This is my all-time favorite JRPG (out of a sizable sample of JRPGs, at that). FIrst and foremost is the story, followed by the mechanics, animations, and the music. It is a crying shame that this game got next to no attention, due to it releasing two months after the release of the PS2. And then the series was murdered by the release of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (not a terrible game, apparently, just very difficult to get into, and a drastic departure from the previous games in nearly every way: it should have been treated as a spinoff, not a sequel.) The story, themes, and character writing are head and shoulders above every other JRPG from the PSX era, hands down. There is still a bit of jank here and there, however, this is a clear example of a developer putting all the lessons learned about a particular console system over its lifetime into a game in order to wring out every last drop of quality they could. I believe the choice of using a 3D environment and 2D character sprites led to a far better looking game than the choice of many of its contemporaries (e.g. FF7-9, The Legend of Dragoon, etc.) to use 2D pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D character models, and Capcom was still at the top of its game with sprite art, despite BoF clearly being far from one of its flagship series, e.g. Street Fighter, Megaman, Resident Evil, etc.
