Breath of Fire (1993)

I played this game back in the 90s by renting but did not finish it until many years later. I started it on emulator sometime around 2007 and played roughly half way through the game until stopping for an unknown reason. Several years later I picked up where I left off and 100% completed the game, using a guide to make sure I got everything.

My preferred party was Ryu, Bo, Ox and Karn (Gobi underwater though). This was for normal battles. For bosses I kept Ox and swapped the others for the girls; it was all about conserving the girls' mp for bosses. At end game the party was Karn's ultimate transformation Puka, Ryu, Bleu and last Mogu for random battles and Nina for bosses; Mogu does a little better attack damage. All party members were at least level 30, with the hero being 31, Nina being 39 and Bleu 41. Everyone had top equipment, including all of the dragon gear for Ryu.

This game has considerable nostalgia for me. Though it is not quite as good as FF4, FF6 and Chrono Trigger it is still one of my top RPGs and SNES games overall. The story, setting, characters, music and overall gameplay are all excellent. I particularly like how each character has a unique ability, the variety in tactics from who you use in battle and the general lack of bench warming (at least I do not remember characters lagging behind in xp). The only thing I did not like were the short text strings for names of characters, items and equipment.

Against my better judgment and not so great memories, I decided to give Breath of Fire another play through. And you know what? It’s way better than I remembered!

So this title came out spring of 1993, and I got it for Christmas of that year. I guess this means I was just about 9 years old when I played it. It’s amazing what clarity a couple decades can bring. :)

Then, I thought the game was hard, grindy, slow paced, and confusing. I've learned over the past two weeks, it’s really not quite any of those things. Here are some off-the-top-of-my-head observations, there are probably spoilers, depending on what you consider spoiling a 26 year old game.

1. It’s actually quite easy. You barely need to level at all.
2. Leveling is weird, they don’t tell you how much exp to the next level, and despite using everyone fairly consistently, I ended the game with Ox at level 30 and Bleu at level 46. I'm sure I could have beaten the game with everyone ten or more levels lower.
3. Spell/ability and equipment pacing/usage are weird. In the end game, I was inundated with equipment, particular for the women, and a lot of it was side- or downgrades. You can access Karn’s best weapon and Ryu’s best armor (or pretty close to them) not even halfway through the game. I didn’t use most of Nina’s spells. None of my characters, minus Karn's fusions, has enough HP to ever warrant the existence of Cura4 and barely Cura3.
4. Is there a point to the Gold Dragon? I can’t think of any undead boss fights between learning that and Rudra, rendering it basically useless.
5. The Rudra and Doof transformations come way too late in the game. I suppose I used Rudra for a couple bosses. Agni and Puka come WAY too soon after those. Really, the only point of Doof is to move dressers to get to Puka. Maybe I'm wrong, but I saw no reason for Debo to exist - no content takes place underwater once you learn the fusion, so I didn’t even use it.
6. Speaking of unused things, poor Mogu.
7. The music is cool, and I like how the changes in overworld and battle music helps give freshness throughout the game.
8. I thought the battle graphics were nice for 1993.
9. I remember being incredibly confused by the story as a kid. Turns out, it’s all pretty clear and you just have to pay attention. I wish there was a bit more character development, for both good and bad guys.
10. This is one of those games where you have to talk to everyone to find the one person who gets some event to trigger, and unfortunately, many if not most townsfolk all say the same damn thing. It's not always clear where you are and where you need to go next.
11. Why is Zog the only dark dragon who is a dragon?
12. Thank goodness for hindsight because the shit with Tyr and Agni and triggering the “good” ending is still super confusing. Hidden clue, the clue is bad, random location that you probably forgot about a long time ago, use said ability at a certain time. I know in my childhood years play through, I had the bad ending and left it that way for a long time until Nintendo Power or something had information about it.
13. Having Agni is required for the ending, but also makes all end game content worthlessly easy. This is not great planning on the devs part.

I know that sounds like a lot of negative, but honestly, other than the ease of the end game bosses, none of these truly detracted from the game play. BoF is still a fun play through of as classic a 16-bit RPG as you can get. Looking forward to the rest of the series which has been sitting in my backlog for as long as they've existed.