Breath of Fire II

Finally downloaded this on Wii VC, since I've always heard Ash reminiscing about it so much, and I ended up craving the game myself...

The large blocky text, and poor translation (original script?) are stinted more than all get-out, and will always get to me, but it doesn't completely destroy enjoyment of the game.

The world map's kind of strange, if not uninspired; it's essentially one large land bridge that goes around the entire perimeter of the world, with a few islands in the central ocean.

What I always REALLY disliked about the game, was how much of a level-grinder it was, and how the levels of enemies jumped exponentially between different regions.

In the beginning, enemies don't give you a whole of money, either, and they rather expect you to upgrade to new weapons before facing the first non-scripted boss battle in the game; you're completely toasted if you don't. Also a good idea to gain some levels, too, but that goes without saying.

Selling fish you catch, and animals you hunt, is definitely a good way to gain money quickly, until later in the game, when monsters drop more cash than you can get from selling game animals.

What's more, is that the total amount of EXP you gain from a battle is divided amongst your party members...ever notice that?!

What I've noticed about enemies, is that different enemies really aren't all that different from each other; they mostly spam physical attacks, sometimes they land criticals, sometimes they miss, and sometimes you dodge; enemies that can use Magic usually beat you within an inch of your life every time, if not outright kill you.

As for your own characters' attacks, each character has their own special battle ability (think Final Fantasy VI), but most of the time, those abilities are very worthless.

Ryu, you main character, is mostly if not always an attacker, interrupting physical attacks only for Dragon summons that hit for big damage, but drain all your MP/AP.

Bow's your first additional character; physical attacker, he does have some cure and support spells, but after he's out of your group, you don't see him until after you're a half, maybe one-third through the game, and characters don't level up when they're out of your party. In other words, fun levelling him up ten or more levels, not that it's going to be worth it.

Katt's "Dare" ability is risky, seeing as how it makes enemies focus their attacks on her, but she doesn't have much HP or Defense; use her Dare ability, and you're basically sacrificing her. Use her for attacking, or maybe using her to cure with items, since she's usually the fastest and first to attack.

Rand's "Wake" ability awakens sleeping party members, and I've heard tell that it can even revive fallen party members, but I've never seen that work; he's otherwise a heavy hitter, and he has a few spells, mostly Cures, and a Thunder spell; he has a decent magic rating, and enough AP/MP, but he still essentially uses physical attacks only.

Nina's basically the only consistent magic user in the game, focusing solely on ata tack magic, with a few support spells thrown in. She gets spells of all 4 elements, not that I've seen monsters have any consistent weakness to any particular element. Nina has poor defense, agility, and AP; she's essentially a powerful cannon turret that can get taken down in one hit, and when she's out of ammo (MP/AP), she's useless. Though, she can recover her own AP/MP with her "Will" ability, but that's like trying to reload shells in a hurry in the heat of battle. Let's also not forget: There's absolutely no point in updating her weapon, either; it's weak no matter what you do.

It's interesting, though, how each character is some kind of demi-human; Ryu is essentially human, but can transform into a dragon (or maybe he's a dragon that's better able to maintain a human form?), Bow is a dog man, Rand, some combination of a rhino and an armadillo, Katt's a tiger girl, Nina's an angel, Sten is a monkey man, Jean is a frog man, and Spar is a vegetable man.

The action abilities your characters can use, kind of like Wild Arms, is always what helped this game stick out from the crowd; kind of gave it a Zelda flair: You needed a certain character with certain abilities to pass by certain obstacles in the game.

That, and the Shaman Fusions which change your characters' abilities and looks; must've spent hours experimenting with that stuff back in the day, but thankfully, there're FAQs a person can look up for that info, now.

The town-building element, they could've allowed a lot more freedom, allowing you to build as many houses as you wanted, where to put them, and which people you ended up housing, but no...they only give you 6 houses, and certain people will only occupy certain houses. So choose wisely...led to me experimenting with practically each person I could find, to figure out what they do. A surprising number of people had absolutely nothing to offer you...but the whole thing is, why did you end up building a town, anyway? The carpenter just got carried away with building houses...?

That's another thing about the game:

They try to squeak in comedy at practically every turn. Ever fought for you life against a pack of roaches? How about a trio of harpy sisters who'd be threatening, if only they could stop beating each other up, instead of you? Or a wild cat man who tries duping you into cooking you alive in a man-sized oven? Oh yes, let's not forget drunken witches!

And sometimes, they try condemning the vices of humanity when they can. What with the coliseum being all about blood shed, or the carnival being about capturing and imprisoning animals, and making them perform. Oh, and let's not forget: 1/3, maybe 1/2 of the game is spent trying to track down the person who framed Bow for a crime he didn't commit.

After all's said and done, the game's only real point is that they think The Church is evil, as it ends up being a front for a demon to draw strength from humanity.

I know I always sound extremely critical, but despite the game's myriad flaws, I'm still quite enjoying it, and looking forward to actually finishing it this time around; I got stuck at quite a few places in this game back in the day, with solutions in places that made me RAGE when I found out how easy they were.

But Anfini? That's what made me give up, when I couldn't figure out how to choose one of my party members to sacrifice.

Other points I got stuck at? Whale Cape, trying to figure out how to enter the whale: Smash the gate with Katt's action ability.

That's pretty much true of the majority of RPGs. Very few don't work that way.

As for the game, I consider it one of the worst I've ever played.

Don't know 'bout that.

Most RPGs, when it says you get 400 EXP, each character gets 400 EXP, not 100 each for your 4 party members...

Well, you're not too bad off if THIS is one of the WORST games you've played!

Well, I wouldn't say majority, but there's definitely a lot more of them.
I think most of the older FFs worked like this, and Dragon Quest as well, I believe.

As for BoFII, I found it absolutely horrible and impossible to sit through because of most of the stuff Bernie already mentioned. Way too much of a grind-fest.

But then, pretty much every game in this series is terribly frustrating, with the sole exception of IV, which is really surprisingly good.

You know, I can't really explain why I like this game as much as I do... maybe just the right game at the right time? I liked it more than the first one however....

Yeah, the translation is not very good, but you have to give Capcom some slack here; this was the first text heavy title they brought over to the US by themselves. Squaresoft brought the original BoF over in lieu of Final Fantasy V, which raises a whole bevy of questions. Still, they should have - I mean really should have - redone the translation on the GBA cart. Seriously Capcom, wtf?

If you like the game enough, I would definately suggest picking up the GBA cart. Money is tripled and experience is doubled on it so the grinding is litterally cut in half and it's possible to reach level 99. Still, reaching lvl 99 is kind of pointless as the stat increases past levels 50~60 are insanely meager.

Mega Man X Command Mission does this as well.

Yeah, the Dragon system leaves a lot to be desired. Once you get the final dragon power, all boss battles after that mainly revolve around spaming it, refilling Ryu's AP, spaming it.... if you want an entry with a good dragon system, I'd suggest picking up BOFIII.

Once you find the game's hidden character, you've never going to use Nina again unless the story forces you. A shame since BoFII's Nina is probably my favorite: both in character and in looks. The most useful "Ninas" are the healing ones (BOF1 and 4) not the attack magic ones (2 and 3).

Generally, I tend to like games/storylines where religious organizations turn out to be fronts for malicious activity. Don't really know why but I do.

Edit: By the way, what did you think of BoFII's small little homage to Aliens in the well? I thought that was pretty clever.

Me neither; all things considered, I should hate the game, but it grew on me, and I became nostalgic for it...there's just something about it...

I was thinking the same thing; I was quite surprised when I found out that the GBA BoF II wasn't re-scripted.

Never noticed it in MMX Command Mission, but as far as I was ever concerned, that game was pretty easy, anyway, and I didn't need to go out of my way to level build. The dungeons threw plenty of enemies your way as you went along.

Ohh, yeah! I dug the Dragon combination system from BoF III! Never finished that game, either, but then again, I could never snag my own copy...must've rented it about 5 times just to get to where I did.

I suppose if it's on PlayStation Network, I'll pick it up then; rather remember enjoying what I played, even if it was still a basic RPG; music, colors, and overall atmosphere of the game rather reminded me of Super Mario RPG (SNES) - 'nother game I need to d-load - and that's never a bad thing, right?

Final Fantasy X and Grandia II also villified the church; though, I'm not so sure they're condemning organized religion, so much as they condemn the human corruption within.

Don't want to get into too much of philosophical debate about it, but things get damn well sticky when religion is treated as a political device, instead of a spiritual one. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Tee-hee! And here, I just thought that was the developers crazy sense of humour!

Everyone complaining about this absolutely shitty translation for Breath of Fire 2 can rest easy with this fan translation. That is, if you're using an emulator. People playing on VC are shit outta luck, though.

Too bad I don't have the ROM...or an emulator...

Almost forgot: They call the first town in the game "Home Town" ... even though it's not really the town you grew up in...

And they call the town of carpenters "Capitan" ... the French word for "Captain."

The first game has some crazy town names as well. For example, there's a town haunted by zombies called "Romero" and then there's a town called "Carmen" where time was brought to a standstill by one the villains. Where in "time" is "Carmen" Sandiago?

Still, I played through this on the GBA last year and found it as enjoyable as I did the first time around - perhaps even a little more with the small improvements.

But the thing that strikes me about Breath of Fire II is it really feels like a - and excuse the somewhat derogatory terminology - a poor man's Final Fantasy VI. I don't say this to insult the game, but in how the characters are handled (how each has their own commands, and their own quests per say) I see shades of FFVI here and there, and I don't think that's a bad thing. And while the soundtrack isn't exactly bulletproof, I think it gets too much flack. But then everything Takehara composes for usually ends up being underrated. Go Star Gladiator!

I always found the Breath of Fire series to be incredibly mediocre.  I've played and beaten all of them except BoF1 (which I got through a good 80-90%).  While I got some enjoyment out of BoF1-4, I never truly loved any of them.  They were all just an ok time... though I feel each installment got ever so slightly better than the last.  I think I am one of the rare people who liked BoF4 more than BoF3.  I somewhat recall BoF2 being heavy on grinding, as was mentioned.

BoF5 however was absolutely incredible and I rank it as one of my top 5 PS2 RPGs I'd say.  It's a shame that so many people hated it.  It was such a unique experience, the polar opposite of all Breath of Fires before it.  Every time I think back on Dragon Quarter I have the urge to play it again...which is anytime anyone mutters the name "Breath of Fire".  ...Urge to play rising...

I liked BoF4 a fair amount... but the three before are it are pretty generic. I have a copy of BoF5 but I haven't touched it yet. I think I need persuading!

Funny how random people can have almost the exact thoughts of a game.

Really sad that Capcom hasn't made another rpg in vein of Dragon Quarter, I want more. Or just another Breath of Fire-game even, in style of III, which I also do love.

That would be nice. The last time I played through III it was a lot better than I remembered, although I'm still not crazy over the stallion bros section of the first half.

Edit: I liked VI as well, but it couldn't help but feel it was kind of dry. The dullish color palette didn't really help in that respect either. And I'm kind of miffed that they turned Sicas' slurred, drunken speech into a stutter outside Japan. The guy’s a drunk, not spineless.

See my previous comment in this thread.

As for Dragon Quarter, I loved what they were trying to do, and the atmosphere was second to none, but the game itself was just too unbearably frustrating for me.

I loved the fact that Breath of Fire V offered a challenge that was not tied solely to grinding.  You couldn't grind in that game without starting parts over...which I thought I'd hate, but I didn't at all.

I simply cannot condone any RPG that limits how often you can save and that puts you under a strict time limit the entire game. Trying to make up for that by saying "you can restart anytime you want" is just purely sadistic design.

That said, I still managed to drag myself through it because I loved the atmosphere, music (Sakimoto's best by far!) and setting so much, although I did use a cheat that took advantage of how retarded the game's system was.

It was a VERY gimmicky system, and definitely seems over the top restrictive.  But it forced you to really think of your strategy and be careful like no other game I've played.  I was very much against it all until I actually played it, and then I quickly forgave the faults since I was having so much fun...and also at the time hadn't really played any semi-difficult rpgs in awhile.

Wow, that sounds hideous. I'm a serial save whore, and any game that limits the save system in anyway beyond "you can only save at x type places" should have their developers drawn and quartered.

Thing about Breath of Fire V, the whole 'starting over' shtick wasn't even all that minor an inconvenience; they might've taken your money and items that you didn't deposit, but they still let you keep your experience points.

Also, when you started over, depending on certain achievements made previous round, they increased your D-Ratio level; this's important, because some doors open for certain D-Ratios, which allowed you to make short cuts through dungeons, sometimes bypassing them altogether!

Those two factors ensured that you sped through parts that you'd already been through before, and quickly caught up to where you died at and had to start over.

Do I think it was a necessary gimmick? No, aside from the Scenario Overlay System (SOL) - enclosing more story for each additional playthrough - I'm sure they could've found an alternative, but the game as it is actually isn't too difficult.

From top-to-bottom, the game can take as little as 7 hours to complete; that's bypassing treasure chests, all random encounters, and fighting only bosses.

Another thing I wanted to mention, and rather separately, at that...

VHS PLOT RECORDING

I still have my Breath of Fire V ~ Dragon Quarter VHS plot recording; I'm looking into converting it into DVD.

If I can do it successfully, is there anyone who'd want a copy? E-mail me through my forum e-mail! If you're willing to cover shipping ($5 USD), I'd appreciate it, but I'm willing to do a person a favor, since I just love this plot so much! Then again, if I can copy the DVD onto my computer, I suppose I could just distribute it digitally...but if you want it one way or another, get in contact with me!

MOVIE-MAKING?!

Honest to God, I've actually been toying around with the idea of turning this plot into a live action movie.

SCRIPT

Kind of working on rewriting the script, so it fits together better, in the scheme of a movie, and make it less video-gamey; I'd omit things like dungeons in which no important plot points occurred, and some things, I'd have people react to more realistically - the Dragon Chamber in the Bio Public Corporation, for example, and Vexacion making Bosch practice against a Duke Leader when he was still a child, are 2 examples.

I'd stay as close to the original script as would be reasonable - after all, that's why I'm going through my VHS recording - wouldn't want to try recreating the whole thing from scratch, mind you!

COSTUMES

I wouldn't end up making the costumes as fantastical as they are in the game; for example, Ryu and Bosch would probably end up with solid-colored fatigues (not camoflauge pattern), field jackets, and combat boots. I'd try making the characters look rather contemporary and believable. Elyon, I'd make an exception - his costume is nothing BUT fantastical. And if I could get samurai armor for Vexacion, and armor for Hortensia, I'd do it. Best/worst case scenario, I'd need costumes designers.

CASTING

Obviously, I'd have to hold auditions, and I would want people who look as close to the characters in game as I could get - for example, I'd want someone Asian for Ryu, and teenaged, at that; I'd have to match people based on appearance and age. Discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen there, I'm sure.

At this point, I'm taking an inventory of all the characters who're integral to the plot.

...anybody know where I'd find a blonde, bearded 40/50-something - who can do fight choreography - to play Vexacion (Bosch's father)?

FILMING ON LOCATION

This'd probably the hardest part - find places IRL that would look like they match the locations in the game; need people who're experienced with filiming, too.

Again, I'm taking inventory of all the locations that'd be integral to the plot, and trying to think up reasonable equivalents, or substitutes (e.g., doubt they'd let us shoot in an actual water facility or power plant).

CG & SPECIAL EFFECTS

I'd need some people who know how to do this - need CG for dragons, monsters, and fight choreography.

If I can't get real costumes, or travel and shoot in different locations, costumes and backdrops would probably be computer-generated, too. Need someone knowledgeable about green screen, I guess.

I have a feeling that it'd end up a mix of real, and computer-generated, just between costumes, and backdrops.

FUNDING

I'd depend, at least, in part on donations from fans - and anyone else - who wanted to give money.

BOTTOM-LINE

The big kicker, here? If I could get this into theatres, I would. If I can make money off of this, I suppose it could at least pay for the expenditures of creating this movie.

But bottom-line, I just want this story to be told. Sure, it's another environmental, anti-government kind of thing, but the thing was - I could just FEEL these characters' desperation, the situation they were in, and the ending was a real tearjerker for me.

I really just want to bring this story to life!

Dragon Quarter is the only BOF I've never played. I have it (just the disc and manual) and it's on my list to play at some point. I mean even if I don't end up liking it $8 for it and the official strategy guide is worth a gamble. If I like it I'll get a more complete copy, but until then....

Still, I can't say I like what I've heard about the game, but I won't condemn it until I have experienced it. As for the soundtrack, I don't have any real feelings for it one way or another, it's just there. That could change if I ever hear it in context, but I'm not counting on it.

Hello there. Yes, I'm that Ryusui, the guy responsible for the English version of the BoF2 retrans. I hope you all get the chance to try it sometime.

***SPOILERS***

Also, Bernhardt: the bit with Anfini at the end is a trick, what TVTropes would call a "Secret Test of Character". When you're asked to make a sacrifice, refuse. It's that simple. Keep refusing when prompted and you'll earn Anfini.

Okay, I'll try that out!

...

Funniest part of Breath of Fire II so far?

The thieves lining up at the Desert Tomb, waiting in line to raid it, almost as if it was an obstacle course on a TV game show! XD

So polite, and courteous, waiting in line...only in Japan, right?

It's just kind of funny; imagine, you're raiding a tomb, and all around you, are people who're still alive, who got caught in traps...

LoL, almost forgot: The Wild Cat Cafe earlier in the game?

When you're asking around for Nimufu, the Witch, one of her colleagues (also: Witch School Reunion!) tells you: She's worshiping the Porcelain God.

Now, back in the day, I took that in the literal context, after all, the game's about religion, and there are a lot of different cultures in the game with their own religions (Example: Farm Town worships a deity called "Namanda.") Either that, or I just considered it a translation flub.

But I just figured this out: She meant that she was using the toilet! After all, that's where you find her: In the restroom!

Before, the phrase I used instead of "Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom" was "Don't mind me, I need to go save my game" (Re: No More Heroes). But from now on, I think I'm going to say, "Excuse me, but I need to go pray to the Porcelain God."

XD

That phrase is used when someone is throwing up in the toilet, not just using the toilet normally.  (Hence the praying part, because they're on their knees in front of it, hurling their guts into the toilet).

Despite the bad translation, Breath of Fire 2 had one of the best stories and some of the most likable characters in a SNES game. As for the weak gameplay, the same holds true for pretty much every RPG with random turn-based battles in existence, including Final Fantasy 6. They simply can't hold a candle to games like Chrono Trigger, Lufia II and Super Mario RPG. Also, the shaman system, developing your own town and the secret ending were pretty cool. Breath of Fire 2 is underrated.

This reminds me of a similar situation in Wild Arms 2, where I was asked a question and never understood the answer for years until I poked around the original game with a gameshark.

In the "Fab Science Lab" - an optional dungeon - you come to three machines that ask you three random questions. The question in question is "What did you finally get after suffering for almost three years?" The answer is "The Holy Grail" I never understood that, but then I started to snoop around in the first game with a gameshark and low and behold, I got the Holy Grail (an accessory that nulls death) which you cannot get legitimately, but can in the second game. So, with Wild Arms coming out in 1996/1997 and Wild Arms 2 coming out in 1999/2000, it was a little less than three years until the Holy Grail made it's first true appearance.