Breath of Fire II

"Capcom's Newest Remake..."

My Opinion
My, oh my...If it isn't Capcom with another game to add to its long list a remakes and rip offs. As soon as I started playing this game, the first sentence that popped into my head was ''Capcom is a bunch of lazy sons uh *****es''. They hardly changed any aspects about this game. The music is catchy, but sickeningly digitalized, especially after playing Wario Land 4. there are still tones of little bugs in the game, like the Granny who unites you with the shamans. She's a little deaf, yes=no and no=yes...The Great Tree might not have anything wrong, but he's so damn vague it's hard to tell. Some parts are down right confusing in this game...like in the Dragon Clan's little town, when you talk to your grandfather you become Valerie, Ryu's mother, without any prior warning. The townsfolk are incredibly vague about where your supposed to go next, leaving you to search that god forsaken map with a whale or a bird. No special features in this game that I know of, of course it has been a long time since I played BoFII for SNES. You would think that Capcom would put a little sum sum in to pass the time when you don't want to be walking aimlessly through their poorly designed map. Even some little minigame would have been nice. The graphics are pretty, especially the FMVs, but still nothing to brag about.

GBA Special Features - 1
*looks around*Dash feature...Next...

Sound - 4
This is just sad...no advances from the original sound system. And as I said before, after playing some of the GBA games with pumping sounds, this is just tedious to listen to those mind numbing repeat-tunes...at this very moment I'm humming the Township song.

Graphics - 7
Oooooooh...preeeettttyyy. The environments a nice, and the sprites are wicked. I must admit, taking the time to make all those seperate sprites was very nice of Capcom. ^.~

Controls - 8
RPGs cant really have bad controls. One thing I don't like is how 'Select' brings up the menu, and 'Start' brings up the map. That makes it hard to play other games.

Plot - 8
After playing countless RPGs with sickeningly slow, boring, and totally linear plots, I have finally found one that, linear yes...but, it sports a whole bunch of subplots. Of course, me praising a plot isn't much. I never got any playstation RPGs before the stupid thing broke down, and NES, SNES, Game Boy(original through color), and N64 RPGs didn't have much, plotwise, at all...

Overall - 8
Overall this is a good game. It's nice to have on the road for those long trips, but, unless you really liked the SNES game(and don't own it), or you're a big RPG kinda guy, I would recommend sticking with the cheaper SNES version. It also helps if you're into mideival stuff, anime, and cool FMVs.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/11/02, Updated 06/11/02