Breath of Fire

[Mercen-X]

How the hell are you people finishing V? Becoming a dragon is game over and percentage grows with each step you take. It's total bunk!

[Khaotic]

*reads his sig*

I'm playing IV, I like the battle graphics and style, but the storyline is pretty boring, its even making it hard to concentrate on it. =/

[KoShiatar]

By the way, I disagree with those who say Breath of Fire was easier than Final Fantasy. Maybe it was easier than Final Fantasy I, but it had a lot of things to keep track of. You should compare it to Final Fantasy V-VI, that's when it came out more or less.

-A very limited number for item slots.
-Weapons and armor strictly limited in use to a certain character .
-No auto-equipping whatsoever. You have to see for youself if a weapon or armour is better than the one you have or not. And the only way to do so is equipping it, with the possible risk of losing your precoius money.
-You screw up in battle? You're most probably dead.
-Only natural magic. There is no such thing as espers, materia or the job system.
-Consequently, you just can't make up your party with the people you like best like in FF, you HAVE to choose according to inborn abilities.
-Tough bosses. There were (from what I remember) no super-hard bosses, though.
-Absolutely NO airship or the like before the end of the game is very, very close. In BOF II, you even lose the Great Bird at a certain point. (You have a Warp spell though, but it only works for places you have already visited).
-Different endings. You screw up during the final battle or even long before? You can't get the best ending.

And so on...

[Craig]

I got III back yesterday, finally got past the desert.

I faced Teepo in his Dragon Lord form today and got beat, I think I got quite close to beating him though, 1 or 2 more Auras and he would've been toast.

[Lindy]

BoFV is the only BoF game to show a TRULY powerful Dragon Form.

BoF had Agni, but even then it was invincible, BoFII had that super Dragon that did 999, but that wasn't endlessly useable, BoFIII had that Gene combo for the HUEG dragon. BoFIV's dragons were just...dolls, they died too easily.

People have too much of a problem with the limit on your Dragon powers in BoFV, why are they limited?

BECAUSE YOUR DRAGON FORM IS INVINCIBLE.

You only take damage from other dragons, of which there are only two in the game (Dva and Cheytre), everything else does no damage to you, while you on the other hand can deal out insane damage, killing everything in minimal hits.

Now if there was no limit, where would the challenge in the game be? Because there is a limit, there is challenge.

Consequently, I like BoFV the best, all the other BoF games were fun but just full of annoying fetch quests "zomg, to get past me standing on this bridge, bring me an apple from the other side of the world, oh and by the way, nobody has ever been to the other side of the world so you have to find someone to take you there, but the only guy who can take you there is in a cave that's blocked off, so you need some dynamite to open it, but the guy who has the dynamite will only trade it for some gold dust, and you find the gold dust in the mine beyond my bridge, but you need to bring me an apple from...", and so on.

BoFV was straight, to the point and fun.

[XxSephirothxX]

I remember finding the secret snake-lady character in BoFII (was here name Beau, or something?). Having two powerful magic users in your party made it way easier. That being said, the high encounter rate in some places in that game drove me crazy. If I was playing it today, I don't know if it would keep my interest, but it was one of my first RPGs and I really loved it, for some reason. I wish I could find a copy of III or IV, or even V. When Dragon Quarter first came out, I recall reading something about it in EGM, which said that the game actually grew easier when you died, or something, by revealing things you couldn't see before. Sounds...weird.

[Crossblades]

I played BoF I - IV and I has to say the best ones are II and IV. IMO BoF III sucked

[Destai]

I remember finding the secret snake-lady character in BoFII (was here name Beau, or something?). Having two powerful magic users in your party made it way easier.

The original name is Deis and she was a main character in bof I and "kindve" a main character in bof IV. She appeared in BoF I-IV. Shes an entity that cant die and as I understand it the sister or I & III's godess Maria and the aunt of II's Deathevan.

[Craig]

Just a quick question, but what did people think of the World Map in III?

I thought it was great, not too open, not too linear.

I'd like to see something similar in an FF.

[Dreddz]

I liked it
BOF III is a pretty darn good game

[Lindy]

When Dragon Quarter first came out, I recall reading something about it in EGM, which said that the game actually grew easier when you died, or something, by revealing things you couldn't see before. Sounds...weird.

It's called SOL, Scenario Overlay, you have two options in Dragon Quarter, SOL Restore and SOL Restart.

With SOL Restore, you can save the items you have in storage, the current party EXP, unlocked skills and new weapons/armour over your previous file, so that it has the newer items and such are available at your save earlier on. You can then use the party EXP to level up your characters, so it's easier to progress.

SOL Restart is the same thing, but you return to the beginning of the game.

By Restarting with SOL, you can reveal new story scenes and understand more of the plot, the same goes with finishing the game and improving your Dragon Ratio, the more times you finish the game and the better your Ratio, the more story scenes you can view, and the more areas of the map you can unlock and travel to, in order to get better items, weapons and skills for future playthroughs and thus get even BETTER Dragon Ratios.

The godly ratio, the Dragon Quarter, 1/4 has insane requirements, but it's quite do-able using the SOL system.

It's a very different way to play a game, where sometimes it's easier to just bite the bullet and restore you game to a previous save, especially considering you only have limited saves for the whole game.

[Yuffie514]

i played Breath of Fire II on my ZNES emulator, but i can't see some things on it, so i quit playing. iz good, i like fishing.

[XxSephirothxX]

Unless Dragon Quarter can be finished pretty quickly, it sounds to me like the Restart system would be somewhat annoying. I'd hate restarting 2/3 of the way through the game just to flesh out the story more, or complete the game over and over again just to fully experience the plot. I guess I'd have to play it, though, to really understand and judge the system.

[DK]

I only got to play III, which I hired from a video hire store a long, long time ago, but I do remember it being extremely fun. I'd like to play through it again and complete it some time.

[Polnareff]

I have all of the BoF's but Dragon Quarter, and I love all of them. What makes this series my favorite RPG series are the characters and the different powers you get in all the different games, like shaman fusion in #2 and the whole dragon genes thing in #3.

And then there's the gameplay. In each game, the battle system is different from the previous one (kinda like in FF). The combo system in BoF4 was topnotch, and some of the moves you could get from helping the faeries build their village, such as (SPOILER)Super Combo and Faerie Charge were great and useful.

My favorite BoF is 4, with 3 being the second. The reason for this are because of the battle system and the plot twists such as (SPOILER) Ershin being controlled by Deis of the previous BoF games

I don't mind the "fetch quests" as someone else called them because they weren't too overly frustrating and doing them was a good chance to meet new characters, get more items, and gain more levels. At least they give you motivation to play.