Breath of Fire

"Linear gameplay... just like almost every single game before it..."

To begin my review, i would like to address the issue of the linear storyline- If one looks rather closely at most other games made anytime before it, they also have a fairly linear gameplay... in fact, most games by capcom have a fairly linear gameplay, including streetfighter (most of them at that point involved fighting the other characters in the exact same order, where one started was different) and resident evil (i have never ever been able to play these games by doing things out of order. ever.) and most others. the sole exception to this would be mega man, but that is neither here nor there, since mega man has little storyline (but awesome gameplay). so, i beleive that BoF's lack of "non-linearness" does little to hurt the game... unless you're the type who absolutely has to be able do things differently (or out of order or whatever), in which case, tough.

In any case, the very linear storyline, which is very easy to follow (some games make me nauseous with their storyline gaps) and massive to boot, provides one with a world filled with different clans, where the clans have the attributes of their clan names (they could be totems, but i'm not too terribly sure about that) These include the Light Dragon Clan, the Dark Dragon Clan, the Bird/Eagle Clan (something like that), the Forest/Bo's Clan, Karn's Clan, the Merchant/Fish Clan, the Smith/Ox Clan, and the Mole Clan. You will have a party member from each clan, except the Dark Dragon Clan, where you will instead get the legendary sorceress Bleu.

The game also blesses you by allowing you to change characters at any time, although it will force certain characters in certain situations (always change back to your original/favorite party) and break up some of Karn's transformations, which is rather annoying.

Combat is rather simple, especially since there is the auto-battle command, which allows you to just hit two buttons and wait for the experience and gold to come in. Otherwise, you have your average rpg combat interface to deal with. The game also makes many of your weak attackers more powerful by providing items you can reuse to cast spells with set amounts of damage, and oncew that item is obsolete, another is available, throughout the game, basically (Not for the first two dungeons.)

While some of the enemies might be wierd (giant floating eyeballs surrounded by huge fire auras? wha-?) and introduced a tad early for their relative power level (the same) you shouldn't have any problem running from them, and building up your level by fighting any of the other zillions of other bad guys out there, and trust me, there are zillions of them (One solid to reason to praise the Auto-Battle function.. Wait, they probably juiced up the encounter rate because of the Auto-Battle function... Doh!) The graphics are really simple, but the far-flung results of Square revoltionizing every aspect of rpgs had yet to take hold when the graphics were ebing developed, and some of the bosses, dragon forms, and transformations look really neat. (Especially Puka... The only time a video game my mom swear by saying "What the *^&$ is that thing?") So, while some people may get annoyed with EVERY single person in, say, Tunlan being a woman blowing a flute (lordy me, get Freud on that one) i think Capcom did fairly well with the graphics they created, and are better than the graphics of some 64 bit games... nevermind the fact that i'm referring to the Atari Jaguar...

Now, as to whether or not this game is any fun, and has any replay value. I found this game to be truly addictive the first time around. Then, the second time around when i actually got everything, it was even cooler, especially all of Karn's transformations, and the Emporer Sword as an item. But after that... well, i had to wait about five years before i felt like playing the game again... That was after i had beaten FF7 for what seemed like the trillionth time and my SNES arrived at my new house. So, the game does have a somewhat limited replay value, but for the four or five months you'll be playing it, you'll (hopefully) enjoy it. I know i did.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/11/00, Updated 01/11/00