Breath of Fire IV

The fourth Breath of Fire game and the second on the Playstation 1 was released at a time when the platform was being largely phased out in favor of its successor and thus it went largely ignored by critics and audiences.  But does Breath of Fire IV prove to be a worthy RPG despite its low-key release, or is this just a lackluster last hurrah for the series on the Playstation 1?

Breath of Fire III is probably the most successful and talked-about entry in Capcom's RPG franchise, but I personally didn't enjoy it all that much.  While it did have some great and interesting elements to it, the dragging story pace and arduous combat and minigames, paired with a general lack of balance in the gameplay, made it a game that felt more like a slog than a compelling RPG experience.  Because of that, it was a long time before I really gave Breath of Fire IV much of a chance, especially as it was said to borrow many of 3's design cues.

That much is true, at least; much of the design philosophy here is taken straight from 3, though thankfully given significantly more polish.  Learning skills from enemies returns here, though the luck element is drastically toned down and it doesn't require a separate command to "watch" them for a chance to learn it; using Defend gets the job done now.  The Master system returns too, letting the player shape characters' stats and learn new skills by apprenticing them to Masters throughout the world, but has also seen improvement - skills learned are no longer dependent on just levels, but have other conditions too, tying into mechanics like the combo system, having enough play time racked up on the clock, fighting enough battles or even having enough fishing points.  Basically, they reward you for playing the game, not just stopping everything to grind out more battles; that alone is a major improvement over 3.

The overall design of the game has been much refined too; evident right away in the presentation and cinematography.  Right from the word go, Breath of Fire IV opts for a more movie-like feel with dynamic camera angles and staging and a greater focus on characterization and worldbuilding while relying far less on corny humor.   The pacing is vastly improved, with dungeons feeling focused and loading being virtually unnoticeable, especially in combat.  Minigames are well-integrated into the narrative, and while still not amazing, are fun little diversions rather than irritating chores standing in your path.  Most mundane NPCs in the game have portraits in dialog, which is quite a nice touch, and the solid animation of 3 is even better here, with fluidly-animated sprites and a surprisingly good framerate in the thick of battle (though you can hit occasional slowdown while wandering towns and dungeons).  Even the movement is tighter now - you still move on a set graph and it uses the same isometric style, but I didn't find myself struggling to position myself in front of a switch or sign nearly as much.  Hell, you even have the option to offset D-pad presses to move in diagonal directions if you wish, which is very nice (though I didn't end up using this).  Even the fishing minigame has seen some upgrades, adding some free-roaming around the fishing spots to find the best places and even letting you reel fish in easier by timing button presses to the drums in the music.  Hell, if you happen to own a Playstation 1 fishing controller, it is fully supported by Breath of Fire IV, showing that they really did go the extra mile in every way they could.

Town and dungeon design is much tighter this time too, with small, focused maps instead of huge sprawling ones, and nearly all the dungeons being built around puzzles rather than static, empty corridors full of monsters.  They went slightly overboard with the "packed-in" feel, though, as the halls and corridors you traverse are very narrow and, paired with the isometric perspective, you'll have to frequently rotate the camera to see where you are and where you have to go.  They did attempt to offset this somewhat with Nina's action command, though - she floats up into the air and looks down on the area from above, which can help you get your bearings at times.

Of course, they do add some new twists onto the game too.  Combat has been overhauled substantially - not just in pacing, but mechanically too.  You get a party of six with a maximum of three active in combat at a time, but all of them are with you at a time - no exiting to the map to swap characters when the plot dictates.  One can even switch characters in and out of the active party mid-fight, with those on the sidelines slowly regenerating AP each turn, and while they're sitting out they're also burning turns of status effect duration; quite handy as you can imagine.  Switching characters to deal with particular foes is important too, as each character now has an elemental affinity - they're usually given spells of that element to cast, take less damage from it and more from an opposing element.  Characters don't ever really become obsolete, either; unlike 3, attack magic isn't rendered useless by poor scaling, and particularly powerful skills (like Ryu's dragon morphs) are toned down considerably here.

Another major factor in combat is the new combo system.  Essentially, what this does is let the player chain together skills and spells to not just deal more damage (growing higher as the combo count rises), but to create entirely new attacks.  Elemental spells, cast in proper order (Fire -> Wind -> Water -> Earth -> Fire) will create bigger and more powerful attacks, and some other, less conventional options exist, like combining a healing spell with a fire-element attack to create one heavily damaging to undead enemies.  Even status-inflicting abilities play into this; useless in most RPGs, here they score two hits - one dealing light damage and the other having a chance to inflict the effect.  The latter hit can also combo with other attacks, giving them another chance to inflict that status on top of their normal effect.  There are a ton of possibilities with this new element, which makes combat more engaging than in any prior BoF game - every time you get a new skill you'll find yourself experimenting with it, seeing what you can combo it together with and trying to work towards the damage and combo chain goals that some Masters require.  A big achilles heel of older RPGs is the stale, repetitious combat, but Breath of Fire finally crawled out of that hole with IV and made battles something I looked forward to rather than started to groan at.

Breath of Fire IV doesn't break a lot of new ground; in fact, in terms of overall design it's remarkably similar to 3.  However, it also stands as proof that polish can make all the difference between an arduous RPG experience and a solid game.  The cinematography, dungeon designs, pacing and writing are all a massive improvement on 3's, creating a compelling and epic adventure that plays great to boot.  The game looks gorgeous, with visuals that manage to hold their own against even the almighty Square even with the much smaller budget; beautifully realized and expressive character designs, smooth combat animations, and creative, sharply rendered environments and visual effects. The music, as in any good RPG, carries the mood perfectly, creating an experience that's often grim and depressing, but also very compelling.  Breath of Fire IV is easily the most impressive BoF on a technical level and in terms of storytelling, and is certainly worth a look for any serious fan of RPGs.

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Playstation 1, PlayStation Network, PC
Released: 2001
Recommended Version:  The PSN version is a direct port of the PS1.  There is also a native PC port, but as far as I can tell it was never released in North America; only Europe, Australia and Japan.  As of 2025 you can also download it off GOG.

Breath of Fire III

After two low-key cult classics on the SNES, Breath of Fire, like many other Capcom franchises, made the jump to the Playstation platform in 1998.  But does it provide enough of the series' unique charm to help it stand out in a sea of other huge RPG names, or does it just get pushed into the background and forgotten once again?

Breath of Fire as a series has always had a dedicated following for its traditional yet imaginative design, but unfortunately that never really translated into raw sales.  Developers for the series have even gone on record as saying that while they enjoyed making the games and they've almost always gotten a positive reception, they've also never really been profitable for Capcom; hence why the franchise has been virtually unheard of since the turn of the millennium.  Probably the closest it ever came to mainstream success was in the Playstation era, where it was among many RPGs to ride the genre's newfound wave of popularity kickstarted by Final Fantasy VII.

Sure enough, Breath of Fire III's first outing on the system really strove to set itself apart from its 16-bit counterparts in a number of ways.  While still set in the same world as the first two games and retaining many of its key themes, the game saw a definite visual upgrade, utilizing an isometric perspective with 2D sprites on 3D-rendered backgrounds, and quite a lot of animations for each of its characters - Ryu in particular has a nice touch in that he gradually grows more confident over the course of the adventure, starting with a weak failing sword swing and gradually moving his way up to becoming a real swordsman after some story beats.   Surprisingly, it also did not utilize a separate "combat screen", instead having the map screen shift slightly with all of the players' characters and enemies becoming visible on the map itself, making the game feel a bit more realistic and immersive.  It did of course play a bit more slowly than the first two games, with noticeable loading times for many special moves and transitions to and from combat, as well as a frequent encounter rate in general; not the worst example of such in this era of gaming, but it definitely feels slower than many other RPGs on the platform.

Breath of Fire always sold itself on having a distinct and memorable cast of characters and abilities thereof, and 3 certainly is no different there.  Each character has their own ability that are used in various puzzles and opening hidden paths.  Rei can pick open locks, for example, while Garr, being by far the largest character, can push heavy objects the others cannot.  Each also plays very differently in combat, getting a variety of spells and vastly different stats; for example, Momo has a powerful bazooka weapon, but it tends to miss a lot, so equipping her with items to boost her accuracy is generally a good idea.  Rei is speedy but not particularly strong, while Ryu is a well-balanced character physically but has relatively low MP.  Throughout the game, one can offset many of these weaknesses (or accent a character's strengths) by training under a Master.  Masters are found throughout the game and will influence your characters' stats as they level up, and can even grant some extra abilities they wouldn't learn normally; using them wisely throughout your journey is key to success, especially early on.

Another interesting addition are "Skills".  Essentially, these work like blue magic or Enemy Skills in the Final Fantasy series, allowing you to learn moves when you're hit by them while using the Defend command.  Also like blue magic, many of these skills are built on specific stipulations like dealing more damage to specific enemy types or having extra effects based on the user's stats (such as having damage based on the Agility stat, rather than Strength).  A lot of these end up being surprisingly useful, so it's worth it to feel out what new enemy types can do (and take the occasional turn to defend so that you can attempt to learn their skills for yourself) rather than mindlessly blasting through everything in your path.

Another iconic element of the series - Ryu's dragon morphs - returns as well, and like many other things in the game, it has seen a substantial overhaul and puts emphasis on player customization (perhaps an apology for the very watered-down version from Breath of Fire 2).  Throughout the game, one will find a plethora of "Dragon Genes".   Up to three of these can be mixed and matched when the Morph command is used, and the result will be a dragon with the properties of all three.  Some affect stats, generally raising some while lowering others, while some change the dragon's elemental property to one of the five elements in the game (Fire, Ice, Electricity, Shadow, Light).  Certain combinations will also unlock larger and more powerful forms that get big-time stat multipliers, so it's well worth it to experiment with combinations of genes throughout the game.  Interestingly, one gene in particular (the Fusion gene) even retains some elements of the Fusion mechanic from the first Breath of Fire, allowing Ryu to combine with one or more party members to create a powerful new hybrid form.  This definitely ends up being one of the game's most interesting mechanics due to the sheer number of forms you can create, and as mentioned, it's a massive improvement over the first game and especially the second's dragon mechanics.

Of course, Breath of Fire III also doesn't skimp on side-content.  A small management sim exists in the game in the form the Faerie Village, where the player can assign tasks to faeries in order to influence the growth of their town, unlocking benefits like shops that stock rare items, minigames and a sound test.  Fishing returns as well, letting the player catch fish that have a number of different effects, as well as tracking the largest of any given type they've caught.  Saving outside of towns is now possible too via the "Camp" option, which opens up a screen allowing the player to interact with party members and rest at their leisure.

The game does have some glaring weaknesses, though.  The soundtrack is one; it's not painful to listen to by any means, but it feels bizarrely out of place - less like something you'd hear in an epic world-spanning fantasy RPG and more like something out of a Windows 95 desktop game.  The whole time I played my mind went racing back to various casino/card games I played on my PC in the '90s, and a few tracks in particular sound like they'd be more at home in a casual "software toy" game like Simcity or SimAnt.  A definite contrast to the first two, especially the hard-rock sound that Breath of Fire II brought to the table.  Still, it doesn't ever ruin the mood, so I can't say it's a serious flaw - just a very bizarre choice.

More serious problems fall on the game's overall pacing and generally asinine design elements.  The game feels oddly restrictive at times, roping you from one locale to the next with no real opportunity to break away and explore freely - not really a good thing with the aforementioned Master system and you wanting to maximize your characters' abilities.  Dungeons get very tedious before long owing to the frequent encounter rate and significant loading associated with attack animations.  You're also presented with a lot of instances of just having to stop and talk to everyone and search everything before you're allowed to progress, and even then, if you don't have the right character in your party you may not be able to - you'll have to exit town, swap them in, then come back to advance.  Minigames - none particularly fun other than fishing - also pervade the experience and are often necessary to progress, with two in particular being especially annoying - having to time a button press to the exact moment a meter peaks (slightly off and you waste an item; run out and you have to go back to town to buy more) and a particularly irritating rope-pulling minigame where you have to mash a button when prompted and stop exactly when told; one mistake on your part (or your computer controlled partner's part) and you get to restart the whole thing.  They clearly wanted to take a page from Final Fantasy VII here, and while FF7's minigames generally weren't amazing, they at least weren't aggravating to endure like these.

Breath of Fire III was the game that put the series on the map for most fans, and I can certainly see why.  It brought the franchise into a new console generation in style, keeping its interesting mechanics, characters and overall setting intact while taking advantage of the extra CD space to provide a good-looking game with some innovative elements.  Being able to customize one's party via Masters, Skill learning and a huge pool of Dragon morphs are pretty cool innovations, while its story and a plethora of hidden secrets and optional content keep die-hard players coming back for more.  It was one of many RPG franchises playing second fiddle to the juggernaut that was Square, but that didn't stop Breath of Fire III from doing its best to stand out.  Or being the only game in the series to get a port to the PSP platform years later.  It's got some uneven difficulty and pacing problems and its overall slower, more methodical design makes it feel a bit more dated than most prominent PS1 RPGs, but an interesting piece of history nonetheless; worth a look if you can track it down.

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom, Infogrames
Platform: Playstation 1, Playstation Portable, PSN
Released: 1998, 2006, 2016
Recommended Version: Both the PS1 and PSP versions seem to be more or less the same, though the latter is presented in a wider aspect ratio and has slightly tuned up visuals to match the more powerful hardware of the platform, though the tradeoff is slightly longer load times.  The PSP version also seems to have slightly higher odds for luck-based elements (stealing, learning skills, etc), but this may just be luck on my part.  The PSN version is a port of the PSP version.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

After a string of successes with the Breath of Fire series, Capcom takes the franchise in a new direction, radically mixing up its gameplay and setting into something unlike anything else in the series.  But does this combination of elements work out in the end, or does it just end up alienating franchise and genre fans alike?

A few things about the Breath of Fire franchise have remained relatively consistent since its inception - a protagonist named Ryu who wields dragon-powers, a heroine named Nina who acts as the primary party mage, and a fantasy world with some dark elements that lend themselves to a compelling narrative.  They would also feature relatively traditional turn-based JRPG gameplay with a few creative mechanics like character fusion, learning enemy skills and having hunting and fishing minigames to earn extra resources.

Dragon Quarter retains a handful of these elements, but for the most part strives to make itself into something very distinct and new.  The setting is only faintly related to earlier games, becoming more of a dystopian science fiction tale than a dark fantasy.  Characters named Ryu and Nina return once again, though fulfilling much different parts in the tale - Nina being a biological experiment sought out by the corrupt government overseeing the game's world and Ryu being a government agent who goes rogue to protect her, gaining the power of a dragon in the process.

The gameplay itself is drastically changed up as well.  While combat in the game is still turn-based, the design of the game itself is like no other RPG before it, combining elements of survival horror and roguelikes into the mix.  The player is afforded a very limited supply of inventory space and resources and no inns to easily restore health, saves are heavily restricted (requiring the use of scarce "Save Tokens" to make a permanent checkpoint of one's progress) and enemies are now visible on the map, meaning that avoiding combat is just as important a part of the game's overall strategy as knowing how and when to fight.  While the game world itself is fixed, the roguelike element comes in the randomized contents of chests and the fact that the player often finds unlabeled gear that must be taken to a town and identified before it can be used, often having bonuses over standard gear like extra skill slots or higher statistics.

The skill system in the game is an odd one.  Players learn skills by  finding items (earned as combat rewards or found in chests), but they are no longer simply accessible from a dedicated menu option like in previous Breath of Fire games.  Instead, the item must be used to add it to the character's repertoire, then it must be added to slots on the character's weapon or shield in order to become usable.  One of the most important skills one earns is one of the few in the game whose location is fixed - the Steal skill.  When equipped on a shield, this grants the character a chance to "steal" any usable skills used on them by an enemy.  This adds a risk-versus-reward element to the game - the player naturally wants to conserve their health and items, but the only way to get many powerful skills is to bait an enemy into hitting them with said skills.

Dragon Quarter's combat is a strange breed as well, primarily because what the player does outside of the combat system proper is just as integral to the overall strategy as what they do within it.  Outside of battle, the player can get a free turn by hitting their enemy first, and the enemy can do the same.  They are also afforded the opportunity to set traps in order to weaken their foes before beginning the fight proper - meat to lure them to a set location, bombs to deal damage (and possibly kill them outright without even having to enter the combat system itself) and other traps that can do things like inflict Poison, Paralysis or Bind status, putting enemies at a disadvantage in combat proper.  Utilizing traps effectively quickly becomes an essential part of the game's strategy, allowing the player to overcome particular encounters that must be beaten in order to progress (and which would be nearly impossible in a straight-up fight).

The combat system - dubbed PETS (Positive Encounter and Tactics System) -  is another innovation.  Somewhat akin to Chrono Trigger, battles take place on the same screen where the player touches the enemy and with character positioning playing an important tactical role.  Unlike that game, however, the player can move freely (not bound to a defined "grid") and utilize the terrain to their advantage - attacking from atop slopes or retreating behind cover to prevent enemies from approaching as easily, for example.  Each turn, every character gets a set amount of AP, and any unspent AP is carried over to the next turn, up to double the maximum.  Movement and attacking cost AP, with attacks coming in three "tiers" that cost 10, 20 and 30 AP respectively.  These can be chained together for a cumulative 10% bonus to each attack after the first, and occasionally creating new moves in the process (chaining Side Slash and Vert Slash in one continuous combo will do an "X Blade" attack that deals extra damage, for example).  Oddly, there is no AP cost to using items mid-fight - perhaps a way to both give the player a fighting chance in tougher encounters (and the fact that they are as limited as they are means the player will want to conserve them whenever possible anyhow).  Winning battles quickly will earn the party bonus experience, as well as more "Party Experience" - points which are stored in a separate counter and can be freely distributed among party members at any time in order to level them up.

Befitting this system, each of the three main characters fills a predefined role.  Ryu, as per series norm, is a front-line fighter with Dragon-based powers that should only be used in very desperate moments (more on that later).  Nina is the mage, doing damage with both traditional direct attacks and being able to set up "magic circles" that essentially serve as in-battle traps, damaging and disabling enemies that walk over them (or get pushed into them by other characters).  Finally, Lin is a ranged fighter with skills that slow down foes and knock them back, keeping them out of melee attack distance - very useful for fighting enemies on the player's terms and, ultimately, conserving limited resources.

Ryu's dragon abilities are another source of challenge in the game.  After a certain point in the story, the game becomes a race against Ryu's "D-counter", which slowly ticks up over time and more quickly as he uses his dragon abilities; these come in the form of a Dash that allows the player to knock enemies aside and avoid fights, melee attacks that each raise the gauge by a set percent, a one-turn stat buffer that also raises a set amount (and can be stacked multiple times for exponentially stronger attacks), and a dragon breath attack that essentially allows infinite damage as long as the button is held down but which fills the gauge at a drastic rate.  Once the D-counter hits 100%, Ryu is overtaken by the dragon and the game ends immediately.  However, the game all but forces you to utilize these abilities, as many enemies and bosses are simply too powerful not to require it, so learning where and when to use them in order to progress is key to victory, and even then you probably won't have enough left to make it all the way to the end on a single playthrough.

This in turn ties into the game's SOL (Scenario Overlay) system.  Simply put, this encourages the player to restart the game, which they can do on the game over screen or at any time by pressing R2 from the main menu.  When this happens, the player restarts the campaign from scratch, but retains any equipment, skills, stored inventory items and unspent Party Experience.  This in turn allows you to make more progress the next time through and eventually complete the game in full once you're powerful enough to overcome all the bosses without maxing out the D-counter.  The game also attempts to prevent things from getting too repetitive through this system - as the player completes the game and gets higher ranks (based on a number of factors, but chiefly using fewer saves, gaining levels and taking less time to finish the campaign), their "D-Ratio" will steadily increase, and as it does so, more plot scenes will become visible and new rooms will unlock, allowing the player to see more of the story and get rare items to make themselves more powerful in the long run.  Sadly, while the D-Ratio does play a part in the story (essentially serving as this world's caste system), Ryu's increasing D-Ratio does not play a role in the plot itself - the narrative always treats him as 1/8192 no matter what his actual ratio is.  Still, it does lend a compelling element to the game, with the player wanting to restart and try for better scores to not just see their way to the ending, but to view all the content that gets unlocked as they make their way to D-Ratio 1/4 (the highest rank possible and the titular "Dragon Quarter").

In the end, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is an unconventional JRPG that works in elements of strategy games, survival horror and roguelikes; a strange combination, but surprisingly fun once the player figures out its quirks and learns to use the overall design to their advantage.  The game requires a lot of planning and specific tactics - and yes, several playthroughs - to see all it has to offer, but it proves to be a compelling and rewarding experience and well worth the investment it demands.

Developer: Capcom Production Studio 3
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2003
Recommended version: N/A

Breath of Fire II

The original Breath of Fire was a modest, if not outstanding, success for Capcom and Square, so a sequel was inevitable.  But does Capcom's second outing manage to recapture the unique charm of the first, or does it just prove to be an inferior followup?

Released two years after the first Breath of Fire, the second game in the series is also among its most popular, with a cult following that continues to this day.  It's not too difficult to see why, either, even just looking at it from an aesthetic viewpoint; the visuals in the game are much improved, with larger, well-defined character sprites and each character and enemy having their own plethora of unique animations.  The music in the game is up to Capcom's high standards as well, delivering energetic rock tracks for the battles and some grandiose orchestral tunes for the maps and towns, managing to convey a sense of wonder that fits the fantasy setting very well.

Attempts have also been made to balance out the cast of characters; each character now has their own unique battle command (seemingly taking a cue from Final Fantasy 6), and rather than giving a few characters some drastically overpowered abilities that unbalance the rest of the game, skills now have a bit more restraint to them.  Ryu's dragon abilities, for example, are no longer form changes that last for the remainder of a fight (or until one manually reverts), but now single-use attacks that take all of his Magic Points and deal damage based on the total in reserve.  Bow's Shot skill will either do a single point of damage or a critical hit, while Nina's special ability restores some of her MP (with great effect being achieved the more turns have passed since the last use).  While some of these abilities are still clearly more useful than others (with Sten's "play dead" ability being nearly useless and Katt's Taunt ability being a poor choice due to her low defense), it was at least a nice attempt to round out the cast a bit more.

The spell system in Breath of Fire 2 still leaves much to be desired, however.  While it hits the usual JRPG bases of having healing, buffing and elemental damage that some enemies resist and others are weak to, they all share a common downfall.  Namely that nearly all of them have a set effect, with the only real variance coming in resistances and weaknesses adding or subtracting a fixed amount from elemental spells.  This means that your lower-level spells will gradually become useless as the game goes on, while the top-level spells will eat up tons of your MP, requiring much grinding to stock up on MP-restoring items to be able to remain a threat in later fights.  I actually found the most useful offensive spell in the game to be Chop, as it does equal damage to any enemy and costs 0 MP, making it far more versatile (and useful) than most any other attack spell.

Fusions make a return as well, though again, attempts have been made to balance them out compared to the first game's.  Rather than combining characters together into one uber-character, the player is now given the option to fuse their characters with six "Shaman" characters representing the six elements.  The effects vary from character to character, but the ones a character is compatible with will generally bolster their stats and alter their color scheme slightly.  Particularly effective combinations have a more drastic effect, giving that character an entirely new form and even sometimes new battle abilities; Bow, for example, can transform into a robot-like form whose Shot special will either deal 1 damage or 999 damage (though it does not work against bosses).  There is a catch, however - if a character is rendered unconscious or even reduced to critical HP, they will lose their fused form and have to return to the home base in order to activate it again.  Thus, the late game becomes a matter of not only grinding enough to survive the gauntlets of strong enemies, but also a trial of keeping the entire party's HP high so that they do not lose their powered-up forms.

Speaking of grinding, that encompasses another disappointing element of Breath of Fire II compared to its predecessor.  The game, particularly in its late stages, requires quite a lot of it; enemies give relatively little experience and money and the power difference between dungeons can be drastic, reducing large spans of the game's run time to tedious, slow-paced leveling.  A disappointing turn in an era when games were largely beginning to move away from that aspect of their design.  Especially when one considers that this game came out the same year as Chrono Trigger, a game noted for its minimal grinding and overall fast pace despite its genre's pedigree.  Even the first game kept grinding to a relative minimum outside of the early stages, with repetitive battles even late in the game being largely skippable through use of its Mrbl3 items, so it's a step back for its own series as well.

The translation has seen a significant downgrade from its predecessor as well.  Breath of Fire 2 saw no involvement from Square; instead, Capcom themselves took on the duty, and this is very evident in the final product.  The translation's quality is notoriously lacking, from relatively minor details (such as being prompted to equip a fishing lod) to character dialog with no real flow or logic to making the story almost indecipherable in its later stages, Breath of Fire II's localization job leaves much to be desired.  It's probably the worst I've seen in an RPG from a big-name company, and that's saying a lot!

With so much of the game being trapped in the restrictions of its predecessor, and so many others actually being a step back in terms of design, one must then question why this game is so beloved in comparison to the original Breath of Fire.  Well, I think I have an idea: Breath of Fire II is one of the earliest examples of an RPG built heavily around anti-religious themes, which probably accounts for a lot of the popularity it enjoyed (and still enjoys today).  After all, if it offends your parents, it must be cool, right?  Neon Genesis Evangelion came out around the same time and got mistaken for being "edgy" and "anti-religion" even as its creators openly admitted that they had no political message in mind and only chose to use Christian iconography for how nifty it looked (Source), but it still proved to be a massive success for Gainax, so naturally everyone chose to follow the trend.  From Final Fantasy VII and X to Xenogears to Deus Ex to the Matrix, the mid-90s to early 2000s were saturated with video games, movies, books and comics which subverted Abrahamic images and themes to push the illusion of depth and attract the angsty teen demographic, all of those teens seemingly unaware (or just not caring) that by supporting it, they are giving the overwhelming majority of their money to the rich conservatives who ran the giant mega-corporations that produced and sold those works.

That's my theory, at least;  edgy gamers trying to be "rebellious" whilst never realizing the irony in the act of buying symbols of their rebellion from a multi-million dollar company.  Not to say that Breath of Fire II is a bad game using said icons as a crutch - it certainly carries an interesting storyline with some well-realized dark themes (when you can puzzle it out through the bad translation), has the same great imagination to its setting and characters as its predecessor, and of course has some killer visuals and music that live up to Capcom's lofty standards.  However, its overall design and presentation is lacking on several fronts, and in fact feels like a substantial downgrade in many ways from the first.  II may be the more beloved game and the one history remembers better, but to me, the first Breath of Fire was a superior experience overall.

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Super Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, Wii Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console
Released: 1995, 2002, 2007, 2013
Recommended version: The Game Boy Advance version features somewhat downgraded visuals and music to fit the differing hardware, but it does also substantially reduce the amount of grinding involved by tripling the experience and doubling the money enemies grant.  The player is also afforded the ability to dash, which makes navigating dungeons significantly faster.  So I would probably recommend that version over the SNES or Virtual Console releases (which are ports of the SNES version).

There are also extensive fan patches for the SNES version that greatly polish up the translation and fix the overall poor balance; play that if you have the means and bump up the rating half a Star.

Breath of Fire

One of Capcom's earliest forays into the RPG genre, and their first prominent effort on a 16-bit console.  But does this title manage to distinguish itself, or is it just another RPG fated to be left on a back page of the history books?

RPGs in the early 1990s took a lot of steps to diferentiate themselves from their earlier days.  The technology was now there to have more in-depth storylines, stronger soundtracks and even a somewhat more cinematic style to go with them.  Of course, they also attempted to keep with this style on the gameplay front, adopting a more fast-paced style of design and gameplay to match the more cinematic style that began to creep its way into the world of gaming.

Capcom threw their own hat into the ring with Breath of Fire, a game which sought to differentiate itself in its gameplay, and does so in ways that few (if any) other RPG franchises to this day have duplicated.  Each character in your party has their own abilities, and each proves useful in its own way.  As a few examples, Bo can hunt monsters on the world map (which can earn the player a plethora of useful items), Ox can smash down weak walls, Mogu can dig at certain points on the map to uncover hidden items, and Karn can pick locks and fuse party members together in various ways (each with abilities of their own).  In fact, the game's overall design is a bit reminiscent of titles like Metroid or Symphony of the Night in that regard; you'll frequently encounter things you can't interact with yet over the course of your journey, but later in the game you'll be able to return with the proper party member and finally access it.

As per Capcom's standards, Breath of Fire also excels greatly in the presentation department.  The visuals in the game are downright gorgeous, with a vast amount of detail put into the environments (with almost every town and dungeon the player encounters having a distinct style and feel to it) and large, fluidly-animated character sprites for both allies and enemies bearing Capcom's distinct style (no surprise, as many of the designs were conceptualized by Keiji Inafune).  Music in the game also very much lives up to their standards, pushing the Super Nintendo's MIDI capabilities to their fullest to deliver a grandiose, orchestral soundtrack accompanying every step of the journey.  It's easily among the best on the platform, and one that I feel often gets overlooked when conversations turn to great RPG soundtracks.

Breath of Fire came out in the era when accurate translations of Japanese games were still relatively unheard of, and is no different in that regard.  However, it does fare a bit better than Capcom's usual fare (and especially the sequel, Breath of Fire II) due to the fact that its translation was not done in house, but provided by its publisher, Squaresoft.  It was handled by one Ted Woolsey, however, so it does come with a lot of his usual embellishments, which may prove distracting to some.  The abbreviated item names (all trimmed to fit a 6-character space) can also be somewhat confusing, but the game does at least provide descriptions for every item the player collects via the question mark icon on the item menu, so discerning exactly what an item is and does is never a matter of trial and error.

On the downside, Breath of Fire did come out on the tail end of the era when RPGs were still largely "grindfests", and the game does require a fair bit of fighting enemies just to power up and earn gold for equipment (though considerably less so as the game goes on).  Many of the bosses in the game also largely come down to battles of attrition, which can be a bit frustrating as they continue to fight well after their visible health bars are depleted, leaving the player in the dark about how much more damage they have to inflict before the fight will end.  And if you simply don't have enough resources to hold out until then... well, you're doing that whole fight over once you power up a bit.

This ironically seems to go in the opposite direction in the latter half of the game, though, as many of the more powerful and unbalanced character abilities begin to surface.  Karn's fusion ability in particular can be comically broken, as the characters it creates are not only a fusion of those characters' abilities, but a combined total of all their stats.  Thus you end up with party members who have several hundred more HP than your standard ones and who can inflict vast amounts of damage, usually enough to one-shot weaker enemies and deal hundreds of points a round to the bosses.

There are also a few of the usual annoying design quirks of the era, particularly in the form of items that require a huge amount of grinding/sheer luck to attain.  One in particular that comes to mind is Ox's ultimate weapon, which requires the player to sell numerous random items from their own inventory at the flea mart and hope a random visitor just happens to have it (and that they have enough cash for it when it finally comes up).  The odds of this happening are extremely low, so completionists can expect to be at it for many, many hours.

All said, Breath of Fire is a solid and largely overlooked RPG on the Super Nintendo.  While it may not be the strongest title in terms of story or characterizations, its gameplay shines through, providing the player with plenty of interesting sights to see, locations to explore and secrets to uncover.  A well-polished, enjoyable and charming adventure that's well worth a look.

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Squaresoft, Capcom, Ubisoft
Platform: Super Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U Virtual Console
Released: 1994, 2001, 2014
Recommended version:  The GBA port gives greater experience/cash rewards to make the game flow faster, but also has substantially worse music and more washed out visuals (an attempt to make them lighter for easier viewing on a portable screen).  So I'd recommend sticking to the SNES version or one of its ports (Wii U or 3DS).