"One of the few game series that constantly evolves and improves with time"

The breath of fire games usually follow a pretty similar formula; it's always the story of Ryu the dragon and Nina the princess, and basically, the tale of their quest of be together and find the truth behind their existence. This instalment is no different in this respect, however, if makes some noticeable differences to previous games in the series.

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Storyline (7/10)
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This time round, the story takes place underground, after humans shut themselves away down there. Ryu is a ranger, who's job it is to basically seek out and kill the monsters in the surrounding areas. After the terrorist group Trinity attack the train Ryu's on, he soon meets up with Nina. Soon after he meets up with Lin, a member of Trinity, who goes along to protect Nina. Essentially, after this point the goal is to climb up 1000m and make it to the ground above in order to stop Nina dying, as the air is too polluted for her to survive.

The game takes a lot of twists throughout and sometimes can be a little confusing, however, it's an extremely well thought out plot, and really makes the game worthwhile. The Scenario Overlay System also gives you reasons to replay the game, as depending on your D-Ratio, you'll see different pieces of the storyline and cutscenes, which unfortunately makes the game a little confusing first time through. The angst between Bosch and Ryu is a bit cliche, but at times it works really well and it's interesting to see how their ‘feud' evolves, and also Bosch's past.

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Gameplay (9/10)
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The new battle system is a huge change from previous titles in the series, and is something that most fans seem split on. Personally, I found it a little difficult to use and master at first, but with a lot of practice, I started to find it pretty easy. It makes the battles a lot more interesting than they are in most RPGs, and means that as the player you have to employ strategy quite often. Also, trying to find the best combination of skills for each character is quite tricky, especially when some of the stronger weapons come with skills already in place that cannot be removed, and some prevent the adding of further skills to the weapon.

Although it still feels like you're just running around a dungeon, due the fact you're actually given a conscious goal, and you're also conscious of the fact you're getting closer to the top with every climb of a ladder, makes them feel worthwhile. There's also a lot of optional side bits to the dungeons, which you can choose to do or don't, but if you do you'll most likely get a lot of party XP. This is something I find quite handy, as you can quickly level your party members up at the beginning of the game using it, which makes killing the monsters there that bit easier until you get some actual weaponry and decent skills. I really liked the addition of this, and it's also necessary to save a lot up if you're going to do the optional dungeon; Kokon Horay. In order to get there, you have to use this game's rendition of the fairy colony, where there are fairies, but this time you control ants, and basically order them around to make shops and banks etc. Eventually you'll come across Kokon Horay, which is a dungeon where you will have to begin from level one, and try to beat 100 floors of enemies of varying difficulties. This is why you need to save Party XP, as without it, this is literally impossible, and even with it, it's incredibly hard, and in all honesty, is probably one of the most difficult dungeons ever to be in a game.

The last thing I'll mention is the D-Counter. A LOT of people complained about this, as it is always increasing and when it reaches 100% you automatically die. HOWEVER, the counter rises incredibly slowly, and only goes up by a significant amount when the player makes Ryu turn into his dragon form. This limits the amounts of times the player can use the hugely powerful form, and thus stops the game being so easy and gives the player a judgement call about whether they should use it or not. If played through sensibly, no player should really have any difficulty with it; on my first play through I made it to the last five bosses with only 30% on my D-Counter, and thus just D-Dived for them. That's how it's supposed to be used, and that's why it's a great system in my opinion.

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Graphics (6/10)
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The game uses cel shading, which I'm not the biggest fan of, but they work sufficiently well here. However, while some of the environments look really good, a lot of them tend to look quite bland. The enemies aren't all that interesting to look at for the most part, except some of the bosses. The main characters themselves look good though, and there's a decent amount of detail on them.

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Sounds (6/10)
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I don't really recall any of the music from this game, which is a shame, because to this day I still remember songs from Breath Of Fire III. The one thing I do remember is that some of the battle sound effects became quite annoying, however, I liked that they kept Lin's Japanese voice for the battles. Other than that, there wasn't much else in terms of sound, as other than in battle there was no voice acting.

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Summary (7/10)
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Even though the graphics and sounds effects were a little bland, in some ways I can't say I'm surprised, I'm not sure how big a budget this game received but my guess is that it wasn't as big as other games receive. The game itself has one of the better storylines that games have delivered in recent times. The game's not easy but it's not stupidly difficult either, and I have to say, people's criticism of the D-Counter is completely unfair, as it doesn't rise up quickly enough to really put any kind of time constraint on the game. It's also one of the few games that gives a decent reason to play the game through again; to see new storyline snippets and to increase your D-Ratio; thus opening up new side dungeons.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/07