so had forgotten what I was told and referenced the note in the Tent), you've just completely wasted at least an hour of your time (thanks a bunch, translators))). An issue that won't come up very often since almost none of the battles last long enough, but the manual is wrong when it says status ailments will wear off after 5 turns -- Peco was paralyzed for at least 15 turns against a boss before I gave up waiting and cured him.
Except for a couple boss battles, the vast majority can simply be won by attacking and healing (I probably just had it on Charge for 80+% of them, even against some bosses), with bosses just needing some buffs at the beginning. Even for most of the boss battles, this is the best method. The times I tried to get fancy and turn Ryu into a dragon or use a bunch of magic, I ended up either losing or doing equivalent or less damage and just went back to boring old physical attacks & healing and ended up having no issues. Even against the end boss, I took out about 3/4 of its health without ever being in real danger, except for when it cast consecutive Holocausts, just physically attacking and using a bunch of healing items before I got bored and looked up a quick way to finish it off. The bosses tend to like beating their heads against a wall and casting magic that gets absorbed and/or avoided by items the characters have equipped.
I despise the 45 degree rotation that this game uses at all points. The party management system is awful. The only places you can change party members at is on the overworld map or in camp at the Diary only. You can only change the equipment of characters that are in your party. Buying new gear for your entire party is made tedious because you can't view whether the equipment in the shop can be equipped by members not in your party, meaning you have to leave town, switch out members, and go back into town, and since Ryu always has to be in the party, once you get the 6th member, you have to do this twice. Number of fish required to complete the game: 1. Number of fish caught: 1. That sums up my views on fishing mini-games.
I didn't really play around with the Masters since, other than using them for their stat enhancements, I didn't really find much use for what they taught (except getting some spells from the wizard one right near the beginning). And they all seemed to just need you to level up in order to advance in their training (which, IMO, was improved in BoF4 since you had to get progressively more of whatever the initial requirement was to advance). I did a little with the Fairies, but they never got to the point of having anything really useful, so I mostly ignored that aspect. Also, if there are combo spells (like in BoF4), I never pulled any off -- probably because I hardly ever needed to use spells other than healing ones.
I still did enjoy the game for the most part. I'm a big fan of the areas on the overworld (marked with an exclamation mark) with random encounters and a single item. I would definitely recommend BoF4 over BoF3 if asked. I'll stick with my view of BoF4 for BoF3: I wouldn't recommend playing BoF3, but I wouldn't recommend avoiding BoF3.
