Breath of Fire 2

• Genre: Turn-Based RPG
• Time Played: Doesn't track time, best guess is about 45+ hours.
• Too Short/Long: Honestly too long, as much as I love it, it could benefit from cutting out some unnecessary backtracking, a run button, and lowering the base encounter rate - or at least it's encounter reducing items could be more effective.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very Pleased, always. This is one of my favorite games of all time.
• Why I played: This isn't the first time I finished Breath of Fire 2, but I barely remembered so much off the top of my head. Things came back to me immediately as I played, but I was missing it from my immediate recall.
• Recommend to others: It's hard not to recommend one of my favorite games of all time, but it's very much an early 90's JRPG and I feel like you need to know that and want to experience that before going in.

Breath of Fire 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and I was worried this playthrough was going to change it, since I felt like I could remember so little going in. Even roughly 25 years since I first played it, I still love this game. To be fair, it was very nostalgic for me, I played it both on SNES and GBA, but this time I opted for the SNES version since it's on the SNES service on the Switch.

The SNES version is a bit rougher, especially in the translation department, but it's mostly the same experience. I would probably recommend someone playing it the first time to play the GBA version if they can, just because of some of the really rough translation issues with the SNES version.

BOF2 is very much an early 90's rpg though, it's obtuse and has quite a bit of arbitrary design. It's meant to be non-linear, but in a way where we haven't fully yet developed the "open world" concept. So while you CAN go to various places as you gain new modes of navigation, there is always only one place you're supposed to go and it's not always clear about it.

Now we probably would call that bad game design, but this is just kinda how these games were back then. I feel like that doesn't necessarily take marks away.

Looking at the game now with much more experience than when I was a kid or teenager though, I can see where it missed the mark to capture people like some other bigger SNES era rpgs. There are some clear choices made that were something like "this will make tougher for the player" where it should have just been "this will make it more fun for the player". Things that could have been introduced quicker. Things that could be more convenient, less limitations on the player. Then again, I'm not privy to the limitations of the platform. That said, it has so much... so maybe that's part of why there are limitations in other areas.

There is a day night cycle which they try to make relevant for awhile but then give up on. Still, it's nice.

The fusion system is awesome, but comes way too late. Or at least the cool part of the fusion system. The base system should have been introduced early, so that by time you actually get it, you are at least doing palette swap fusions(which there should be more of), and maybe half way through you're doing full fusions for more than just Spar. It shouldn't have waited til the final dungeon of the game to allow you to fuse each fusible member of your party. It also should have had more combinations, or somehow the ability to fully fuse any combination of party members. There are certain impossible combinations because the character use the same main shaman to fuse with.

Dragon Transformations are kinda a step back from the first game since it pretty much just works like a summon that takes up all your AP. Still cool. Still cool that Ryu transforms into a dragon and all that, but it makes it less obvious in 2, also, there could be more with different benefits, but at least they learned that for the next games.

Town Building is also a cool idea and lots of games have used it since. There is a pool of roughly 30 people who want to come to your town but you get to choose... 6. It's not fair, not one bit. Many of the people are just aesthetic choices and don't actually do anything. Some do one thing and are never of use again. Some have like base game options attached to them, like the Sound Test mode, or the ability to restore hit points and AP in your own damn town. But you can only pick six, and it's silly to not pick the ones that will benefit your journey unless you're looking for a harder time. You "need" the carpenter that can make food(the boring one), you need the people who sell you the ingredients. You need some shops and the like. You don't need to be able to paint your shingles... But I shouldn't have to make that choice! Or at least I should be able to recruit MOST people simultaneously, not a vast minority. But still, it would have been more rewarding for exploring all of the world all of the time to get all the people who want to move in and be able to actually customize it with the painting and the house style and stuff like that.

In retrospect, sure there is a lot that can be improved, but I'm not sure I even thought of these things the first, or even second time I played the game. It's just how I see now, after decades passed and after having played hundreds of more games.

It's easier for me to pick apart each bit and for it to sound negative, but I love this game and I only pick those apart because I love those aspects and see room for improvement. Most games don't have dragon transformations, character fusions, characters who each have special overworld abilities, a customizable town that can serve as a secondary(and backup) means of air travel.

Most games don't have the absolute banger of a cast that BOF2 has. Sure there might not be as much characterization and development as a modern rpg, but I love every one of these characters. I can't say that for every rpg. Also, they all transform. One of my favorite things in game in character transformations, and it checks it off 7 times.

There is also some of the other little things, that it's easy to overlook when playing this game now. This game came out in 94, which means in the JRPG space it's primary competition was Final Fantasy VI, which is... damn, just not fair... but Breath of Fire had style. FFVI's little 25x20 character sprites just can't compare to BOF2's sprite which were easily 4x or more the size as some characters are much bigger and had awesome attack animations, rather than just a little weapon waggle. Also it had different sprites for overworld and in-battle. Which FF7 would go on to do for it's models, and I know a good handful of other rpgs did roughly around the time, and some still do today, but it's just something to note. The character sprites in BOF2 are just top notch. I love them all so much.