A couple of months ago an oomf recommended I should play through Breath of Fire. It was always a game I wanted to play so I could eventually play the popular third entry on PS1. So I’m going through the series in order. I almost forgot to play this one until looking at my list and going “oh right I should get on it.” Enough exposition, time for my opinion on the game.

Well the game starts off pretty promising with a rather dark opening. You know things are serious when you begin in your town all destroyed with your sister kidnapped by the villain. Now it’s off on your own to discover the world and save the day. The character you start off with is named Ryu, who I accidentally named Ryuu. So he will be called that for the rest of the review. I’ll talk about the party members as a whole later.

The game when you’re actually playing isn’t the most interesting as Ryuu can only attack and nothing else. Even when you get to bosses it’s just a game of spamming attacks and herbs until you win. I will say that I do like how you can see an enemy’s health bar. Even bosses are the same way though for some reason their health becomes invisible when you knock it down all the way first. It’s not like that for every boss but it’s for a majority of them. I like how after getting the Earth key it doesn’t end all happy as a whole town gets destroyed for it.

Alright, time for a long paragraph. It’s early to do it but let me talk about every party member. Ryuu is a hard hitter who is good with swords and boomerangs. About a third of the game, you’re introduced to transformations where Ryuu can become a powerful dragon to do massive damage to enemies. He’s a character you probably want out at all times. Nina is your white magic user who can’t hit hard but has a ton of magic to do stuff like heal, give buffs, and give enemies statuses. She spends the early game being on Earth key duty but she ends up being pretty helpful especially for bosses. Gary is a wolf bow user who does good damage and has weak magic that’s good for the early game. Sadly he lacks much AP and he kind of falls behind imo by the late game. He can also hunt on the overworld which is helpful if there is something like ivory you wanna obtain. You also need him to walk through trees in the overworld for some reason. Danq is fast but ok in power. He may seem underwhelming at first but he can later fuse with party members to become really strong. He ends up being one of your strongest units in the game. Hope you find his fuse powers because they will be a huge help. He can also disarm traps and find trap floors but sadly the game doesn’t use this much along with opening locked gates. Gobi is weird, he’s got moderate power but he’s slow and his AP moves only work in the water. He can also host shops but I only found it useful once to get Angel armor. He can also later on help with transportation in the water. Bild is your hardest hitter but slowest character. Though if you ask me, he didn’t feel as strong as I hoped and his slow speed hinders him a lot especially in random encounters. He also can break down walls and knock fruit out of trees. Deis is a black magic user and she gets insanely strong magic and levels up really fast. She’s definitely one of the best members in the game and she gets a ton of AP too. Her only disadvantages are her weak attack stat and somewhat low defense. It’s just a shame you get her so late. Mogu…okay did anyone else find him kind of worthless? He isn’t that strong, his stats aren’t too high, and his ability to flee by digging doesn’t even work in dungeons. He can dig in the overworld to find secrets but I didn’t find almost any use for him which is a shame as his story was quite enjoyable.

When it came to the actual battles, I think it got better once I got more of the team assembled as there is a fair bit of strategy to have when going into enemy encounters and boss encounters. Though by the end of the game I was mostly rocking the set of Ryuu, Nina, Deis, and a fused Danq. Since his dragon form requires Gary, Bild, and Gobi, the only other party member left is Mogu and I sure wasn’t using him. This also meant a lot of my strategy went into power unless I wanted some good magic or some buffs from Nina. There were a ton of auto battle moments which is odd because I almost never use that feature in other games. Also I find it a shame transformations are so limited too, basically only using one move. I think the battle system kind of wavers throughout the game even if it does have times I do enjoy it.

Traveling the world can be fun but god I sucked at figuring out where to go half the time. This was more of a me issue personally but I sometimes was confused at what I was doing wrong only to learn it was something small like I didn’t talk to a specific NPC. I think it’s because a lot of them spout very generic dialogue with some even repeating in the same room no less. It made me less motivated to listen to townsfolk as they don’t feel real half the time. Also you can call me out for me not paying attention but I did have to look at a walkthrough at times for help. I will say at least the story is pretty nice for what’s there and there are even times NPCs will react differently to who’s in the front. Also, if you see something you can’t interact with, write it down and you’ll be thankful for that when you need to go back and get it.

Can’t forget about the dungeons which are alright, they kind of vary for me. Some kind of blend in together but others can have some very creative ideas. I was surprised how much this game uses mode 7 ngl. They aren’t too challenging or long even if you’re getting every chest you see. These are some of the more fun places in the game. My only notable gripe with them is that a couple of them for no reason have a horribly high encounter rate. I’m thankful it’s only like two or three but why is it even a thing? I also never really found any boss to be that hard but some do present some interesting ideas like the one where normal attacks do more damage until it stops looking blurry.

Honestly I don’t have much more to say as the game was a progressive line for me as I continue to moderately enjoy myself and there were still moments that surprised me. I also failed to mention yet was I used a hack to basically give the game a rewritten script and it also added a run button. I got very unhealthy about using it. I normally don’t try to use hacks when reviewing RPGs and I don’t know why I even did for this one but I think it was for the better just for the better script. It also gives Danq his original design but was edited to look a little less blackface. So how about something cool I witnessed? There’s a moment with a character that caught me off guard when it happened and it’s really cool what you get for helping the character out. The final part of the game though kind of blows. The dungeon is fine if nothing challenging though running from most encounters probably helped with that. I already felt my level was high enough that I didn’t need more. The last few bosses are just lame, you just turn on the Infinite form for Ryuu and just attack, attack, and attack! It’s dull, it’s boring and it throws out any cool strategies you could have. I mean don’t get me wrong, the form is cool but like I didn’t want just using one move over and over to be the finale. Well at least when it’s over there is a nice ending and I felt satisfied. Though I kind of wish Nina said something to Ryuu before he left, I kept thinking she’d confess to him with love but no, no dialogue. Maybe the sequel finishes that part off or maybe I’m just supposed to use my imagination, only time can tell…

The game graphically looks pretty nice for the SNES. I like the sprite work presented here especially for the battles. I think the locations could use a little more variety but I think it looks nice regardless. I like how some sprites for shops have an animation when you finish shopping. Some of the bigger sprites look so cool. There’s even a couple of cutscenes that always get me excited but man I wish there were more. It’s overall a good looking game. The music is also quite good with the composers being Yasuaki Fujita, Mari Yamaguchi, Minae Fujii, and Yoko Shimomura. I really like the grand feel a lot of them have as they fit the setting and genre the game is in. I feel like it reminds me of some other Capcom games on the system but I can’t remember what it was. There aren’t really any bad songs but goddamnit I can’t stand the house theme as it plays every single time and it got so repetitive that I would eventually make my own lyrics that are so bad and uncreative I’m not telling you them. I also wanna give a shoutout to when you’re getting ready to fight the final boss for real, the overworld music becomes the one from the beginning and you first hear this coming out of the first town again. I was actually getting so hyped hearing it again!! Seriously, it’s good stuff.

Game’s can have their ups and downs. Breath of Fire is not perfect but I still had a good time with it. The setting and story is nice along with a fun party. I think the battle system could use some work, moreso just balancing the group better. I think it’s a good start considering how little Capcom had done with the genre at that point in time. There were better RPGs on the system by 1993, I even reviewed one of them a little while ago but I expect going on past this, it’ll be even better. I hope Capcom will impress me more as I move forward into the series. I should also mention the game would later get ported to GBA but I can’t tell you if it’s any good, sorry. I just don’t know much about it. It’s also available on NSO if you want an easy official option but be warned it still uses the old Squaresoft localization. Breath of Fire is worth playing and I see this as the beginning for what’s yet to come. I’ll probably play the sequel sometime this year so expect it probably in about 5-6 months. I’ll see you around!