Breath of Fire: Battle Tunes

Was just doing some level grinding today when I had some time to spare. I just wanted to let those of you with the latest version of Quicktime to check this out.

Breath of Fire Battle Music 1

Breath of Fire Battle Music 2

  

So now you can jam while you read our blog :). Also, try and picture a couple nerds with big smiles on our faces, thats J03 and I every time we play these games. Half our enjoyment comes from the music alone.

Keep gaming, dragons.

Breath of Fire: a Knight, a Wizard, and Princess Nina

Jumped back into Breath of Fire today. Managed to get through two bosses. The first was the Knight and the second was the Wizard.

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely love this game so far. There are quite a few things that I complain about a lot, but first and foremost, the story is stellar even if the dialogue is somewhat stinted.

So after I killed that Frog dude, I was told that earthquakes were being caused by a Quake machine and that I should delve into the dungeons below Nanai to stop it. So I did just that. After a few minutes of crawling around the lava-covered dungeon I ran into this little problem...

Meo: "Arrrrrrrghhh"

Which made getting to the bottom of the dungeon difficult, so when I ran out of antidotes I died quite a few times. However, like I mentioned here, this is good for level grinding. The irritating part was sneaking past the guards from the save point all the way to the castle. It wasn't quite as convenient as level grinding outside a town, but the baddies in the dungeon were tougher and garnered more EP. So I did this for a while until I made it to the bottom relatively unscathed where I met a Knight tinkering with the Quake Machine. We fought and...

"that all you got?"

So I pressed on. And eventually I collected enough Herbs from fallen enemies and various (way out of the way) chests. I fought the Knight again, and it turned out that I could take him with about 4 Herbs and a lucky streak of Cntrs and Slams. It got pretty close, because once I wore him down to his danger zone, he'd use a magic ability called Recovery and heal. This persisted about 7 times and then he stopped and just did melee damage. Finally I killed him, but not before the damned "Seems Alright" happened. For those of you not familiar with the "Seems Alright" in the BOF games, it is what happens when you wear a boss down to zero and they miraculously regain the ability to stay alive a few turns more. Sometimes "Seems Alright" is replaced with "Grings Confidently" or something stupid like that. That is one of things that angers me about this game. But, it just has to be worked into my strategy when going into a boss situation.

Defeating the Knight brought me to level 10! So I took the E.Key from the machine and the whole town was reduced to rubble. It's ok though because the King said that it was a tough choice to make. A nearby NPC promptly told me that I should travel to Winlan, so I did.

The people here all have wings!

I mosied through their capitol and upgraded some weapon and armor at the weapon shop, then found out the king is ill. Went to the castle and they sent me to bed because I couldn't see the king yet. Then I got to play as Princess Nina.

I was able to sneak around the castle and gather a LOT of Herbs and upgrade her armor for free. Then I found Ryu asleep, and it turns out he sleep-talks...

Somebody apparently has a thing for Sara.

Then I left the city and went to the tunnel to the left and I was greeted by a couple winged soldiers who didn't want me wandering around unescorted. They came in handy, though.

Nina serves best as a healer while the soldiers did whopping amounts of damage. After leveling up a couple, Nina became super fast and would almost always go first, allowing for quick healing when necessary. So we made our way through a zombie town where apparently people were rising from the grave because of an evil Wizard. We trekked through the woods to the Wizard's castle and did some fancy dungeoneering until we came upon him. He overwhelmed us because winged people are apparently susceptible to his Xeon Gas. So  one of the soldiers got away and went to the roof where he TURNED INTO A BIRD.

Because apparently having wings isn't good enough...?

He flew back to the castle and they deduced that someone without wings had to go to the tower because they wouldn't be affected by the Xeon Gas. So they flew me back, and they fought some dragons to allow my bird guy to get through.

Once inside the tower, I was shown a VERY convenient room, where I could save AND heal. I wish saving and healing could always just be one thing. But yeah.

Went down into the depths and found my new nemesis. He seemed very displeased that they winged people so easily thwarted his Xeon Gas with...gasp...someone without wings! Oh no! So then we did battle.

He kept using a move called Petrify, where I'm assuming he solidified his skin to make it difficult to deal damage to him. His strongest attack was Freeze which did about 15 damage. So when I was lower than 15 I used a Herb and continued to pummel him. Since I had like 20 Herbs, this was a pretty easy fight.

At last I destroyed him and we received the Remedy that will help heal the King's sickness.

Oh Ryu, just foiling evil plans wherever you can.

So we all flew back to Winlan and it was a glorious celebration of flying birds everywhere as we landed. Nina hurried to heal the King and when I found them the King was barely hanging on, but then suddenly was jumping up and down on his bed. I couldn't help but laugh. This is when I discovered that Ryu actually has some dialogue...which is weird for some RPGs...I don't remember the Ryu in BOF 3 saying anything. It's kind of like a Link thing, isn't it?

Oh well, apparently I'm wrong.

After the King granted me access to the "tunnels" or whatever, Nina decided to join my party. Thank goodness, someone to heal me while I decimate legions of baddies, muahaha.

In any case, I have the RPG bug and I'm gonna keep plugging away here.

Keep on gaming, dragons.

Breath of Fire: It's Not Safe To Go Alone, Take 300 Gold...

 Alrighty RPG fans, the trek has begun on Breath of Fire, or BOF (reminds me of the Marry, Boff, Kill game, haha. I'd rather BOF people than Boff them. Rawr.). Those of you who have played large scale RPGs of previous generation consoles know that they are tough, irritating, but fun as hell.

The BOF games are nothing short of brilliant. I have played this one briefly when I was younger and shelved it for eons. I did, however get REALLY far in BOF 3 for the Playstation, which is a fantastic game. Things that separate the BOF games from any other RPGs are the extensive challenges that tie in MANY off-the-beaten-path sidequests with a very solid storyline. Turning into various types of dragons in battle is extremely fun and the games are completely filled with a crazy cast of unique playable and non-playable characters.

From my experience with BOF 3, I learned that there are SO many sidequests and strange segues that you easily lose track of the many through-line and often have a lot of thinking to do in order to decide what happens next. SO, I am pretty thankful for this blog, because if I forget, voila, I got it documented, yo!

As far as this blog goes, you'll see me talking more strategy and somewhat less story-explanation. I'm not a GameFAQ writer, so don't expect anything super detailed, after all, we have a goal at 16-Bit-Warriors, and that goal includes me seeing this game til the end.

For this first post, let me just do some explaining of the mechanics briefly so that future posts you'll be able to get what I mean in case I short-hand too many things.

Let's start off by me telling you I'm a traditional RPG'er. I stick to the canonical names.

Fun Fact: Ryu is Japanese for Dragon.

Battle Mechanics:

In BOF, the battle screen looks like this:

It's actually much better than some RPGs. The animation, personally is among my favorites because the sprites don't stand still, swing, and deal damage from a distance. The characters actually move up to the bad guys and attack. For 16 Bits, that's ballin. In the Battle area, you make a choice if you want to select your move, auto-battle, skip your turn, or flee. In the moves you can attack, defend, use magic, or use item. Auto-battle will just skip the move select and deal damage to your foe. It will persist until you cancel it by pushing B.

When your health gets below a certain point, the health bar turns red and Ryu takes a knee. From hence-forth I will be referring to this state as the Danger Zone. Queue 80's music:

"Riiiiiiide innnnn tooooo theeeee Danger Zone!"

(Sorry Kenny Loggins)

Things about BOF battling that you need to know:

1. It's easy to die, so stack up on Herbs or stay near a Save Point (more on that in a bit)

2. Counter Attacks (Cntr) - They are SO handy. Once in a while, depending on your Luck Level (more on that in a bit) you'll automatically counter attack after being hit, which you get to stack a normal-turn attack on top of.

3. Critical Hits (Slam) - Once in a while, also depending on you Luck and your Strength, you'll critical hit a monster with a Slam, which does double of more damage.

4. Sometimes you actually forget that you have to push A - Like in the above picture, the animation will continue, but there's nothing but cards on the screen as if you're waiting for something to happen. Get in the habit of pushing A a lot because this is just waiting for you to decide to do something. If you have a brain-fart problem like me, this will occur often.

Stats:

So as you level up you get stats. Your stats include poitns in HP (Health Points), AP (Ability Points), Vigor (Taking Damage), Agility (Turn Speed (Initiative to you DnD players)), Wisdom (Magic Damage), Strength (Melee Damage), and Luck (Chances of Slams and Cntrs occurring).

Also included in your stats are your ability stats that increase and decrease with your weapons and armor. These include ATK, ACT, INT, DEF, MAG, and FATE. Now, I think I get all the first five, but Fate? Why the hell would a pair of boots increase or decrease my fate? Yeah, I'm sure one day I'll figure it out.

Ok, SO, After gathering this knowledge off the get-go, I set off to take down BOF. I didn't get very far for this first post, but let me just start you off. The story opened up with a dragon waking me up from my dream...

 ...to find out that my town was burning down. When I found the refugees, I gathered info a little too quickly:

 Who the hell did you hear that from, NPC? And why is it breaking news NOW?

So a gal named Sara fought off the bad dudes after turning us to Stone and then we awoke to a destroyed town. So sad.

Darth Vader: "NOOOOOOO!" Audience "Ffffffuuuuuu..."

One thing I quickly deduced was that the walking in this game is tooooo slow. But the dialogue boxes are good and quick, so my irritation level was pretty low when I moved on to the first town. This town had a save point in it like my home down. They are easy to spot with a stone dragon head over the doorway.

Note on Save Points: You can die at any point after saving and be revived at the save point, you will NOT lose levels or have any penalties. SO, if you are a level-grinder like me, just find a town with one of these guys in it and keep battling outside until you die. You can save money on Herbs this way and spend less time looking for healing pools (found in dungeons and castles:

Which I didn't find out about until level-grinding to level 5.

I had stepped one foot into this neighboring town's castle and got insta-killed by a Gloom. So I decided to grind until I could one-hit a Bulla and attack faster than a Flea, believing that to be sufficient enough to explore the castle. 

"So get your muk blobbin and your arms flip flobbin, Do the Creep! Ahhhhh! Do the Creep!"

Found a few pieces of armor and a better sword along the way and quickly encountered my first boss:

Tough as nails this guy. I used all my Herbs to beat him because his jump attack could take 12 HP at a time. 

Luckily he didn't poison me (which, you'll find, is my biggest RPG pet-peeve. Lord, do I hate Poison.)

I wasted this dude and the castle was restored to normal. I got so many EP (experience points) that I leveled up to level 8. Win!

That was about as far as I got, an NPC mentioned some trouble in Nanai, so I'm off to do some hero-ing over there.

Keep on gaming, dragons!

PS: I shall name him Bill.

"Bill, you stay away from the cliff edge. Bad Golden Stag! Bad!"

F-Zero: Brakes are for Suckers

Alright, so my first go at this F-Zero game was a... Partial success. To be honest, I was actually feeling pretty confident about my abilities after the first lap of Mute City. I thought the controls were simple, and that I knew exactly how to power through this whole game. Oh ho ho, boy, was I wrong. This game is vicious. It is fast, and relentless, and it is near impossible to stop to think about anything else when you're blasting along in your hover-car. By the end of my sit-down I was cursing left, right and center. I slammed my fists down on the table and walked away to get some chocolate ice cream. Let's see how I started off so well.

The game starts off simple enough. Two options: Grand Prix or Practice. I'm like "Practice? Hah, who needs it." So I jump in. There's only four different cars, which seems ludicrously small considering the roster of cars in modern racing games (over 1,000 in some cases.) I don't really take time to look at stats or acceleration because the Blue Falcon looks perfect and I love me Smash Bros.

Logic = flawless.

So here go, Mute City. Pretty basic starting racing level. More or less an oval-ish shape.

^See that oval? It's a bit distorted

So the cars blast off and I gun it. I pass two of them easily enough but the yellow car is just ahead of me. We tango for a bit, weaving side to side, he's trying to keep me from passing him, I'm trying to pass him... Classic. Then we turn.

Let me tell you something about F-Zero corners. They are tight. These are not very forgiving corners of the stage. And when you bump the wall you will know. It electrifies you. I'd say it's like the bottom of your car is fingernails, and the edges of the stage are like a chalkboard. You grind down on it and it hurts you and makes a horrible sound that you never want to experience again. But if you're going too fast, it'll shuck you all the way into the opposite wall, which will shoot you back and electrify you too. So brings in the power meter at the top right of the screen. This is your health bar. It goes down when you hit something - be it a wall or another car. There is one strip of healing track per level (so far anyway) and when you go onto it a little robot appears above you and lasers down some glowing energy that heals you.

So anyway, back to the race at hand. This yellow guy was not letting up, and even when I passed him, he was ALWAYS right on my tail. It was like no matter how fast, or how well I thought I was doing, he was literally always right behind me. I did manage to keep calm though, it was all about focus, that's one of the main things I took away; this game demands your attention or you will be passed. You can't idle. Idle and Die.

So I'm in first place right now, great place to be. There are only 3 other cars and they're behind me (right behind me infact), when I see a car coming up infront of me. And I'm thinking, "Sweet, I'm lapping one of them!" But, no, it was a car I didn't recognize. So I pass it, and there are a couple more. Then it just becomes normal that there are all these other cars in the race. Some of them are flashing, and if you bump them, they explode. I guess their extra enemies to deal with, because just racing would be boring, right?

So that's the gist of Mute City. I won though.

Wooo! First place!

Next we came to Big Blue, which is a really fun stage; and has an AMAZING soundtrack to it. It's very recognizable, but that may be because I played a lot of Smash Bros. (When will I stop referencing that game? Who knows.)

Anyhoo, pretty well the same deal here. Kept ahead, couldn't look back, smashed into some walls, tight corners, flashing enemy-bombs. Came out on top.

So I really felt good about those two first levels, and I imagined I would continue this winning streak and demolish anything in my way. You'll see how wrong I was in my next post, catch ya later gamers!

ME0: No, It's Not A New Cinnamon Chewing Gum

So after much thought I have decided to follow in JO3's footstopes and step outside of the sidescroller genre for my next game. I didn't want to start taking on obscure ones quite yet (as I have heard from many friends that this will likely be a problem later if we hit all of teh mainstream ones too early) because there is one game I started to play about three years ago and lost my copy of it. So now I'm bringing it back and I plan to see it through to the end. It's one of my favorite RPG series out there, as it is ripe with story, heart, and a unique gameplay.



Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you (if you actually read this instead of went from picture to picture :P) Breath of Fire!

Work on this game of dragon-filled awesomeness starts as soon as possible. Also, take a look at that cover art! I was blown away when I looked it up because it is far more epic than the cartoony style that the games are well known for. Nevertheless, I'm super stoked. This is gonna take a while, but I am dedicated to kicking its arse one way or another.

Keep on gaming gamers.



PS: We have added a few new features to our blog. We now have begun a list of defeated games so readers can keep track of what we've done already. We also have a page with tips and tricks for the games we've beaten, feel free to click and check them out.

Super Metroid: Couldn't help but ace this game right away! Death to the Motherbrain!

 So I literally took a few minutes in between writing that last blog post and going back to finish the game. Unfortunately I've now published them together because I had the other one on draft for too long. But that's the life of technology. So anyways, I couldn't help myself and I went back into Super Metroid and completely destroyed this game.






Like I thought, things went down once I went to the golden statue. (I picked up more health and missile upgrades along the way, btw) The statue started blinking out, one boss at a time....

 And then sank into the water...

It was a nifty cutscene, and I was presented with an elevator to a new world. The final one. This one had no secret passages, just Metroids and stupid computer-controlled laser loops that fired at random, a LOT.

By the way, I now fully understand every webcomic joke about Metroids. They are the most irritating creatures. You cannot at ALL get rid of them once they latch on, aside from entering a different room and coming back in. The trick I soon discovered was to plasma freeze them and then super bomb them. I later discovered I should have used regular missiles instead....woulda made things easier.

I forgot to get a pic of it, but I did come across a metroid MUCH bigger than the one displayed above. It attacked me and sucked my health all the way down except for one health. Then it pulled away....was....was this the Metroid I was looking for? Motherly feelings swam through me as it sadly withdrew from me. I then found health, missiles, and a save point, then it was time for the mother of all bosses...the Mother Brain.

note: getting to the mother brain proved difficult, and many retries were had due to the fact that the laser loops would drastically lower health as I took apart the obstacles getting to it. THEN it took WAY too many missiles to destroy the case the brain was in, which in turn made the boss fight impossible after. SO, I eventuall discovered you could do a whole bunch of damage to the brain, then make your way back to the missile loader and energy recharge station, then come back and the brain had the same amount of damage taken. So this is what I did eventually and I exploded the brain.

Which brought me down to a little square room to face off the evil brain with its new body. Suddenly Ninja Turtles comes to mind...hmm. So the fight was hard, namely because he/she/it had a mega move that couldn't be avoided and you had to ensure you had about 4 tanks of health left. Then it hurt me for a bit and THEN tried the move again...but I was saved by this!

 My Metroid baby came back and defended me. Then it gave me all of my health back, but the Mother Brain killed it. It was very tragic. Samus got furious and I gained an even more powerful laser attack...somehow.

 But hey, who am I to complain. DIE MOTHER BRAIN!

And I showed it who the real boss was. Then she proceeded to activate the self destruct (of course) so I had to boogy my way out of the planet, shooting MANY space pirates along the way *hallelujah!* and got back to my ship.

I took off into space and then the entire planet blew up. Take that you dirty Metroid-Thieving Pirates!

Another surprise was the actual number of hours I logged on the game was not nearly as much as I have been exaggerating about, haha. I had a good laugh at that.

Thus brings an end to the fun of Super Metroid. I hope you had fun journeying to the depths of Planet Zebes and defeating the Mother Brain. It was a difficult mission, but I think we all came out the better for it. Thank you all for your patience on my posting lateness.

Stay tuned for my next game announcement. Also, we still encourage game suggestions in our comments field. Don't be shy. We like comments at 16 Bit Warriors. Keep gaming gamers.

Super Metroid: Bye Bye Draygon and Ridley

Why hello there gamers! I sat down to take down this game once and for all. And wouldn't you know it, I took down two bosses in one sitting. This game has gotten a whole lot more interesting and I feel the end of it is near. Not to spoil any secrets, but I've already picked out my next game. *big evil grin*

So, without further ado, here are the tasks and challenges I faced today.

Well we left off having been brought back to Brinstar and me not knowing particularly where to go next.

 I took that door to the right there and soon discovered that my new suit had the ability to withstand most forms of lava. SO this made for plenty new discoveries and a lot of missile and health tank upgrades. Some new passages brought me to this interesting thing I wanted to show you guys.

 It's a giant turtle. Although I couldn't do any damage to it, once I shot at its babies, it would go into his shell and start flying around trying to knock me on my armored ass! I jumped on top of it and discovered it then would go straight up and show me secrets. Then I made my way through the other new areas....

 I thought this was a pretty cool pose. Using the grappling hook on walls.

I mosied along and it wasn't very long before I made my way through the weird underwater/sand levels and found myself in a new boss room. This guy is Draygon, and he was easy once I figured him out. I shot at his stomach, and he took lots of damage, but wouldn't die. Then I had the bright idea of shooting out the cannons on the wall, letting him catch me, then electrocuting him! He flew pretty close to the electric buzzing stuff where the cannons were and I used the grapple beam to kill him. I took a lot of damage in doing so, but he was instantly dead.

 He/She sank beneath the sand and its babies followed.

My reward? Space Jump!

The trick with Space Jump powerup is that I had to jump JUST after descending from a previous jump and I could theoretically jump infinitely . I say theoretically because the timing was really rough unless I was in shallow-roofed tunnels, then it was easy. Soon I also got another upgrade to my weapon. A Plasma Cannon!

This just simply dealt more damage, so I could take on the space pirates when they became more powerful. So, with my Space Jump and Gravity Suit, I was able to dance my way through a lake of lava and get to the entrance to Ridley's lair. The iconic bad guy awaited my arrival.

But first, an upgrade! I fought a Golden Chozo for this sucka.

 The idea of this attack was I could do damage when jumping into things and baddies. it also opened up cave-away rooves. So I dropped into a dark room and something sinister was...

 ...waiting.

Then BOOM! Attack of Ridley. I emptied every missile I had at him and when I ran out of those I gave him nothin but charged shots, all the while trying to discern his dip and lunge patterns. He was hard, but easy to hit. Lots of damage was done on both side, but in the end...

Ridley was nothing more than a health and ammo dump. *spits on Pterodactyl corpse*

So now that I've defeated the bosses of all the worlds, I'ma head back to that creepy golden statue thing and see what happens now. Keep on gamin, gamers!