With the retranslation patch which comes with qol and various other improvements? Genuinely one of the best snes rpgs. Has some genuinely poignant character and narrative moments and no grinding whatsoever. An improvement on the first game in every regard. Feels like the first true Breath of Fire game and really shows the groundwork that BoFIII eventually built upon.
The vanilla release? Somehow worse than the first game in every way. Grindier, slower, and even harder to understand.
It's crazy how far those fixes go. I'd recommend breath of fire 2 with the retranslation any day of the week (on top of just avoiding the first game altogether) but it's incredibly upsetting how capcom not only did basically nothing for the translation and grinding in the gba port, but continues to re-release the vanilla snes release without any improvements.
Obviously, it's not totally fair to say "I think this game is great because there's a patch to fix most of its issues", but I'd bump it at least down to a 3 stars if the grinding and tedium were kept the same, because the writing really shines when it's actually comprehensible English.
The vanilla release? Somehow worse than the first game in every way. Grindier, slower, and even harder to understand.
It's crazy how far those fixes go. I'd recommend breath of fire 2 with the retranslation any day of the week (on top of just avoiding the first game altogether) but it's incredibly upsetting how capcom not only did basically nothing for the translation and grinding in the gba port, but continues to re-release the vanilla snes release without any improvements.
Obviously, it's not totally fair to say "I think this game is great because there's a patch to fix most of its issues", but I'd bump it at least down to a 3 stars if the grinding and tedium were kept the same, because the writing really shines when it's actually comprehensible English.