Breath of Fire

"A high quality review consistent w/my others, now for Breath of Fire!!!!!"

(you might want to read the last part of the review 1st, because I explain how my review and ratings system works in that section. That section is clearly marked w/a ''***'')

Snippet: Breath of Fire is an RPE with a considerably higher level of dragon-based theme than most. In fact, you can turn into many different dragons (in battle) after you train for these abilities. You are a man from the Dragon Clan fighting the Dark Dragons. Your allies, found as you quest, include personified wolf, winged-woman, a personified mole, and even humans! You are also searching for your sister, whom the Dark Dragons may have captured in the opening scene.

Graphics/Animation: 5.5
Few backgrounds were detailed. Enemies, characters, etc. looked ok, not as much detail as Lufia enemies, but probably the best part about BOF was the animation. Enemies typically had 2-3 frames when not attacking, and another 2 or so for their attacks. I appreciated seeing the animations. There were also a few scenes where you see someone close up (''cut scenes'', i suppose you can call them). But there weren't too many of them. I did like the mid-battle cut scenes when you turn into a powerful dragon, though. It was nice to see a close up version of your dragon.

Story: 5
The overall story is ok. It really didn't stand out as especially well-written or very poor. There were some innovative elements, that did keep the story rating from going to below average (see innovation category). Also note that most characters in towns speak w/one sentence or two, as is common in early RPEs like Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior. That didn't help advance the story too well, particularly since they were focused on the present quest and not the big picture. I know of no other RPE that had so many towns w/o story connections except for a few references to other towns for quest items and occasional talk about the Dark Dragons. One of my biggest gripes is that in many situations there would be several different people in town that say the exact same thing, which many of the oldest RPEs, like FF and DW, did not do so much of.

Music: 6.6 (music range 5.7-7.3)

Many tracks in the 7 range. This is impressive. There were about 5 or 6 different town musics, plus 2 different shop musics. There were 3 overworld musics, various area musics, etc. So, much variety, and it was all good. I'm not sure how to describe the music as far as the type of synthesizers or sampling used. Perhaps horns are the closest example for some overworld music. Only complaint is that no musics were great, so i'd not quite be willing to buy the soundtrack.

Play Control: 5

Characters did respond quickly to the push of a button, but there were some problems. You walk kind of slowly, and have no way to dash. This makes things slow. They do allow you to warp to towns you've been to, and when you get the flight ability, you can turn into a bird at the press of a button and carry your party around the world. None of that ''I have to walk back to my airship'' tediousness, as in the final fantasies. The same holds true for being under water. But, and correct me if i'm wrong, if you do have the person in the lead that can allow the party to fly and you search an area for hidden items, you'll fly instead of search. This caused me to miss an item and i had to resort to a strategy guide to get it. Battle commands were good, and i really liked it that if you cast a defensive spell, it takes priority in the round over all other turns by both your party members and the enemy. And the auto-battle command made many battles quick and efficient. Autobattle has your characters all just fight, though not super-fast like they did in Destiny of an Emperor. Here you see each individual attack.
If you do not use the a-b command, then you must every time choose what you want your characters to do, since there is no memory that lets them do what you last had the button on. Hunting and other abilities allowed for more control in the overworld, which also helps keep this rating from going too low.
The amount of random encounters is moderately high, as is the case in Lufia, however you can adjust this by purchasing mrble3 items. These temporarily reduce random encounters to nothing. These are very cheap items to buy, so stock up as much as you need. It would be nice if all RPEs had this item available (or just make it possible to adjust random encounters in the options screen).
Running also works well in BOF, because if you place your highest agility party members in the front of your party (I think putting them in front is what is most important), then you will be able to run on your first try. This is helpful if you want to see the enemies in an area, but don't want to waste time w/those that you don't feel like fighting again.

Lasting Interest: 6.4

I spent maybe 30 hrs on it (similar in length to most RPEs, such as Final Fantasy 2e) and the many quests helped keep the pace at a good level, though side quests would have been cool. I thought that the battles went quickly enough, except for the slow paced, tedious boss battles. I did feel like it was time it ended near the end. Too bad it didn't capture my interest greatly at that pt.

Overall: 5.7

Other categories not included in the overall score (but if these are important to you, by all means add up the scores plus the ones in the below section, then divide by the total # of scores you like. This allows you to get the overall score that means the most to you! Anyway, here are the extra categories:

Sound Effects: 4
Nothing special here, and not too many, plus few sounded very realistic or moving.

Originality: 8.5

There were several areas in which BOF showed some originality. The story was dragon focused, but not in killing them. Rather, you are of the dragon clan and so you can gain the ability to turn into ~9 different dragons. One of which is huge! It is as big as some enemy bosses. As a matter of fact, your whole party combines to turn into the most powerful dragon. The other dragons did not require combining party members. Then there was Karn the thief who could combine w/2-3 party members to turn into one of ~4 different powerful monsters. Another innovation is the ability to hunt in the overworld map, fish, fly, hit trees to get fruit, or swim when walking in the underwater world. Other RPEs tend to not allow such actions in the overworld. You can also switch party members (one per round) in mid battle. I also like it that all characters gain experience points during battles, whether or not they fight. This might not be as ''realistic'', but it made things more manageable. I suppose if it were really realistic, then you'd be able to use all 8 party members in the same battle and not be limited to 4. But, if it is too realistic, it wouldn't be fantasy, now would it? ;)

Challenge: 7.5
This is above average (the only Final Fantasy that may have been as hard is Final Fantasy V). When you start you have just one character. You do get more, but it takes time. Challenge is not extraordinary, but harder than the final fantasies. When you do have all your characters, the challenge continues to stay at about the same level. Only when you start getting the ability to morph into dragons or monsters do you start to break the challenge barrier and get significantly stronger than even tougher enemies. I suppose you can always level if you have a fear of your party dieing, but I personally prefer not to fight solely to level.

Comparative Statement:
Compared to Lufia, BOF's total story is not nearly as good (though it is important to note that Lufia's story took a long while to reach its potential, but here we have a mediocre story throughout). But graphically it does fine, in large part due to the animation. If you like dragon themes, you'd probably have a special apprection for the dragon elements in BOF. And compared to Lufia, this focuses more on personified animals as characters, for Lufia and most RPEs stick to humans for you main characters. The many sub-quests go at a much faster pace than the moderately slow Lufia. However, you don't deal with the big picture as much as you do as Lufia.

Stylistically, BOF is less like the Final Fantasys than Lufia because it has the overworld abilities and the graphics are much different.

Though BOF is often called a ''SNES cookie cutter RPG'', I think this review discusses enough innovation to prove it otherwise. I'd like to end with a statment like ''If you liked RPE 'XXX' or 'YYY', then you'll love BOF. But if you thought RPE 'ZZZ' was stupid, then you should avoid BOF'', however, I'm just not able to figure out any RPE that really is similar enough to this to say so. Even trying to compare it to something w/some similarities, Lufia, I fall way short of being able to be able to make a connection between liking Lufia and liking this or disliking both. BOF truely takes elements from varoius RPEs, plus some unique qualities, but not enough similarities to any one so that I can make the kind of statement I'd have liked. Hopefully those who have a hard time gaining from a technical review will be able to find enough content in this review to be able to see what elements this has that they believe they'll like and what they'll not.
Feel free to email me if you see any errors in this review, or if you need more review sections or information in order to figure out if you'd like BOF.

***My reviews are done on the original system, unless otherwise noted (notations for emulators will appear in the review). I typically read the manual as well.

I review a game based on what I see at the time I rate it. If it was on the NES and the graphics pleased my eye, it gets a high rating. 10 would be stuff that I want to stare at for a very long time for its artistic qualities alone. 1 would be completely w/o interest and maybe even sickening to view. I do not rate anything based on what the system can do because I want people to be able to know what the graphics, sound, game play, etc. were like compared to all available (only exception is my originality rating, which doesn't get included in the overall score). So, if I give an overall rating of a 7 for something on the NES and a 6 for something on the PS2, then that is saying that compared to all that I have experienced, the 7 on the NES means that one might enjoy (if they agree w/what I say in my review) the 7 NES game better than the 6 PS2 game. I reviewed every criterion like this. It is my belief that a ratings system like mine is no more objective or subjective than any other, but it takes on a slant that can allow the game to be seen compared with everything out there, which I prefer.
Also consider a classic like Zelda. It is good, and many people agree that it is still good, but it is not as good as Zelda 3 (per most people who do both now, w/o having done the original long ago, which creates a special kind of bias). Despite this, it has many people rating it higher than many rate the Zelda 3, or many ties (should they really both be a ''10''?). W/my revolutionary ratings system, people can look at what I have reviewed and see how likely they are to like it based on what exists at the time it is reviewed. So, if a person has Super Mario World, and wants to try others because they loved the graphics, then they should know this reviewer's evaluation of the graphics in Super Mario Brothers 3 to see if they pleased my eye as much as SMW (assuming I rated both of them, but if I hadn't then they can still see if the one I rated impressed me based on the criteria I gave). Maybe the graphics didn't impress me in SMB3, and if so I person should know that based on today's selection of games, and the big reason is: When choosing what to do w/our gaming time, we do have a choice among many systems from 3 decades w/many games on each system; we should be able to see a review and then decide what we'd like to do among all of our options.

Today I see an RPE like Lufia 2 to be one of the best ever, ''ever'' includes some of the greats that have emerged on the latest systems. By reading my review on something old, a person can see how the game stacks up to everything else and this I hope will be helpful to people.

Terminology:

IAVE=Interactive Audio/Video Experience. This is a replacement of the word ''video game'', which I feel is a misnomer for today's experience.

RPE=Role-Playing Experience. I feel that role-playing is more than just a game, but a total experience involving much more than just playing a game. For example, the soundtrack alone can be very enjoyable w/o the game, as can the artwork (graphics), or the story.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/02, Updated 10/01/02