There’s a gettin place I usually go to find old games, and the admin for that place basically said the patched version of this game is too complicated and he’s straight up just not going to update it anymore on his websight. I’m mostly interested in this series for the later psx titles, but I figure if I’m going to play it I might as well play the best version, and it can’t be that complex, right? How bad could it really be?
Folks, I’m so glad you asked. Let me tell you how bad it could really be.
First of all, there’s a heavily reworked script that fixes the apparently poor translation from the nineties. It’s the twenty first century now so there’s no reason to play this game with a script localized by Japanese technical writers for electrical appliances that capcom found on whatever the nineties equivalent of fiverr was. We have the technology to make it better stronger faster. But in order to do that, the game has to do this annoying checksum procedure first. You also have to generate a special .srm file first or the patch won’t work. The odds of that working properly are about 50:50 and you have to sit through about a two minute screen for each attempt. I’ve played a lot of retranslated SNES patches and I’ve never in my life heard of any other game that requires this bizarre step. It’s a pain in the ass but ultimately worth getting through if that were the only thing you had to worry about. It’s not though, not even close.
The rebalancing patch is completely separate from the retranslation and offers various quality of life improvements for characters, adjusted exp and gold, among others. There are, however, an absurd amount of different features and options for this patch as well. Where do I start?
Do you want the encounter rate reduced and the exp and gold and item drop rates boosted to compensate, or do you hate yourself? Pick one or the other. Did you maybe want the main character to have his dragon form completely neutered, you know, the main thing the series is known for, and replaced with a bland magic user build? What’s that, no, you never asked for that even once? Well, the patch creator took it upon himself to make that anyway so you can pick one or the other. Did you want the standard opening screen, or did you want one custom made with one of the worst anime opening theme songs you ever heard in your life? Or maybe “through the fire and flames” by dragonforce (really!)? Well, he went ahead and did it anyway, so go ahead and pick one. How about one where the shaman fusing power gets a little bit unfucked? Oh, that’s a different patch, but go ahead and put that in if you want to.
Oh wait, I almost forgot to ask. Did you want any of these patches… with the retranslation patch? I mean, of course you do, why the hell wouldn’t you, the vanilla version is on switch online anyway. Then guess what, I hope you liked that checksum screen, cause you have to sit through that fucker again, and again, and again, for each individual patch you want.
I know exactly what the admin means now. To host this, you have to to first pick retranslated or not, then dragon or caster ryu, then normal or reduced encounters, then fusing fixed or not, then the lame anime opening screen or the one from planet earth. That’s 32 different permutations for this stupid ass patch, and each one could set you up for failure and time wasted by that damn checksum screen. There’s no way a children’s toy from over thirty years ago could be worth all this trouble, is there? Should I even bother playing Breath of Fire II if it really needs so many skin grafts to be playable? Does it really make that much of a difference?
…yeah, it kind of does. It’s actually pretty good now. I give Breath of Fire II for the SNES, the “1. retranslated 2. standard ryu 3. less encounter rate 4. unfusing less patch 5. non anime-ass opening screen“ version three and a half stars out of five
Folks, I’m so glad you asked. Let me tell you how bad it could really be.
First of all, there’s a heavily reworked script that fixes the apparently poor translation from the nineties. It’s the twenty first century now so there’s no reason to play this game with a script localized by Japanese technical writers for electrical appliances that capcom found on whatever the nineties equivalent of fiverr was. We have the technology to make it better stronger faster. But in order to do that, the game has to do this annoying checksum procedure first. You also have to generate a special .srm file first or the patch won’t work. The odds of that working properly are about 50:50 and you have to sit through about a two minute screen for each attempt. I’ve played a lot of retranslated SNES patches and I’ve never in my life heard of any other game that requires this bizarre step. It’s a pain in the ass but ultimately worth getting through if that were the only thing you had to worry about. It’s not though, not even close.
The rebalancing patch is completely separate from the retranslation and offers various quality of life improvements for characters, adjusted exp and gold, among others. There are, however, an absurd amount of different features and options for this patch as well. Where do I start?
Do you want the encounter rate reduced and the exp and gold and item drop rates boosted to compensate, or do you hate yourself? Pick one or the other. Did you maybe want the main character to have his dragon form completely neutered, you know, the main thing the series is known for, and replaced with a bland magic user build? What’s that, no, you never asked for that even once? Well, the patch creator took it upon himself to make that anyway so you can pick one or the other. Did you want the standard opening screen, or did you want one custom made with one of the worst anime opening theme songs you ever heard in your life? Or maybe “through the fire and flames” by dragonforce (really!)? Well, he went ahead and did it anyway, so go ahead and pick one. How about one where the shaman fusing power gets a little bit unfucked? Oh, that’s a different patch, but go ahead and put that in if you want to.
Oh wait, I almost forgot to ask. Did you want any of these patches… with the retranslation patch? I mean, of course you do, why the hell wouldn’t you, the vanilla version is on switch online anyway. Then guess what, I hope you liked that checksum screen, cause you have to sit through that fucker again, and again, and again, for each individual patch you want.
I know exactly what the admin means now. To host this, you have to to first pick retranslated or not, then dragon or caster ryu, then normal or reduced encounters, then fusing fixed or not, then the lame anime opening screen or the one from planet earth. That’s 32 different permutations for this stupid ass patch, and each one could set you up for failure and time wasted by that damn checksum screen. There’s no way a children’s toy from over thirty years ago could be worth all this trouble, is there? Should I even bother playing Breath of Fire II if it really needs so many skin grafts to be playable? Does it really make that much of a difference?
…yeah, it kind of does. It’s actually pretty good now. I give Breath of Fire II for the SNES, the “1. retranslated 2. standard ryu 3. less encounter rate 4. unfusing less patch 5. non anime-ass opening screen“ version three and a half stars out of five