Breath of Fire II - The Playthrough

[NeoCracker]

So, after remembering the level of awesome possessed by Breath of Fire II, I am finally going to work on my playthrough of it again, this time around however I will be using the weakest members of the game to see how it will go.

Ryu of course I have to use. He's going to be the groups main source of damage between good physical abilities and his damaging dragon spells.

The first pick for weak member is obviously Spar. Spar has unimpressive stats, outside of a lot of AP, and a random assortment of spells. He really only get's 2 useful spells, Freeze and Defense Up X. Mind you, the second is awesome, and freeze isn't bad, but somewhat limited in use since that's his only offensive spell. I'm going to avoid teaching him Missle simple because that spell is scary with someone like Spar and sort of kills the point of this challange.

Next up is Jean. An even worse spell selection then Spar, he does boast a good defense. If I recall he get's teh games highest defense by the end, but his HP Doesn't hold up to your other main fighters like Rand and Ryu, and he lags far behind on the ability to unleash a can of whoop ass like both Ryu and Rand, and lacks the healing spells of Rand. And once again, while his defense is good he doesn't have the HP to back it up, and thus is an inferior tank to Rand and Ryu. He really doesn't have many redeeming qualities at all.

The fourth member was hard to pick. Rand was out, as that dude is a freaking tank. Bow was out as well for similar reasons, plus awesome healing abilities, which Rand also possesses mind you. Nina was a possibility due to low survivability, but wouldn't be to much of an issue with the defense parameter good set of Items helps a bit, and her versatility in spells more then makes up for it, so she was out. And I won't even go into why Bleu is to powerful for this.

That leaves Sten and Katt.

Katt is a pretty god damned beastly in offense, though even in her Shaman forms her magic is to miniscule to give to much of an advantage, so I'm not really taking that into consideration. Her defense is abymsal, but her speed and damage are insane.

Sten is like Katt to an extend, though he doesn't have near the physical punch. He does hit decent though, and gets some good access to spells, especially Missle. And in battles where his low defense may kill him fast, his R.I.P. ability can actually help keep him alive, impoving is Survivability over Katt. Normally Katt would be a great team mate, though in this particular party she may not have much use at all, in that she gains little in ways of defending herself, and the other party members dont' exactly help her out in any way. Her only method of healing is Cure 2 from Spar or Ryu and Items.

Sten, however, while adding a bit of versatility with his magic, and still being a good hitter, But still wouldn't match up the ever consistant damage output of Katt. So, I'll be going with Sten for the duration of the game over Katt.

One last thing to note, I'll be running it with the re-translation patch of the game, to hopefully make it's bad translation not so bad.


Anyway, let us embark on this magical journey of epic.

Of which I won't have the screen cap of the titlescreen, cause I forgot to snap one and I dont' feel like reseting to do so....

Regardless, this fan translation is actually pretty rad.

http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb405/Mad_Monarch/BreathofFireIIUsmc000.png

And here is good old Bow, I mean 'Basch' in this translation.

And I don't know why, but they changed the backround on the screen, it looks pretty cool so here it is.

http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb405/Mad_Monarch/BreathofFireIIUsmc002.png


Anyway, off to find a pet and massacre some giant cockroaches who are bothering old people.

http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb405/Mad_Monarch/BreathofFireIIUsmc004.png

And now he shows himself to be the evil old man he is by trying every dastardly trick in the book to eat this little girls pet.

http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb405/Mad_Monarch/BreathofFireIIUsmc006.png

Really I probably won't have much at all interesting until I actually form my Un-Doom Party later. Probably won't update to much on the screenshots either, unless I come across lines that are either hilarious or awesome, and an occasional update on my party.

Feel free to discuss the awesome that is Breath of Fire 2 here as well.

[Wolf Kanno]

Sounds fun, and I'm happy you chose Sten over Katt. Yes, R.I.P. is useful to keep him alive, but it just means better characters will be taking more hits so I feel its not as good of a tradeoff, especially since I feel Sten much like Spar and Jean have to rely on the Shaman system to be useful, cause their normal stats are not so great.

I'm assuming you won't be using the Shaman system as well? How about power leveling by exploiting the Giant Monster Island? Will you fight Barubary alone as well, to make it more challenging?

[NeoCracker]

The Shaman system I was using, but it didn't really make much of a difference, I have yet to have an issue.

I did use Monster Island, but I didn't even consider limiting my level much honestly. :P

Really, up until now there hasn't been an issue at all getting through the game. I haven't really updated just because there hasn't been anything worth updating. It really feals even not leveling as much as I did it would have been easy sailing considering how use to this game I am.

I say up until now, because Barubary is a fucking bastard. Shamans' hardly matter in this fight, and even with the Shaman Sten is my highest consistantly outisde my dragons, and that's only as long as his MP holds out for casting Missle.

I have no way to keep my HP up for my group simply because of the damage he's capable of dealing.

The question isn't 'Do I fight him alone' too make it more challanging, it's 'Do I fight him in a group' to make him more challanging. Seriously, he's a bit weaker alone but normally it's still the harder fight alone because he's not weakened that much. In the case of this fucking group however, it seems more disadvantagous, even with the Shaman system, to fight with them.

Mind you, my entire group is in the fucking fifties for level.

The best method seems to be spamming W. Fruit's and HelpBL's to restore Ryu's AP and HP quickly, but the problem is I can't keep the rest of my fuckign group alive long enough for this plan to work.

I only have two Wisdom Fruits, but I'm savign those for Deathaven, but still. Fuck Barubary. Fuck him hard.

[Martyr]

I don't remember the difficulty of the game that much, but I'm surprised it's that difficult. I remember Sten and the Frog being fairly good enough, really. Spar sucked, I was actually hoping they'd off him at the end. Stupid plant.

The only monster I recall giving me any trouble was the mammoth in the final dungeon.
Now I kinda want to play your challenge party and see if it is seriously so difficult.
I guess I can see how the Jean and Spar are so slow that they would get wasted against Barubary. Swiftly.
But, ah, I don't see myself playing BoF again any time soon.
Great game though. Glad people play it.

[NeoCracker]

I don't remember the difficulty of the game that much, but I'm surprised it's that difficult. I remember Sten and the Frog being fairly good enough, really. Spar sucked, I was actually hoping they'd off him at the end. Stupid plant.

The only monster I recall giving me any trouble was the mammoth in the final dungeon.
Now I kinda want to play your challenge party and see if it is seriously so difficult.
I guess I can see how the Jean and Spar are so slow that they would get wasted against Barubary. Swiftly.
But, ah, I don't see myself playing BoF again any time soon.
Great game though. Glad people play it.

Sten is actually quite a good character, he's fast, has decent physical damage, and two hard hitting spells, Fireball and Missile. The problem is low defense and hi tpoints. He gets hit hard when Barubary using his group hitting physical attack, or BoltX. Withough a good healer, something this party lacks, Sten has no method of surviving long.

Spar has a good number of hitpoints, though little defense. He actually survives longer then Sten, but in the end it's irrelevent due to his inablity to output any kind of damage.

This leaves only Ryu and Jean to output any real damage. The problem with that is Jean is really only useful as a tank due to his Defense, but he has less hitpoints then Ryu, and ends up failing at that. When Bolt X hits, he goes down pretty fast as well.

This is all normally easy to deal with, until an enemy like Barubary whose sole tactic is high damage output. I have next to no effective method of keeping my characters alive, and Sten and Ryu are the only good damage dealers in this group.

There are ways to make Spar useful, i.e. teaching him Missle with that one guy you can get in your town, the problem is I didn't do that since it would turn him from weak to strong.

The big issue is I have no way to compensate for any of my parties weaknesses.

[Wolf Kanno]

I don't remember the difficulty of the game that much, but I'm surprised it's that difficult. I remember Sten and the Frog being fairly good enough, really. Spar sucked, I was actually hoping they'd off him at the end. Stupid plant.


I feel the major difficulty in the game mostly comes from neglect. I never cared for Sten and would ditch him as quickly as I could, only to discover later, there is a section where you have to have him in your party, and even have to solo with him for a bit. Luckily hindsight makes later playthroughs easier.

[NeoCracker]

I smurfed up and ended up fighting Barubary one on one since I wasn't paying attention to the clicking, and ended up winning. Since I have no desire to fight the smurfer again, I'm going on to fight Deathevan. I plan to beat him nce with My Shaman's, and depending on how close a fight it was, I'll give it another go without them.

Edit: You know, I mopped the floor so badly with Deathaven, I'm not wasting my time re-fighting him without Shaman's.

He has no where near the damage output of Barubary, so a simple Defense up X from Spar was more then sufficient to keep me alive.

Really, only do this challange if you want one bitch of a fight, Barubary.

Fuck that last fight was easy.