Breath of Fire

"Capcom starts a roleplaying series! The first one had it's rough sides though ..."

Ah, Capcom ... my favorite gaming company. With all the great fighting games out there they go and try to prove that they can also make roleplaying games as well. Well, it turns out they can make some damn good ones :P Let's start the review shall we?

Graphics: 7/10

-The graphics, for the first BoF were ... average. The map looked pretty dumb, because the characters were so big, and the world/towns/ect were small. Still the map it's self did look pretty good, just not as near as good as BoF II. Oh well. The characters looked very nice, and so did the enemies. The backgrounds in battles look pretty
good, but they're could have been more types of them ... Overall, the graphics didn't suck, but they weren't anything eye poping, either.

Sound: 8/10

-The sound was pretty good actually. Let's just say it had more good tunes than bad, but the bad ones take it down to an 8. The battle music was good, and most of the town music was decent enough to not have to hit the MUTE button on your tv. I really dug a few of the song's. I reallly hated a few of em too, thus the score garnering an 8.

Story: 9/10

-The story was very good. I don't spoil em, as I've always stated but it starts out as Ryu is a member of a dragon clan (like all the BoF's) and he's fighting against the evil Zog, and many other's. People come in early in the game from Zog to kill his people, but he gets by. It's a very good story with good/but not great character development. It's really cool how Capcom has always kept the story pretty similar in all of the Breath of Fire's yet they're always different in a way, and well done.

Gameplay: 7/10

-Um ... the gameplay is again average. This WAS Capcom's first RPG so a 7 isn't that bad. Battles can drag on, and the mini games in this one were quite boring and not well done like the next one's in the series, but hey, you have to start somewhere. This game makes you level up quite a bit until the end, like any RPG, except one you can't find out when your next level is (I think) and the menu isn't very ... great. It wasn't bare bones, but it wasn't excellent either. But really, this was THE FIRST and I understand if Capcom was just working the sticks and stones for there RPG series's gameplay. But this game really has no replay value at all. You play it once, and that's really enough. Number two ... well, that's another review eh :P

Overall: 8/10

Conclusion: This was the first game in the series which IMO is starting to rival Squaresoft's Final Fantasy series and Enix's Dragon Quest series. Breath of Fire is huge in Japan and decently popular in America. This game had it's up's and down's but definitly more up's. And for being the first of the series it's quite impressive. I say if your a fan of roleplaying games in general and want to try the BoF series from the start than BY ANY MEANS do it. Number II is really a gem (which I'll be reviewing ASAP). It won't make you say WOW in any way except the story but you'll want to play it just for the point of it's the first in the series and in the BoF series it's good to know what happened from the first title to the last.

Recommended

E-mail me: paulwolfstien@aol.com for questions.

-PW

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/18/00, Updated 10/18/00