"Who says you can't teach a series new tricks?"

Ever since the original Breath of Fire released in 1993 by Capcom (and published by Squaresoft here in the states,) the series as undertaken an extremely bumpy road on the path of stardom. Often neglected or most oftenly noted, compared to Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire is simply just frowned down upon by the general fans in the US gaming market. However, despite all of these set-backs, the series continued to expand: Breath of Fire in 1994, Breath of Fire 3 in 1997, and Breath of fire 4 in 1999. With each new installment, the series seemed to become more popular, focusing on the theme of dragons. This now leads us to the latest game released: Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter.

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| Story - 8/10 |
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Centuries ago a disaster struck the surface and destruction rained from the skies, forcing the inhabitants of the earth underground in order to survive. The sky has become a mere fairy tale and no one is quite sure what the actual word means.

It is in this world that our hero, Ryu 1/8192, a low ranking ranger grunt, lives. Eventually, after certain events, Ryu is driven to protect and help a mute, winged girl named Nina.

Basically, that's the gist of the story and I will comment more on this. I love the theme of the game and it fits in with the environment. While it may seem simple first play through the game, it is not so. When I played this and beat it first time around, I was kind of disappointed with the overall story being confusing and vague... HOWEVER, after starting over and seeing the SOL scenes, I am becoming more and more impressed with the depth of the plot.

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| Gameplay - 9/10 |
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Most importantly is the game play. Get used to it, because you'll be doing it ALOT. Although, unlike most games where the game play gets exceedingly boring such as the typical menu-driven battles where all you do is just push the attack button and go make a sandwich, or whatever you people do while waiting for the characters to attack, Breath of Fire: DQ sports quite an innovative battle sytem.

Gone are the days of randomly encountered battles. Now DQ allows you the pleasure of seeing the enemy on the field and employ a variety of traps. With these traps, you can damageenemies before they attack you, or use them to draw enemies aside so you can run away. Alot of things can be done with traps, it's good to experiment!

When you fight in this game, you must manage your AP in order to successfully complete any action. That is the most important aspect of the battles: AP. When you move around in the battles, you consume AP to walk and when you use one of your attacks, it also costs AP.
There are three different levels of your attacks: 10 AP attacks, 20 AP attacks, and 30 AP attacks. Obviously the higher the AP cost, the stronger the attack. You can link these together during battle and create tons of damage depending on your input.

There is no curative magic nor any inns in this game. You must rely on healing items you buy at the item shop to preserve your life. Not only does this make it more difficult, it also may make it more frustrating half of the time. This may also be because zenny is sacre and your backpack space little. (10 slots at the beginning.) However, with good management, this will become more and more easier to deal with. Especially when you get alot of the appraisable items; you can sell them off for zenny.

Saving is also a problem, seeing as you have a limited amount of ''save tokens'' which you use at Telecorders to hard save your game. temp save is also available, but it is deleted after you load it.

Besides that, the ''minigame'' of this game is the ant colony, which is similar to the faerie colony of 3 and 4. Here, you hire ants and have them do a variety of things to make a little village. You can build skill shops and character shops, plus even have a few other things. You also can make lots of profit off of this, so play around with it.

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| Graphics 8/10 |
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Graphics are all right, but I have some complaints about the sometimes pixelated appearance of the characters at times. They aren't exactly the best, best, but I would say they are beautiful and fit the atmosphere of the game. The graphics in the introduction movie of the game are spectacular! I expected no less from Capcom. One of the most impressive thing about the graphics to me is that the models look just like their designs.

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| Music - 9/10 |
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The only reason I give this a 9 is because some of the sound effects aren't that great. However, this game has an AWESOME soundtrack. Composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, who had work with the Final Fantasy Tactics OST, Legaia: Duel Saga and Vagrant Story, to name a few. I will have to say he has done a very good job at creating the perfect music for the atmosphere in this game. Each of the battle themes are appropriate and bring out the mood of the moment, as do some of the area themes.

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| Replay - 9/10 |
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The replay in this game is high seeing as you are MEANT to play this game over several times. You have many options of what to do in this game seeing as you get sort of a ''new game+'' kind of feature. This is the beauty of the SOL (Scenario overlay) system. You can unlock new scenes to piece the story together and carry over party EXP and appraised items to a new game. However, items can be saved by lockering them and your ant colony will stay intact, allowing you to further build onto it.

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All in all, a decent game. However, if you are NOT a fan of difficult RPGs, or dungeon crawlers, I suggest you rent this in order to see if you would like it or not. Hardcore BOF fans I suggest to buy it, or for anyone who enjoys a challenging game with tons of replay.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/03, Updated 02/24/03