Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

"A Different RPG, a Drastically Different Breath of Fire"

The Breath of Fire series certainly has never been one of my favorites. I missed out on BoFI, but I played the next 3 installments. BoFII I found mediocre, BoFIII downright bad (it's one of my most-hated RPGs, as a matter of fact), but IV I found enjoyable and well-made, though not one of my favorites. Needless to say, I was wary of BoFV when it came out, and didn't get it until the summer, when the cost was down. My going through with the purchase was backed up mainly by reviews and comments from people saying it was drastically different from the preceding installments, and people like me, who find the BoF series to be not very good, saying that the game was a huge improvement over the others. And thus, I began to play BoFV. It certainly is different from most other RPGs, and incredibly different from the other BoF installments, but was overall very enjoyable

Story/Characters – 6

Definitely a weak point of the game. As far as characters, you have the 3 main ones, Ryu, Lin, and of course, Nina. And all three of them are, well, bland. The villains of the game (and there are a whole lot of them) clearly outshine the heroes in every possible way - character design, personality, dialogue, etc. Although not well-developed, the villains are certainly appealing, whereas the heroes, well, aren't.

The story, hmmm. It's mysterious, somewhat entrancing, and oddly alluring… but not very good. There's simply not enough to it, and it's not just because of the short length of the game (~25 hours). It can also be convoluted. There is something of a solution to this problem, though, which I will get to later.

The premise is basically your group of three people is living in a neo-apocalyptic, underground world (along with other people, rigidly stratified via a caste system and different “layered” towns), and are striving to get to the “sky” and clean air, so that Nina can survive. There's also the dragon aspect, seeing how this is a BoF game, of course.

Graphics/Visuals – 6

The graphics are cel-shaded, and get the job done, but aren't all that great. They're grainy at times, especially during cutscenes. The characters are done in a deformed, big-head, little-body style, and it really just depends on whether you mind this style or not. Character design is one of the flaws of BoFV, and as mentioned earlier, the villains look a whole lot better than the heroes do, although there's still a lot left to be desired. Monster design is pretty good, although there is a bit of palette-swapping to be seen, a pretty big no-no in my book. The locales are entirely underground, in mechanical, neo-apocalyptic settings, seeing as how that's the premise of the game. It's pretty hard to make varied, continually appealing mechanical settings like this, but somehow BoFV pulls it off.

Sound/Music – 9

There was a dream-team involved with this soundtrack, and it shows. Hitoshi Sakimoto composed, while Yasunori Mitsuda produced and offered advice. The result is a phenomenal soundtrack, very epic, and conveying the entire spectrum of moods from happy to tense to sad to angry. Tense, battle-ish, fast-paced songs make up the bulk of the tracks, though, seeing as how that's what most of the game consists of in gameplay and story.

Sound effects are nothing special, and there's no voice acting

Gameplay – 9

Here we go, this is what BoFV is all about; the gameplay. We have quite an interesting mix of genres here, although it is largely an RPG. However, included is a non-grid based Strategy-RPG battle system (for a change), and some survival horror elements. The entire game is set in one enormous underground, labyrinthine place. You are trying to escape this enormous underground, labyrinthine place by reaching the top, and the “sky”. You run through this huge dungeon, constantly avoiding monsters and/or fighting them. That is the survival horror element of the game, the fast-paced and “escape” nature of the game. This element is enhanced by the D-Counter, which appears on the top right of your screen and is constantly going up as long as your performing some sort of action. Once this reaches 100, game over. Don't worry, though, it really doesn't restrict you that much, and you will still have plenty of time to do whatever you want. However, there are certain attacks Ryu performs that increase the D-Counter dramatically. You should really only use these if necessary. There are no random encounters in the game, you can either engage the enemy by slashing your sword at them, or you can choose to do avoid them. Sometimes you can avoid, them sometimes you can't, but there are certain “trap” and distracting items you can get which will aid you in avoiding them. Battles are in the form of a non-grid based Strategy-RPG, as stated earlier. That is, battle are turn-based, you move to a certain point on the map, then perform an action. The battle system isn't very complicated, but it is very enjoyable, and has quite a bit of depth. One particularly noticeable aspect in my mind was the use of magic panels that Nina can cast throughout the map, which can allow you to cordon off certain areas to enemies, trap enemies between two panels, etc. It adds a whole new element of strategy to the battles and enhanced it a lot.

The “system” of the game is the SOL (Heh, don't you love the allusion?) system. The game is based on restarting. Sounds odd, I know, but it works. For the more you restart, the more of the story is exposed (as I was talking about earlier), and you can get access to more areas. You can also restart when you're in a situation you just can't escape from, which will probably happen to you at least once in the game, as it is quite challenging.

Overall – 7

It's a very fun game, and overall enjoyable, but it is hurt by a lacking story and characters, as well as some sub-par graphics. And though it might not be a great game, it is a good one. I definitely recommend the game, because even if you don't enjoy it (which I guarantee you will anyway), it needs to be experienced by every RPGer because of the radical new direction it takes the genre. That alone makes it great.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/03, Updated 08/23/05