Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

This game is intense. There is no easy way to heal, no easy way to save. There's no way to level up easily, either. It's a constant hard struggle through long dungeons, with only a small amount of storage space (compared to other games) for items. There's no point where all your HP is restored. Tthere's no inn's, no magic springs, no resting. All you have are your hard won items throughout the entire game. And did I mention the limited inventory? You begin with a backpack consisting of two pages, each page of which has five different slots. In other words, you can carry ten different items, but you can only have ten of each in any slot. Fortunately, you can pick up six or seven more backpack pages. Unforunately, these are not carried over onto New Games.

The world of Dragon Quarter is different from all the other Breath of Fires. It's completely underground. You begin a thousand feet down, and the majority of the game consists of you working your way to the almost mythical sky. However, the original Dragon who lead the retreat underground doesn't want this (It may be wishful thinking, but Origin seems to bear a certain resemblance to Ryu from Breath of Fire IV). There are very few towns - to be honest, the whole world resembles one long dungeon with safe areas. to return to anywhere you've visited before, you will usually need to traverse all the tunnels over again. Luckily, since enemies don't respawn, you won't have to fight thousands of tedious battles to do so. Unforunately, because they don't respawn, unlike most other games, you can only kill them once. That's it. There's no going back and fighting easier enemies for experience, practise or money. You do however, win 'party experience' based on your skill in battle. You may use this on whoever you please, or even just store it up for the next game.

Saving is done using 'save tokens', of which there are only a limited number in the game. It's a tough choice. Do you save before or after the boss battle? You start with nine tokens and usually find one at the start of each dungeon, so you can afford to waste a few. The trouble is, you have no way of knowing when and where you're going to need them until you've actually gone through the next section and by then it's already too late. You cannot store these Save Tokens in the item locker like you can with other items, and you will definitly not want to drop them. In other words, that's one precious inventory space gone already.

Random battles are a thing of the past. Similar to Tales of Symphonia, a battle is triggered by running into a monster. Unlike Tales of Symphonia, the monster that appears is exactly the one that was shown. Like Breath of Fire III, the battle screen is exactly the same as the field screen, with the same walls and obstacles, even the same items if you left them lying around. This provides an interesting tactile element to gameplay. You can also lay traps to distract a monster while you either run away or hit it. If you manage to hit it, your onscreen character gets an extra turn at the start of battle. The battle system is, as always, turn based. Your character has a certain number of AP points each turn. they can use these up in movement and attacks, or they can end their turn and carry the points over to the next round of battle (up to a limit of three times the points they get every turn). Movement is not limited just by AP, but also by the characters Movement range. They can move anywhere within a certain circle, similar to Phantom Brave.

You cannot afford to let your concentration slip in this game. It keeps the pressure up the whole time. There are a few in game features that make the game easier, however. If your whole party is KOed you can choose to SOL: restart or SOL: restore, ie, start the game again from either your last save or the beginning, with your items, party experience and skills intact.

Although I wouldn't like it if every game were like this, because this game is the first RPG (or at least the first I've found) to have this sort of intensity and vague realism, it works astoundingly well. I like the things mentioned above, although some people may not.

The characters and graphics look gorgeous too. Breath of Fire games have their own style, and although this is as different as FFX vs FFIX it's still obviously BoF. Certain scenes are reminiscent of other BoF games, as are certain aspects of the gameplay.

Usually Breath of Fire games are all very similar in plot, character and minigames. This is very different, which has surprised a few die-hard fans. However, I feel that change isn't a bad thing, especially when it's done as well as this. the storyline is emotional, and the characters and their history and relationship to each other are all well developed. Ryu, the traditional Breath of Fire hero is back, this time as a sixteen year old ranger (sort of like a policeman/soldier). As always, he fights with a sword, although in this game, he can't fish (which is a bit of a relief in some ways - I found the fishing games in Breath of Fire III and IV slightly dull). His hair is it's normal nice shiny blue, and his Dragon transformation skills are back (although this time he has only one form to choose from).

Then there's Nina, the blonde, short-haired winged Princess. In this version, she's not the princess of Windia/Wyndia (which no longer exists anyway), and she has her infamous wings for a very different reason. For once it's Ryu who's the chatty one while Nina is silent. Another difference is Ryu's defence of Nina the outcaste, a reversal of roles in the BoF universe. She's twelve years old (young even by video game standards), and is a mage, a familiar role for her. There's no white magic in Dragon Quarter, which makes your limited inventory even tougher to deal with.

Youur final character (yes, final - you have three characters, less than half the normal amount) is Lin, a member of Trinity, a rebel group. Although she and Ryu are enemies by profession, they are united in their desire to protect Nina. Lin bears a certain resemblance to Ursula from Breath of Fire IV - they are both opposed to Ryu, and loosely resemble cats. She fights with a gun.

There are very few sidequests. In fact, there is one sidequest. And one optional dungeon, the Kokan Horay, which can be accessed through the Fairy Colony minigame. Yes, the fairy's, at least, are back. This time, it's the ants rather than the fairys who are the workers. This means that when the ants you have in a certain store die, the items or anything else you've unlocked, don't disappear with them, like in Breath of Fire IV. Instead, they are stored by the fairy whose room it is. Since it's underground, the ants dig rooms and tunnels, rather than the fairies clearing space and building houses. The unlockable jobs available for each house are similar to those in the other games. There are stores (in four varieties - a general skill shop, which makes a handy place to sell items picked up in the middle of dungeons, and an armory for each character), a Concert Hall where you can listen to the music of the game, a Laboratory where the fairies unlock new jobs, or create items when they're done with that, and exploror ants, which bring back various items (the Concert Hall is similar to that in FFX, and the Exploring works like sending Chocobos item hunting in FFX-2). There's also a bank, where, as well as earning compound interest on your money, you can trade in foreign currencies. Buy low, sell high, as I'm told it works in the real world. It's an interesting, and easy way to double or triple your money fairly quickly. However, as in previous games, the time passed in the colony is determined by battles, which may cause a few problems.

The ending is amazing, and so sad - I was in tears. The plot builds slowly, making putting the controller down almost impossible (and not just because save points are few and far between) All in all, don't expect a game like all the other Breath of Fires. Expect something better.