Breath of Fire
Reviewed by James Wardle
It is another start to a popular RPG (Role Playing
Game) series. They start off as a low class RPG such
as Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy, then it reaches a
number where everybody starts playing and crawl
backwards through the series to play how it started
off. For example, hardly anybody (especially in
Europe) played a Final Fantasy game until Final
Fantasy VII was released, and not many people tried
playing Breath of Fire until the third installment
came out for the Sony Playstation. Going back in time
though, how does the game shape up to Breath of Fire
II, III and the terrible Breath of Fire IV? Well all
I shall say in this paragraph alone is that the game
is great, but not as special as Breath of Fire III,
Mainly because this is as linear as it gets.
The ring is our treasure! It gives us strength!
Ryu, Nina, Wyndia and the infamous goo balls have
been in every Breath of Fire game to date. They
are... Or should I say right here? The story starts
off about a dragon boy called Ryu who starts his
adventure sleeping, he is having a tough time as his
village is burnt down. He goes off to save the world,
resue his sister and defeat the evil Zog and the Dark
Dragons once and for all. On his journey, Ryu meets
many people with their individual goals. Nina wishes
to defeat Zog too, she is hiding a secret too. There
is Bo, the hot headed hunter of the bunch who once
led his men to victory against the Dark Dragobns,
until he was outnumbered. Then there is Karn, who
wants to learn more about himself and become a master
thief and starts off his adventure sleeping, Gobi a
merchant who loves money and 'is only with you to pay
back the money'. Ox, a member of a strong tribe who
just wants peace and quiet for his soon to be child,
he too starts his adventure sleeping, Bleu a sleeping
snake woman who just wants peace. Finally, we have
Mogu, a sleeping moal person who is having a bad
dream . Those are the main characters in Breath of
Fire , each of them have their individual powers and
spells, Ryu can change in to a dragon, Gobi can morph
in to a fish, Nina in to a bear and Bo can trravel in
forests and hunt animals on the world map. Good stuff!
Breath of Fire Advance is not just a direct port of
the Super Nintrendo version. The battle system is
much more neater and colourful, this time with
avatars of characters and easier to understand
colored bars for HP (Health Points) and AP (Ability
Points). Ryu or whoever is leading the party can now
run with the B button to make playing faster. You can
also exchange items with other Breath of Fire Advance
players with the link cable, this works great because
if you need a gold bar and can't afford one, you can
get a friend to give you theirs and vice-versa, it
sort of works in the form of the PokŽmon games for
the Gameboy Color. The story, characters and items do
remain the same though, except with some differences
like sharper detail.
The gameplay is quite similar to the other Breath of
Fire gammes which follow this great game. You are
allowed four playable characters in your party at
anyone time (Breath of Fire II) instead of the three
from the Playstation versions. You can attack with a
characters weapon, which would be a sword in Ryu's
case or a hammer in Ox's term. You can select magical
spells like turning in to a dragon, summoning fish,
fire spells or even recovery and revival spells with
Nina, Bo, Ox and Bleu. You can select 'Auto' to like
everybody attack the enemy themselves while you sit
back, watch or do something else whilst waiting, Run
away if you are sick of the constant random battles,
Defend to recive less damage, change a characters
postiton between the back row (less damage to both
you and the enemy) or front row (more damage for both
you and the enemy). Finally, you may have already
guessed, use an item. You will be using items a lot
in this game, most of the bosses you face are
challenging and if Nina is not in your active party,
you will need a lot of herbs and other cure items.
Plus there is many battle items such as the Earth
Key, that makes all enemies lose 30HP, sounds useless
but great near the start of the adventure.
On the field screen (Town, dungeon, world map) you
can select a different character to take the lead,
and the best thing is you don't even have to have
Nina or Ryu in the party at most points, to make the
game more challenging. If you have Bo in the lead, he
can go through forests and shoot enemies, If Mogu is
in the lead he can dig holes to find items, Karn can
pick locks, Gobi can swim, Nina can fly and Ox can
smash things up. Ryu have the most fun though,
fishing. If you ever find a well or a small lake,
press A and if Ryu has the fishing rod and some bait
equipped, he can do a bit of uncontrollable fishing,
added with a very cute theme tune.
It is a shame that the game is very non linear. The
point is to collect a number of keys, whih I didn't
even know I was meant to be collecting them until I
finished and I read the instruction booklet. Instead
of having a betterstory like the future Breath of
Fire games, you complete a task in this game and
don't know hwat to do nex,t so you talk to someone
and they say 'There is a ghost in the tower to the
east', so you go to that said tower and get an item,
then speak to someone else in the town and they say
'There is an old man who likes antiques in the town
to the west' so you go there. Once you give the man
his antique, he says thank you and tells you to go
somewhere else. Most of the game is sadly like that
and becomes quite linear until the final few hours,
you are always left wondering what the heck to do next.
I did say that boss fights are very hard, and there
is more to them then what meets the eye. With 99
percent (and theres a lot of bosses to deal with!) of
them, they attack them until their health goes down
to the bottom of a horizontle red bar. Instead of
dying, a message comes up saying 'Boss name goes here
gets up and fights' and you must deal a lot more
damage to him or her or it, sometimes thousands more
health points are needed to slay the boss. Quite a
nice touch but usually both repetitive and annoying.
The dungeons are usually long but rewarding, yet
sometimes plain annoying. Once you get sick of about
ten random encounters within the first two floors of
a tower, you will wish to use the item you found
earlier to reduce the enemy encounters for a short
while. Usually the dungeons are just triggering past
caves or going up a tower, or the most impressive yet
over used, the moving tile puzzles.
The gameplay is something good about Breath of Fire,
although it is not all that great due to the annoying
fact that you need to figure out for yourself where
to go next and which duungeon to go to, you would
hate to travel up a tower to be greeted by an
obstical which you need another character to over
come. By the point you get all the characters in your
party, you will be very sick of changing them all the
time to make sure Ox can break down a wall and Karn
can pick the lock behind it etc.
I love the graphics on Breath of Fire as they are
quite impressive for the Gameboy Advance, and is a
contender for the best looking game alongside Rayman
Advance and Broken Sword Advance. The animations
which range from Nina's standard attack to Gobi
swimming are all pussing the Gameboy Advance hardware
to its limit, it is very good to both watch and be
part of it. As for the sound, terrific although it
sometimes carrys on a bit and you will get bored of
the same inn and item store music...
Finally, Breath of Fire is indeed a Gameboy Advance
title which shouldn't be missed. It may not be as
good as Breath of Fire III, But is much, much better
then Breath of Fire IV.
Good
- The game which started it all
- Great graphics and sound
- Good characters
- Very long
Bad
- Mostly finding objects
- Very non-linear
- Not enough character development
Summary:
Graphics - 9/10
Music - 8/10
Sound - 7/10
Sameplay - 6/10
Story - 6/10
Ending - 4/10
Challenge - 6/10
Enjoyment - 8/10
Lifespan - 7/10
Overall - 7/10