Breath of Fire II

released on Dec 02, 1994

The incredible sequel to the best-selling RPG hit Breath of Fire is here! You are the last member of the Dragon clan, fighting to rid the world of a growing evil. A cast of unusual and exciting companions joins you in your adventures across a wondrous land full of magic and mystery. You'll find strange mystic items, memorable monsters and exotic locations in your quest to conquer evil. There's strategy and spellcasting galore in the hours of compelling action and adventure that awaits you. Breath of Fire II is the ultimate in RPG excitement!


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Pretty great. Worthy of being compared to chrono trigger and ff6. Probably the worst of the three, but worth being grouped together

This, like ActRaiser, is another white whale of mine that I bought long ago on Wii Virtual Console but never ended up completing. I even gave this one a second try years later when I tried to get through the GBA port, but I ended up putting it down then too. I pledged to myself that this WOULD be the time I finish Breath of Fire II, and I wouldn't let myself give up. I certainly did kinda wanna give up at some points, but after 30 or so hours and getting the best ending, I finally have beaten this game from my childhood.

Breath of Fire II is a 1994 JRPG made by Capcom and released in America in 1995. It follows the story of Ryu (not that one), who grows up in a small village until the day his father and sister disappear, and the entire village forget who he is. He escapes with another orphan, a dog person named Bow, and go to a nearby cave where they're attacked by a horrible monster. Following a time jump to Ryu and Bow as adults, they live in a completely different town doing odd jobs as "Rangers", and after trying to clear Bow's name when he's framed as a thief, a cascading series of events reveals that there is more to both of their destinies than either of them ever could've imagined.

Breath of Fire II on the SNES is pretty infamous for having a pretty terrible English translation, and boy howdy is that reputation ever deserved. Characters whose names don't stay consistent, poorly localized place names, basic spelling and grammar mistakes, constantly mechanical and unnatural dialogue. They don't completely prevent either understanding or appreciating the story, but they constantly get in the way and they really made me with I had picked up the Japanese version of this on VC instead. That all said, the story that's there is pretty good. It has very strong themes around sacrifice and what it means to be a good leader. There aren't many musical tracks, but the emotional ones really stick their landing when they're used (and what's there ranges from alright to pretty good, especially some of the unique boss themes). While I certainly wouldn't recommend the game wholly on the merits of the writing, I think it really speaks to the quality of the narrative that the story manages to be quite good despite the poor localization. For what it's worth, the GBA port does improve the translation, but from what I remember, that version's translation is still bad (although there has been a fan re-translation that apparently does a pretty good job of fixing things).

The mechanics are pretty basic for a JRPG. You have a party of four for battles, you have members that leave and join as the story goes on, you can swap out your favorites but sometimes you need one specifically for one section, Ryu always has to be in the party. There's a shaman-fusing system that can give certain characters big stat boosts that last until they're either killed or knocked to low health, but it's easy to miss a lot of those shamans and the game is still overall an experience that shouldn't feel very foreign to anyone who's played RPGs before. However, this game has its fair share of rough patches that can really test your patience at times.

In addition to some routinely very vague signposting (whether that's an effect of the localization or if the game has always been that way is anyone's guess), the game has a really uneven difficulty curve. Sudden difficulty spikes of normal enemies and bosses are quite common, and the XP and gold you earn is relatively low overall (they even made you earn 2 or 3 times as much of each per battle in the GBA port). You will very likely need to do some grinding at some point through the game, especially if you realize too late (like I nearly did) that only Bow can learn multi-person healing spells (don't make my mistake and leave him by the wayside! XD). It's certainly not Final Fantasy III-levels of vindictively hard, but the last dungeon or two of the game is pretty damn long and can really test your patience after a while.

The visual design and presentation of the game are quite nice. Given this came out the same year as FFIV, it's certainly not the best looking game on the system, but it still has some nice character and monster designs and some very fluid battle animations (especially on the big, pretty character sprites during battle). As previously mentioned, the music can get a bit repetitive for overworld and dungeon themes (to the point the game even has an option to just turn off the music, as if it expects you to put on your own music while grinding XP), but they do change after certain story events for a nice change of pace.

Verdict: Recommended. Even though I really was struggling at certain points to keep my motivation up during the difficulty spikes, the fact that I'm still considering doing a playthrough of this in Japanese to see that version of the script makes me think that I liked this game more than that initial emotional response. It certainly isn't Final Fantasy (although I'd' say I definitely enjoyed this more than FFIV last year), but it's a commendable effort by Capcom that has really piqued my interest in checking out the rest of the series. If you really want a SNES RPG and want something a little bit different than SquareSoft's stuff, Breath of Fire II may not be the best out there, but it's certainly not a bad choice.

On one hand, this game has one of the most hilariously bad translations of all time. On the other, the fact that nobody at Nintendo was checking means that they got to put blood and religion in this sucker in 1994 and it kicks ass, so who can say if it's bad or not. The fact that they let it stand as-written for the GBA release is harder to defend, but it is extremely funny to crack open this script, remove a single swear and one (1) reference to Othello, and then call it a day.

But you know what? The script isn't actually mistranslated the vast majority of the time. You can get the intended emotional beats and gameplay instruction. The fact that this sucker remains a very solid game despite it stands in testament to the strengths of the game.

The first Breath of Fire endeared itself to me with nothing more than its experimental spirit, with all sorts of silly ideas for mechanics and area gimmicks thrown into the mix to keep you on your toes. The sequel is a bit less goofy, and focuses on refining some of those ideas, or at least remixing them. For example, the character fusion idea got turned into the shaman fusion system, which applies more equally to all characters, has more depth, and deactivates if a character goes below a certain health threshold so it's no longer just objectively correct to have it on all the time. I even found it factoring into my party composition, my god.

That's not to say there's nothing new: the town building aspect of the game was more novel back in 1994, and while it is an absolutely baffling mix of mutually exclusive choices that you don't know you're making, it's at least a fun idea. Honestly, making you choose things permanently (you can't give this poor beggar a house without sacrificing that slot for someone who can actually help you mechanically) isn't a bad idea, but everything is so arbitrary so as to be nonsense. I suspect future games will bring this back and remove the friction entirely so I'm glad we have this entry at least trying something.

I think it's ultimately the story and presentation that shine, here: you have a variety of party members again, and their battle sprites just ooze personality. Capcom absolutely the best to ever do it these are some fuckin great furries dude. Bosch Doggy walked so that Vanillaware could put a cunty owl sorceress in Unicorn Overlord. The actual plot has an actual focus and development now unlike in the first game, and while everything that happens is very broad, archetypical melodrama, it's well executed enough that-- again, even through the butchered script-- I could lose myself and say 'hell yeah' at it. Sometimes you just want the mysterious goofball in your party revealing his tragic backstory dude! Sometimes you have a duel with your old friend on a bridge during your unexpected and bittersweet homecoming! What the hell else do you want this is the good stuff!!

Holding the game back is the fact that the combat is the most workhorse stuff possible. Even though every character has unique abilities, very few are even slightly interesting. Offensive magic is extremely spotty in terms of effectiveness so most fighting is just mashing attack and healing when you need it, and only towards the end were a few more interesting bosses thrown at me. Levels are really important here, but benched characters do not gain XP and this is a pain in the ass.

In fact, it's pretty interesting to come to this after playing some old JRPGs that famously "aged poorly" or "are grindy" or whatever and be able to conclude that like, Dragon Quest 1 is way more mechanically interesting in the combat. The random battles in BOF2 are insanely frequent, uninteresting, and largely cannot be mitigated. The enemy sprites look absolutely sick as hell though. I think Capcom still being new to the genre shows here, as this is kinda what people who played these games as kids and haven't touched them since think NES JRPGs are like.

Overall, Firey Breath The Second gets a heck yeah from me. I am stoked to see what sorts of shenanigans they were able to get up to on the Playstation.

Pretty substantial improvement over the first game but still far from being a great game. The random encounter rate is absolutely insane, most of the dungeons are gimmicky and a slog to get through and the combat is still barebones and leaving it on "auto" worked for 70% of the game. Besides that, the shaman system is a very interesting idea but it requires a massive amount of backtracking everytime you get to low health.
As for the story, it has some interesting ideas but doesn't flesh them out enough to leave a lasting impact (this point, however, might be due to the awful localization though).
All-in-all, it has Katt in it so it's a good game.

It's larger, bigger, deeper than Breath of Fire 1, but strangely works worse.
Everything bout visuals, plot, world and exploring is perfect. Characters are awesome, locations are beautiful, etc.
When it comes to combat, though...... nahhhhhh it's illegally annoying. The amount of random encounters is indescribable. There's no any variety during fighting, like it was in BoF1. Mb cuz of items, that are pretty boring. (example: u can heal 100hp at once, when u got 300+ hp; 20ap at once when u got, like 200+ ap n this item also takes 20Hp when u use it and so on). Last boss was just "HEAL - PUNCH - AP - HEAL - HEAL - AP - PUNCH". This part of the game barely works properly.

U still gotta play it though. It's a cool gameplay experience!

While this game did age a lot, not having a good localization and even some technical problems this games artstyle and simple but enjoyable story really made it a good experience.
The Ost is also astounding, i hope Capcom remakes this gem one day