Breath of Fire: Bourgeois Boogie

I have been kind to a woman and dog man who wanted to wed. I have befriended a robot with a heart literally as big as a house who died for that couple. I have faced injustice and became a damn dragon man. And now I enter a seaside rich town and just because of my looks...I am thrown in jail!

I'm innocent, goddammit!

So, treated like a punk, I did nothing but act like a punk through this entire town.

Got this sly ass dude to break me out of prison everytime I got caught...Which happened...

...frequently...

So whatever. I stole everyone's money. I bought shiny new equipment, plus a SUPER expensive G.Bar, which I hope to find a use for later. Then I found a ship, but the captain said it belongs to the rich guy, Ross. So I went to Ross's place to mess with his shit.

Turns out he'll just give me the ship if I help his daughter. She's stuck in a safe. Sure, no problem.

Fuck.

Well, moving on. I hear from a woman in town that her son is kidnapped by fairies in the fairy woods. So I head back through the northern cave. Or as I like to call it the EveryFiveStepsYouFight Cave. I saved the dude, and he swore to stop chopping up the fairies trees.

The lady gave me even more money as a reward and I soon realized that I wasn't getting anywhere in this town, except jail. But it occurred to me to play:

Ask the NPCs:

Nope

 Interesting...but nope. I'll take note of that.

Also interesting, but doesn't help now.

AH, bingo! Gotta find this Bleak!

My only guess is a cave to the west. But it sure beats jail all the time. Plus, I bet a thief could help me break into Ross's vault. I betcha!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: MINI/IMPORTANT POST

Ok, so the moment I have been waiting for has finally happened. And even though I was still reeling from the Gremlin boss fight and the death of GAR, I still managed to accomplish something awesome. This will make boss battles much easier in the near future.







Upon arriving to the new world I found a mini temple. The words of villagers from Tantar/Tuntar suddenly reminded me that this has been set up for a while "If ever you find a temple, make sure to pay your respect". I kept thinking they meant the save points in each town, but then I found that little point below the lava river.

Entering it I came across an old man. Goosebumps went up my arm.

 Ok, you got that much beer?

So he sends Ryu in alone, and I get a chance to grab an Herb from a chest and heal up at the fountain. And then...I fight the dragon ghost thing in the middle. BY MYSELF!

I quickly realized my attacks weren't doing enough damage to keep up with him so I just hit him with E.Key as much as I could and then healed up with a Herb when he got me to about 50 health. This pattern worked out but took quite a while. Before long I had him and he didn't even do the typical "Almost dead but just kidding I'm actually twice as strong for about ten more turns" thing. And baboom. Test passed:

So what does this training mean? Well ladies and gentlemen...it means I CAN BE A MOFUCKIN DRAGON!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Right in the Feels

 Progression is slow going in Breath of Fire, but the storytelling is pretty brilliant. It takes round-about routes to get to certain points, but there's quite a bit of payoff once it happens.

I piddled about Tantar and Tuntar until I finally thought to talk to the chief again, d'oye. And he was like "Ryu, we need a proper wedding ring thingy, so go get it while we prep for the interspecies wedding"

Ok.

So he opened up a trap door, as usual, and I got...yes...another key. So I go back north to the cave by my big robot friend and find on the inside that the water level has been lowered because of the damn being broken. So I traverse this dungeon like all the rest with little incident and receive the ring.

 The fact that this chest kinda resembles a Boss Key chest from Zelda became slightly foreboding to me.

Went back to town and found that they had arranged the wedding *gasp* just in time for me to bring the ring!

Don't mind me, ladies, errand boy coming through.

And we commenced with the inappropriate marriage of dog and woman. No offense, Bo.

So we were thanked and let go. I took a nap at the inn and proceeded to leave. We were supposedly gonna take the robot over the river...but...

That dickbag had better ideas I guess. And like a classic cartoon villain he had it perfectly timed. So while we were all in this town celebrating a wedding...

The neighboring town went 'splodey. But before the General could do the same to us, the Robot inexplicably shuts down...weird right? So we go in to stop the bad guy.

I thought this was gonna be an easy fight, but was I ever wrong, wow!

Ok, who fed the General after midnight?

He turned into a Gremlin and proceeded to pound me to a pulp. In order to win this fight I had to have Nina casting Atk Up on Ryu and Bo as well as Fort to keep Bo's shitty defenses up. After that, essentially, Nina was healing on every round while Bo and Ryu slowly chipped away at this dude's health. Once he was at a sliver of health, he did the boss thing and became tougher. Every turn he was blowing fire worth 15-20 damage at the whole team. Nina had to keep on her toes and heal the lowest health dude for like a millenia before Bo finally shot him down.

After this, the Robot moved:

We got to the southern part where the broken bridge was. Then the saddest thing in the world happened. I was too sad to take a screenshot, but essentially, GAR hopped into the volcano and died so that he wouldn't hurt anyone ever again.

This was me

With the GAR's noble sacrifice came the eruption of the volcano which filled the southern river and hardened into stone so we could cross.

 From here on I will fight for GAR and everything he stood for...

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Adventures of GIANT ASS ROBOT

 I'm getting to that point where I'm addicted to playing this game now. And I have to give it props that despite its lack of subtle hints, it still give you things to look forward to. For a while now I've been waiting to do something with this GIANT ASS ROBOT. It was confusing me because I thought my E.Key would activate it for some reason. I dunno...Earth Key....giant stone robot....requires a key....can you see my line of reasoning?

Regardless. I now made the trek up to see my friend the GAR (an acronym, but as bonus knowledge, Gar is also the name of a character in Breath of Fire 3).

 I'm gonna be in you.

So I wound my way around the littler desert patch or whatever and entered via it's foot. Up the leg I go, seeign all the creepy wires and stuff, then found its heart.

 It's HEART is being ATTACKED! FOR REAL!

I couldn't let this injustice stand, so I went after the madman and his flunkies. They went down like bowling pins with my recently power-leveled heroes letting loose into them.

So after taking down the General AGAIN, we activated the robot with the new key we got from
Bruce Springsteen and then it started to walk.

 It walked all the way to the giant damn and then:

 BZZZZAAAPKABLOOEY! (That's a technical term)

 And then the damn was loose and our giant friend stood proudly beside the free flowing river. Thinking that my job was done I wanted to head south but then discovered again that my road was blocked. A bridge was broken. Frustrated I went BACK to the twin towns, who now seemed very happy, and heard why I couldn't progress from this guy:

Ask the NPCs: The Reckoning

So looks like I gotta solve some more stuff around here before I go. Maybe I can solve this guy's mental health problem....

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Actually Agua This Time, We Swear

I'm beginning to see that Capcom's early RPGs are lacking a little tiny thing called "subtlety".

As often as I like to complain that its hard to remember what you're doing while playing long-stretch games like Breath of Fire or the Final Fantasy's, its clear to me now that the minigame I told you all about in my last post called "Ask the NPCs" is not a joke. It's a real thing and sometimes...sometimes its painful. But it goes much further. Allow me to show you.


Upon fixing the village I needed to know just WHERE Agua was. Well one dude told me Agua was to the North. And then THIS chick told me:

Oh. Ok.

So I head out of town and find an incomplete bridge with a floating tower that I've passed by dozens of times. Keeping Bo at the lead let me go through the forest, and led me to the end of a walkway on the lake.

Using the Tablet, the castle lowered itself down. And thus began many many generations of fantasy nerds obsessed with floating castles and floating rocks. (I know it didn't BEGIN here...but close).

In its day, this cutscene was top notch

Once inside I was introduced to something a little different...

Dungeon Designers Tip 2:

     Another way to have heroes take longer exploring small spaces is to have them do map puzzles. Not knowing where something takes you can be challenging and sometimes frustrating as hell if that something takes you back to the beginning where you gotta walk around again and fight seventeen more battles to start the puzzle again. As an example, try floating disks:

This dungeon took me a little while, but it was kinda worth it for the half decent treasure I found along the way. Then at the end of the line I came to this fella, who proves ultimately this game's lack of subtlety:

 I woulda shat my drawers if instead they had this:

See what I did there?

So anyways. This Boss wasn't much of a boss at all. I only had Nina cast Cura only a couple times before I wore him right down. Then:

*facepalm*

So I finally dealt with this entire area of the map. After some quick hover disk maneuvers and walking ALLLLLLLLLL the way back down to Tantar and Tuntar I kind of discovered something.

For real? A hop, skip, and a jump and there's a fully functioning river over there? Ditch these towns, re-settle people! The pioneers did! GHAD!

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0