It's been a while since I've felt so conflicted about a game. On one hand, classic JRPGs and all of their tropes and quirks is a taste I've definitely developed an appreciation for and can't truly despise thanks to a certain level of endearment and nostalgia they hold. Sometimes I crave an RPG with that pulls no punches and goes all in with random encounters, standard turn-based combat, and just some asshole villain who wants nothing more than to take over the world. Breath of Fire has nothing you haven't seen countless times before in other RPGs but has a level of charm in its simplicity. Characters are flat actually character-wise, but their varied designs based on different fantasy races give them unique visual identities that makes them feel memorable based on appearance alone. Now another RPG where you team up with a blacksmith ox man, a little mole guy, a snake wizard lady, and some thief that can fuse into different chimeras is something I can say I can't name outside of this series. Enemy designs are equally as creative featuring all the different ghouls and skeletons as are so familiar alongside more unique monsters. This gives the world a sort of unique little boon of creativity that separates it from any other generic medieval RPG setting. Spritework is pleasing to the eye like in most RPGs of the time and I'm convinced JRPGs with the SNES sound front can't have bad soundtracks.
But my God I almost wonder how I spent so much time on this game as this was such a damn chore to play more times than not. As stated, combat is very basic, which isn't a damning offense on its own, but becomes hella annoying when later bosses become huge damage sponges and fights become a slog of watching characters continuously chip away at a boss's health until it dies. The main response to that is that maybe I'm underleveled or have poor gear? Well, there are extra unlockable abilities and gear which I did get, but that just made the game so easy it just played itself. The only two modes I could get out of this game by the endgame were tedious or piss easy, neither of which were very engaging. The game is nice enough to feature an auto battle option which at least saves shifting through dozens of menus to get a bunch of hits on an enemy, but I question how fun the developers thought this system was when skipping through it was their solution. Additionally, the padding and backtracking found in this game is just absurd, especially towards the latter portion of the story. Random encounters don't help with world map/dungeon traversal as the random enemy encounter rate is quite possibly the worst I've experienced in a game. Like I know the joke of getting piled by wild Zubats in caves when playing Pokemon but Breath of Fire's persistent enemies put even that to shame. Progression can be pretty cryptic as well. At one point, you literally have to accept what seems like an optional NPC quest outside of any area you've visited prior to progress the story with no hints on what you're supposed to do. The only way I can reason as to why stuff like this was added was to pad game length as artificially as possible. I made sure to keep a guide handy throughout a good portion of my playthrough because of how obtuse progression generally was. Too many times would you have to speak to a random unnamed NPC in order to trigger the story to continue.
As I stated previously, there were things I genuinely enjoyed about this game which is why I stuck through to the end. A lot of the concepts and the aesthetic was pretty special at times. The portion where you enter a character's dream world and defeat a villains corrupted consciousness was probably my favorite arc in this game's story as it was just the right amount of weird and zany to be interesting and featured some of the more legitimately tactical enemy encounters seen in this game. And it's a shame there are so many cool little ideas and touches that show how much the developers cared about this game when its age and mechanics hold the experience back so hard. I would really like to see a remake of this game with modern enhancements and an expanded story as I believe this world is too interesting to just be left in the past. Oh well, maybe I'll try the other games in the series at some point assuming these issues are ironed out in future installments.
But my God I almost wonder how I spent so much time on this game as this was such a damn chore to play more times than not. As stated, combat is very basic, which isn't a damning offense on its own, but becomes hella annoying when later bosses become huge damage sponges and fights become a slog of watching characters continuously chip away at a boss's health until it dies. The main response to that is that maybe I'm underleveled or have poor gear? Well, there are extra unlockable abilities and gear which I did get, but that just made the game so easy it just played itself. The only two modes I could get out of this game by the endgame were tedious or piss easy, neither of which were very engaging. The game is nice enough to feature an auto battle option which at least saves shifting through dozens of menus to get a bunch of hits on an enemy, but I question how fun the developers thought this system was when skipping through it was their solution. Additionally, the padding and backtracking found in this game is just absurd, especially towards the latter portion of the story. Random encounters don't help with world map/dungeon traversal as the random enemy encounter rate is quite possibly the worst I've experienced in a game. Like I know the joke of getting piled by wild Zubats in caves when playing Pokemon but Breath of Fire's persistent enemies put even that to shame. Progression can be pretty cryptic as well. At one point, you literally have to accept what seems like an optional NPC quest outside of any area you've visited prior to progress the story with no hints on what you're supposed to do. The only way I can reason as to why stuff like this was added was to pad game length as artificially as possible. I made sure to keep a guide handy throughout a good portion of my playthrough because of how obtuse progression generally was. Too many times would you have to speak to a random unnamed NPC in order to trigger the story to continue.
As I stated previously, there were things I genuinely enjoyed about this game which is why I stuck through to the end. A lot of the concepts and the aesthetic was pretty special at times. The portion where you enter a character's dream world and defeat a villains corrupted consciousness was probably my favorite arc in this game's story as it was just the right amount of weird and zany to be interesting and featured some of the more legitimately tactical enemy encounters seen in this game. And it's a shame there are so many cool little ideas and touches that show how much the developers cared about this game when its age and mechanics hold the experience back so hard. I would really like to see a remake of this game with modern enhancements and an expanded story as I believe this world is too interesting to just be left in the past. Oh well, maybe I'll try the other games in the series at some point assuming these issues are ironed out in future installments.