Breath of Fire: Dragon's Quarter

[Dracos]

Breath of Fire: Dragon's Quarter

Tonight, I review the latest game in Capcom's superb Breath of Fire series.  The fifth in the successful classic rpg, it has been a pleasure to play through.  Now, those of you who have played the previous games in the series, such as myself, toss out any expectations of this being like those.  It isn't.  It's very different on every order of the game except having a blue haired hero associated with dragons.  Now, with that out of the way, it's a very fun game.  The creators clearly put quite a bit of quality work into it and it shows.

   First off, the graphics of the game are very nifty.  This is the first time I've gotten a chance to see the new cel-shaded graphic designs that are the latest rave.  I must say, they deserve it.  Smooth yet often capable of showing quite a bit of emotion.  I fell in love with them in moments.  The still shots really didn't give a fair grasp of how nicely the graphics looked when moving.  It was just so fluid and smooth throughout.  It was very enjoyable to play.  Originally I was slightly annoyed with some of the challenges of camera angles and dealing with some of the dark underground corridors, but on replays I grew to really appreciate the controls.  My problems with the camera originally stemmed from totally ignoring the instructions indicating that you could control the angle of the camera quite a bit (360 horizontal with zoom and pull back with about a 45 degree angle up and down).  The darkness, dirt in the air, and mists are most notably around the areas in the lower level with the spiders.  While this makes the spiders much harder to deal with, it also allows you to dim the lights in your room and truly get into the sort of adventure spirit the game presents.  I look forward to seeing more games in this style of art.

   For those who follow the Breath of Fire series, you'd know that the last two games had either horrible or barely mentionable soundtracks.  Number three in particular was so bad that it was worth turning off the sound and replacing it with a CD.  It never helped the theme.  It is about the time they finally pulled their heads OUT OF THEIR ASSES and hired someone better to do the music.  This is the first game in the series done by the superb Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final fantasy Tactics anyone?).  And what a remarkable soundtrack this one is.  This guy clearly has a strong grasp of how to compose powerful and evocative music and WHERE it needs to go for a great rpg.  That's right.  The battle themes.  Nothing is more often complained about or found to get drab than the battle themes in a game.  Most games limit themselves to 3-5 battle themes at most.  Not this one.  With a grand total of eleven superb battle themes, there is plenty of variety to last you through the four or five 'game clears' that the game is supposed to last.  Hitoshi truly provides an excellent and powerful soundtrack.

   Okay, it's shiny and sounds nice, but what we really care about is how it plays.  I already mentioned it doesn't play like the previous Breath of Fire games at all.  In fact, it's a rather atypical RPG in the fact that there are no 'random' battles and a limited amount of enemies.  So, does this mean you have to kill every enemy to remain strong enough to continue on?  Ladon, no!  Generally, the standpoint of how you do is strategy, but of course, for the less strategically minded, there is a way to power up.  Depending on how well you fight (efficiency, time, effectiveness, lack of damage), you will be given a certain percentage of extra xp each battle to a party total.  This Xp stays with you through each play through accumulating... allowing you to restart from your last save with the extra xp.  Thus strategy in powering yourself up also comes into play if you can't manage it through tactics alone.  The usage of traps in this game plays a huge part.  Unless you power level like crazy, most enemies won't be easy to take down without some pre battle strategy and luring them into ambushes by your characters and the like.  Overall, I found the whole system entertaining the entire time, even through to my now fourth play through of the game.  There are weaknesses though.  During the game you have a "D-Counter" which represents how much life energy your hero has left before he burns himself out.  This goes up for various actions, including just normal travel (.01 percent per eight steps).  Most damaging of which is that by going Dragon you are using up your D-counter.  So the usage of the dragon becomes an added element of strategy in the game.  How to use your D-counter to the greatest effectiveness.  No the game doesn't award you for maintaining a low D-counter by the end of the game (though it's quite possible to be only at 8-9 percent by the game end.), the fact that you can then utilize the dragon to utterly thrash the last couple of bosses is satisfaction enough within itself.  At first I was rather annoyed by this contrivance to keep me from going dragon all the damn time, but upon examining the dragon more closely, I see how they balanced it.  This dragon form, if used properly, is utterly godlike.  There is nothing in the game that will be able to survive your wrath for even a round in it if you are using it properly.  So basically, it's the ace up your sleeve.  Use it too much and you get burned though as it exacts its price.  Anyhow, it's an interesting dungeon crawler with quite a bit more active a battle system than most.

   Storywise you have to play the game at least twice through to see it all.  Which is cool as the second play through weaves the prologue into the ending in such a nice fashion that it had me fooled the entire first time through the game.  A simple plot to be sure, but an entertaining storyline and a good adventure.  The character designs were solid, though the implementation was a touch fuzzy at times.  The more you play, the more they give you in terms of storyline.  The second play through after finishing the game is quite rewarding, filled with little tidbits of storyline and depth far beyond what you originally see in the game.  Secret areas which aren't open the first time through open revealing new enemies and new storyline elements which you can explore.  With a good cast of supporting characters, the story works pretty well throughout the game.

   All in all, a fairly enjoyable experience.  Not for hack/slashers, but then, I'm not one.

[Anastasia]

Good to know the soundtrack took a step in the right direction. With the exception of maybe two or three tracks, BoF3's OST was toxic. BoF4's was just unremarkable.

Beyond that, I'm likely not to play it for a very long time, if ever. Between the fact that I have some fairly serious reservations about the game and that I want to buy MANY more games first...It's not going to be in my PS2 anytime soon.

[Anastasia]

In other news, my brother picked this game up awhile ago for his birthday.  I haven't played it myself, but I've seen some of the game.  I can't say the graphical engine impresses me in the slightest, and the character design is too anorexic for my tastes.  

Further, the entire concept of having to die and start over several times to likely beat the game offends me on a level. Fuck that.

The music didn't stand out to me, but I admit I didn't hear all that much of it. *Shrugs*

What I can say is that the game fails to interest me in the slightest. In fact, from what I've seen, I feel safe in saying that I do not think it's a good game. It's a pity to me, since I'm a fan of the series from back in the BoF1 days. It really looks to me like Breath of Fire has gone into the shitter.

[Dracos]

Eh, you really don't.  It's quite possible to do it without reloading, just very difficult.

Technically though, it's shouldn't be something new to those who've played any MMORPG or Diablo or the like and done 'X' runs.  "hey, if I wipe this scenario out a few times, it gives big xp.  Lemme do that."  Not entirely necessary to beat the game, but people do it because it's designed for it and is a pretty good xp builder.

The character designs though...  are supposed to reflect the environment they are in.  I mean, come on.  One is a lab experiment, the other's poor as all get out, and the third is a freedom fighter.  What would one expect?  Them to be chubby and wellfed?  Personally, I felt it fit the tone but wouldn't have given it a second glance regardless as having thin characters is generally a mainstream in RPGs.

*Shrugs*

Dracos

[Anastasia]

As far as the MMORPG thing goes, I don't play 'em, so...*shrugs*

As for the characters, come on. It's one thing to reflect the world they live in, sure. It's another thing to be ugly, unappealing and outright annoying to look at. That's the problem with the BoF DQ artwork.  Calling it anorexic is merely the symptom of the disease, so to speak.