"Breath Of Fire took the wrong road"

Introduction
The most coming complaints about RPG are that the stories are cliche, and that the gameplay differs too little from other RPG games. That is why all RPG developers are desperately searching for ways to set their titles apart from others. And of course there's no shame in looking for ways. But far too often RPG developpers cast the "holy" basics aside, coming up with something completely diffrent. Occasionally a good title comes out from that, most mostly the result is "crap" with a capital "c".

Breath Of Fire - Dragon Quarter is such a title in which it went horribly wrong, with as result that it's the by far the worst game I ever played. A former friend of mine said I didn't give the game enough chances. Well, okay, I tried it multiple times, as I didn't want to be a loser without backbone, but the more I played it, the more I started to hate this game. And I tell you, I am a true RPG fan, and Breath of Fire is a series I always had a weak spot for. Therefore I was crying out loud that BOF-DQ insults the series so much.

How could DQ possibly go so wrong?

Read on....

Story
While the BOF stories were never something special (except for BOF3, maybe) they did their task in making BOF enjoyable. The BOF-DQ story didn't really catch on me, but I suppose it does its job. Ryu, a ranger goes with his collegue and friend Bosch on a routine job, and meets Nina. A girl who can't speak. Something is odd about Nina, and Ryu's employer wants to destroy her. The group Trinity has sent Rin (or Lin if you like) to protect Nina. Not really catching. Neither Ryu nor Nina nor Rin are catching characters. And the story. Seems more to me like a cat-and-mouse game. There are more games with a plot like that, so that's not really that badd, but if a game is bad, then at least you may hope that the story keeps you tied. Alas, it doesn't.

Gameplay
This is where BOF-DQ truely failed in any single way. The new battle engine does look promising and requires more of strategy than the previous BOFs did, and that could be good. In fact that could turn out very good. Alas it didn't turn out that way. To start with the fact that the strength between you and your enemies is out of balance. That wouldn't be a problem if you could get your hands on good healing items, since you have no healing spells. But too bad, even the most worthless healing item is a rare item. You need at least 50 hours of gameplay collecting money to be able to buy the cheapest item. No to mention that if you find weapons in dungeons that you need to identify them which also costs a lot of money. There are also no inns or other means of recovery, so that means that you must win at least 95% of all the battles without loosing HP or else you won't make it. The stuff you get is so rare that it simply won't suffice. Normally you could say that level boosting will back that up, but in BOF-DQ you can't. First the supply of enemies is simply too short for that, second, halfaway the game you will get the D-Counter, of which I'll get into detail later. Another setback is the savegame system. You can only save at savespots which are rare. then you also need save tokens which are even more rare. So it will seldom happen that you can save. You can save upon quitting the game, but that save will be deleted as soon as you resume playing. I don't need to mention how frustrated I was when I finally passed a certain section (with a lot of effort) and I couldn't save since I didn't have any save tokens. On top of that, a malfunctiion in my local power provider and the PS/2 naturally had no more power and went off. Result 5 hours of sweeting blood and tears were gone up into thin air. Capcom obviously never expected something silly like that could happen. I can understand you don't want people to save too often, but this is ridiculous!!!

Capcom also claims that when the monsters beat you that you can start over with your Experience points transferred into the new game. Well, that's a lie. No one single point is transferred, and you just start at level 1 again. Except for a few new doors to open or getting extra scenario, nothing noteworthy changes. I was really hoping that playing the game again, and again and again would make things more acceptable, but too bad, it didn't turn out that way.

D-Counter
The one who came up with something as stupid as this, really tempted me to do something horrible. In a certain stage of the game Ryu gets himself pocessed by a demon. The advantage of that is that Ryu can turn himself into a monster (what happend to the holy dragons?). The disadvantage is that you get the D-Counter. This is something that shouldn't be in an RPG in the first place. From the moment the D-Counter is activated, you'll be a 2% or 4%, every action Ryu takes will make the D-Counter to increase. You cannot make that value any lower. There are tricks to make it go slower. This D-Counter makes the frustration factor of this game even higher. As I said, every action Ryu takes increases the D-Counter, transforming Ryu will make this process even go faster. Once the D-Counter reaches 100% the game is over. In other words you now have a time limit to beat the game. Well, with the EXP you need to stand a chance against enemies, that will be next to impossible to reach, not to mention if you take the prices of items and stuff into consideration. The D-Counter goes really damn fast. I started at 4%, and did reach 10% in only 15 minutes. Since the dungeons are real mazes, it will be one damn hard job to reach the end without getting 100%.
Oh Capcom..... You really need to learn a lot.

Music
This is the only spot where DQ shines. The music is beautiful, I have to give them credit for that. But that's not enough to increase the rating I gave. For you see, I don't buy games for music. If I want good music, I'd buy and audio CD and not a game.

Graphics
The graphics are OK. They are cel-shaded, and I seem to be one of the few persons who like cel-shading. But it's not stunning, or disappointing. They're OK. That's all I can say about them.

Conclusion:
Capcom came up with a concept that could be wonderful, but which they ruined themselves horribly. Getting this game in a more balanced out difficulty and removing the D-Counter would have made this game far much better already. I am not a whiner who can't take hard games. But this game is more a frustration factor than enjoyable. If we look at the Grandia series and Wild Arms 4 which have new systems that do really set themselves apart from other RPG games, then we know that it IS possible to come up with something new that isn't completely screwed. So Capcom... Start over, and try it again to come with something new which is actually enjoyable. I know you can do it!

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/06