Picked up and put down this game multiple times over the span of 2-3 years. A bit scuffed of a translation, but it oozes soul and you literally play as a dude who can transform into multiple different dragons, so it's awesome. Also the soundtrack is fire
Played about 8 hours. Love the "elevator music" and the spritework is really nice. The characters writing's decent and the combat is fun and flashy enough to be enjoyable. Easily my biggest complaint though and why I'm stopping for now is the snail's pace the story is going at. I enjoy the relaxing vibes but it's definitely taking too long for the actual plot to get going. Definitely want to come back to this at some point, as there is a lot to love, it just needs to start picking up.
It's a very clunky game in many situations, but it tries to smooth things out, sometimes well, sometimes ineptly.
The final straw was that while learning the magic tree I decided to make it a Peco wizard as it seemed logical to me, later I found out that it turns out it is a wizard for mages, and Peco as I knew it is pure physical power. I decided to remove this wizard, but to my regret it was impossible. I decided to ignore it and train Nina and Momo, unfortunately for me Peco was needed on the team to talk to the tree. That was my last straw, the accumulated irritation.
What annoyed me:
- Very slow and inconvenient world exploring, constant backtracking and no teleport, it pissed me off quite a bit
- EXTREMELY high frequency of random battles
- Clunky fishing mini-game(Which is still needed for one of the masters, lol)
- Changing squad members, changing skills between characters can only be done at camp, which you have to camp, go in and open a book every time, and all that loading and time. Plus, it partially devalues taverns in town
- The dungeons are almost completely devoid of their individuality
- The game is as similar to the SNES games as possible, being a PS1 game. I easily forgave that to some Dragon Quest 7 because of its great dialog with NPCs and co-parties and interesting exploration of locations. This one, on the other hand, is just cheap archaic.
What I did like:
- I am very impressed with the difficulty of the fights, they are quite challenging and there is no feeling of boredom during them almost ever
- The game has auto-fighting, a very useful thing when you go to low-level locations.
- I liked the soundtrack
- The pacing isn't something expressive, but it's on the level
- High level of 2D animation, really liked the attention to detail
It's unlikely I'll ever want to replay it, I have very huge hopes for its sequel, which I've had parts of called "The most underrated game for the PS 1".
The final straw was that while learning the magic tree I decided to make it a Peco wizard as it seemed logical to me, later I found out that it turns out it is a wizard for mages, and Peco as I knew it is pure physical power. I decided to remove this wizard, but to my regret it was impossible. I decided to ignore it and train Nina and Momo, unfortunately for me Peco was needed on the team to talk to the tree. That was my last straw, the accumulated irritation.
What annoyed me:
- Very slow and inconvenient world exploring, constant backtracking and no teleport, it pissed me off quite a bit
- EXTREMELY high frequency of random battles
- Clunky fishing mini-game(Which is still needed for one of the masters, lol)
- Changing squad members, changing skills between characters can only be done at camp, which you have to camp, go in and open a book every time, and all that loading and time. Plus, it partially devalues taverns in town
- The dungeons are almost completely devoid of their individuality
- The game is as similar to the SNES games as possible, being a PS1 game. I easily forgave that to some Dragon Quest 7 because of its great dialog with NPCs and co-parties and interesting exploration of locations. This one, on the other hand, is just cheap archaic.
What I did like:
- I am very impressed with the difficulty of the fights, they are quite challenging and there is no feeling of boredom during them almost ever
- The game has auto-fighting, a very useful thing when you go to low-level locations.
- I liked the soundtrack
- The pacing isn't something expressive, but it's on the level
- High level of 2D animation, really liked the attention to detail
It's unlikely I'll ever want to replay it, I have very huge hopes for its sequel, which I've had parts of called "The most underrated game for the PS 1".
This is a HUGELY underrated gem. Breath of Fire has always been kind of on the back end for some people and this one had the misfortune of coming out in the same year as FFVII. But this entry is a really good time. Clean animations with gorgeous sprites. A great soundtrack with one of my favorite boss themes of the era. And a BANG UP FANTASTIC fishing game. There are some downsides, the story is good but takes a bit to get going. Some puzzles are dumb. And the encounter rate is DUMB high at some points. But its still a fantastic time for anyone into JRPGs