Breath of Fire II

"This was Capcom back in its low-budget, art-house days, you understand."

American gamers are a strange breed. Somehow, no matter how cool the games that get translated and sent over here are, it's always: ''Japan's games are cooler, they have more features, better stories, etc.'' Then Xenogears comes out and proves them partly right: Japanese games DO have better stories. In fact, in many cases they're ALL story, as the infamous Disk two proves. Well, BOF2 was the Super Nintendo equivalent of Xenogears, except that Capcom released and translated it instead of Square. This was probably the best thing that ever happened to the game, and I'll describe it right after going through the

GRAPHICS: Enemies DO move in this one! And rather than the deformed midgets that Square got us to love, your characters tend toward actual human proportions! (Your human characters are the only ones who do this, though. Actually, there's a total of ONE human character in your party, but for crying out loud, it's the principle of the thing!) In any case, the 3/4 view allows for a variety of expressions and animations(have some fun watching Katt's ears and tail twitch!) Dungeons in the game are generally diverse(none of the cookie-cutter backgrounds of, say, Lufia 2) and the spell animations are done quite well, although IMHO we could have used a LITTLE more diversity in the dragon transformations! Ya done palette swapping yet? Oh, and Barubary the scorpion dude virtually DEFINES what an evil last boss should look like-ugly, convoluted, very animated, and so huge he can barely fit on the screen-and he isn't even the last boss! Suffice to say that the graphics are among the best of the SNES RPGs. Imagine something almost as detailed as one of FF3's enemies and almost as animated as one of CT's enemies and you have a good picture of it.

MUSic: BAAAAD dungeon music! BAAAAAAAAD dungeon music! Okay, the mountain theme is somewhat okay, but otherwise...BAAAAAAAAAAAAD dungeon music. Think Jaws, only less frightening and more annoying. Actually, the entire musical score of this game is something of a step down from its predecessor(a common malady of sequels.) The varied town music of the last game is narrowed down to one standard lilting tune, the changes in the overworld and battle music, although still progressing well and much better in the second half of the game(again,) are not nearly as great as the original, and the one perhaps really good tune is only played in a small grove before you go down to face the final dungeon. Though the music isn't absolutely horrid, it lags behind compared to its predecessor. For those of you who remember the original, you KNOW what a shame THAT is...

STORY: Although it lags a bit after a really, really awesome opening, the result is just what Japanese stories are supposed to be known for: Pure, no-holds-barred, badly-formatted, directly translated and uncensored(I assume) story text! You all wanted an ''unedited Japanese story,'' kids, and it's all here! The royal intrigue of monkeys! The sexual competition of cat-people! Overt and nonsensical religious symbolism! The sacrifices of bird-people! Sexual innuendo! Toilet humor! Impertinent fish chefs! An inexplicably evil church! And, most importantly, ACTUAL BLOOD ON SOMEONE'S FACE at the very end. Despite all this, the story still actually manages to be very, very, good in a hard, gritty sort of way. Yep, this is one of those games that teaches a few good life's lessons, number one being to leave the Catholic church and go pray to a dragon idol in your backyard. Number two, believe in friendship and you will be saved. But only if your friends can wield a good blade or cast a strong spell, otherwise, they ain't worth hanging around the ''hero clique.'' Number three, it never pays to talk to shady characters unless you're armed for the eventuality of them getting mad and turning into a demon. Although I don't know, the occultists who fantasize about the third prospect have to, according to the game, actually JOIN AND FINANCE THE CHURCH before they get the ability to turn to/from demon form at will. So the game pretty much alienates both the occultists and the Catholics with that paradox. But if you don't like demons in general, the solution is simple: just stay away from churches and pretty much any human(oid) being. In reccommending this, the game warmed up to its core constituency, the one that's been supporting this industry all along: Teenage loner gamers with no social life!

GAMEPLAY: The aforesaid loners got some nice tweaks to that supposedly invincible Square model. Number one, there are no attacks that do damage in the thousands range. You'll be leaping for joy if you get a ratio as big as 200 dmg per attack in the last stages of the game. This is because no one can go over 999 HP, as opposed the the 9999 more common to Square. You who like the four-digit damage ratios can just go home and sulk. Number two, your dragon transformations have gone from being incredibly strong battle-winners to the equivalent of single-shot mega-spells. Unfortunately, one of these spells takes away ALL your remaining AP(there was no reason to switch AP for MP, this is just a ''thing'' that the Capcom artsy troupe did to try to differentiate themselves from ''traditional'' RPGs)The result of this is depressingly predictable: if you want your dragon to do any appreciable damage, you blatantly resist the urge to use your hero's healing spells all throughout the LOOONG and tedious dungeons. Oh yes, the relatively high encounter rate from BOF is back, although you can now see just exactly how high your rate is in your particular area by checking the little dancing monster thingy on the subscreen. UNfortunately, despite this high encounter rate, gaining of levels and enough gold to buy yourself that new sword you always wanted is frustratingly slow. Not quite Enix-slow, but slow nonetheless. However, my title for this section still remains in all caps because of the numerous, splendiferous, poke-in-every-cranny-and-toss-grenades-down-them-too side quests. Most center around that nice town you get to build later in the game, but you can also hunt, fish, visit the traveling carnival, donate money to the deity of your choice, and search for little hidden abilities that make the replay all worthwhile. Unlike Enix, which tends to take one real NEW idea and do it badly and/or repetitively, this game does LOTS of new ideas in an average, if not completely great, fashion. This prediliction for trying new things, interspersed with nice unique story events just when they're needed to relieve the boredom of hacking through another dungeon, and the way the plot will sometimes take dramatic twists on you, still make playing through this game fun. It's that oddly compelling(as long as you tough out the famous lagging first half.) So go ahead and give this game a try. One particularly rabid fanboy has made a 294K FAQ detailing things as minute as HOW THE GAME REDRAWS ITS MAPS, so if you're still confused after reading it, go play FF5 or something that you can finish in a month. BOF2 is challenging and lacks the polish of Square, but it edges itself into the ''SNES classic RPG ''library by a nose anyway.

Nintendo logic:
Poor Jean. Just when enough gamers had progressed far enough into the game to find his MAJORLY COOL second form that totally annihilated anyone in his path, Square AND Enix released CT and the fat n'happy French frog who would willingly lay down his life for his friends was replaced in gamer's minds by FROG, whose middle English, vengeful quest, and gigantic sword put to rest any earlier frog-myths that may have developed around Jean. Heck, Square might not be original, but their they can turn bad ideas into good, or at least marketable, ones like nobody's business.

When Sten said: ''This monkey's gonna give you a spanking, Shupkay!'' please note that that word usage was probably intentional and not how the original Japanese went.

Spar...Spark...SPOCK! Random word association works wonders!

I liked Bow better when his name only had two letters.

Rand kicks ass.

Put Katt or Bleu at the head of your party. Now walk downward. Those sets of two undulating pixels were also probably intentional.

Nina has some serious family problems.

''This game uses the word ''God'' as much as humanly possible.''

-ToastyFrog

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/01, Updated 01/03/01