Breath of Fire II

"Good, no.....GREAT RPG game"

This game was for the SNES and now they re-made it for the GBA. Good thing cause this game was awesome for the SNES and even better on the GBA.The only difference that makes it better is that characters can run and it makes the game go faster. This game is kind of underrated. I think it’s a great game for all RPG gamers.

Graphics: 9/10
This game has some pretty good graphics. It’s almost the same as the SNES graphics but they improved it a little. The battles look awesome. When you use magic attacks it is very detailed and the regular attacks are good as well. I think Capcom did a great job on making these graphics. The only downside is sometimes its black and white and the outer world isn’t half as detailed as the battles are. The animation was also very good in this game. Overall, very very good graphical game

Gameplay: 8/10
I liked the game play of this game. All of the monsters have HP bars so you can see how far you are to killing them, which is a very good feature to have. The characters move up and hit the enemies, which I thought made the game look more realistic. It tells you when enemies are sleeping poisoned and awake. This is very useful because if you are attacking a sleeping enemy you will know it will be waking up soon or if its awake it will probably attack you soon. The only thing that I didn’t like about this game is that you never know when you will gain a level. If you always constantly look to see if you are going to gain a level this game isn’t any good for that. That’s basically the only downside. I don’t know why they didn’t change it on the GB version. They probably could have and should have re-made that part. The GBA also added a trading feature. It made the game a little better than before on the SNES. Overall GREAT gameplay.

Story: 7/10
The story in this game is not very good. It’s too simple. You are a guy named Ryu that has dragon powers and you have to save the world. Capcom could have tried a little harder on the story. It does have some twists and turns in the story but I don’t know, I just think they could have done at least a little but better. But don’t get me wrong it’s not the worst I’ve seen. Its just not spectacular or anything that’s all. Overall, okay story.

Sound: 8/10
I thought the sound in this game was okay. It wasn’t as good as like Final Fantasy or anything but still good. It isn’t repetitive at all though, which is a very good thing to have in a game. Capcom could have done better in this area too. The battle music was pretty addicting though. Overall, pretty good sound.

Controls: 10/10
I liked the controls in this game. They were very simple to use. You could use the up, down, left, right on the D-pad to talk to people. You could also use the A and B buttons. You can also hold down B to run which was a good added feature to the GBA. There weren’t very many things to do with the controls but they were good over all.

Difficulty: 5/10
This game was very easy to beat. It wasn’t very hard to gain levels because Capcom made it so you got more Experience and Money from enemies. The bosses were hard though. It took a while to beat them since it made it look like you beat them, because all their HP is gone on the bar, but then they say something and they are still alive. Overall the difficulty wasn’t very hard In my opinion.

Replay: 6/10
This game doesn’t have a very good replay value. Once I beat it I didn’t feel like beating everything all over again. There are too many things to do. That’s just my opinion though. Overall, this games replay kind of stinks in my opinion.

Overall: 9/10
I liked this game. This game is very long. It’s about 40-50 hours of game play. I liked that it was that long because it was challenging and addicting. I would recommend buying this game. If you rent it you will not be able to beat it unless you cheat or play it non-stop. And plus it’s a great game. If you like RPG’s you will probably like this game. It’s not spectacular but its still a great game. It’s a must have for the GBA.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/02, Updated 10/28/02