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

Breath of Fire: A Cure for Zombies

 SO, jumping back in....we were left with a clan chief who wanted me to save his village so that an interracial couple could get married in the towns surrounding a dry river....

basically

The Chief said that Agua would have the key to unlocking the GIANT ASS ROBOT up in the north. Ok, lets do that.

I wandered a bit and found that zombie town again. I talked to the chief and he immediately told me what I wanted to know.

There we have it, Agua, a place I need to be to get to this robot business. But...rid the zombies?

They were still pretty hard up for a cure for these pretty harmless zombies. I mean...they weren't even attacking anyone.

Yeah, alright, lets put these monsters to rest

I'd like to take the time to introduce people to a minigame in RPGs known as Ask the NPCs. See, proper conveyance in a story-based game wasn't really a thing. You had to solve problems by asking around. Sometimes you ask the wrong people and there's consequences, but in this game, you're usually pretty safe to ask any ol' NPC nearest to you and you can figure out what to do next.

Clue 1: There's shit wrong with the soil

Clue 2: We can fix the shit with water

Clue 3: We can use a jar to hold water

People stopped giving me "useful" intel after that, and then I had an idea to wait til nightfall and check out the zombie situation again. Then I met a nice crazy zombie-loving lady who knew exactly what I needed.

Thankfully her zombie husband had some sense and opened a secret passage so I can take her jar and go get some clean water.

Putting Bo in the lead lets me skip through forests like its flat ground, so that led me to find...

A fancy cave! This is another dungeon with lots of stairs and badguys every three steps.

Dungeon Designer's Tip:

         In order to make small maps more challenging to the player, make sure that all items are in the centre of the map, but you have to go out of your way to get it. Also, in order to progress through the dungeon, make sure the player has to take the longest route fucking possible.

At least power leveling is easy in forever-dungeons

Eventually I made it to the bottom and found an underground lake of the very hard to find...water.

Thankfully a miracle of RPG's happens. A quick cutscene took me back to the village instantly 

*HALLELUJAH* and we dumped the water in the middle of town.

Went to the chief and he gave me lots of gold and items for my troubles as well as a magic Tablet.

 ooooOOOooooo shiny!


Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

ME0: A Real Life 16-Bit Warrior

 Greetings Gamers!

I just wanted to let you know that JO3 and I are still alive. In fact, a few days ago we had a lovely night out for steak and followed up with several hours of video gaming (like we do). I'm currently on the road performing a puppet show, and I just had some time to sit and think about my blog recently while showing a friend the video games we've been playing.



Just wanted to let all of you know that the blog isn't dying or going on "permanent hiatus" or anything like that. J03 is in his final throws as an acting student, and I'm on a really busy tour. Come April, we'll be alive and kicking. But I assure you, gamers, that we'll be trying to post as often as we can.

Gaming's already our life, so its a no-brainer that this blog is the least stressful thing in the world when it comes down to it. So, expect to see more of us, and I'm looking into making some sweet aesthetic changes to the site as well. Thanks for your patience and your viewership.

More 16-Bit Adventures are coming!

OH, and I found this on the internet, it might be a bit old by now, but I just thought..."Wow, THAT is a real life 16 Bit Warrior. Proud of you buddy."

Oh, and if I can get my funds in order this summer, I'll be attending Comic-Con and E3. I'm thinking my costume choice is pretty obvious....Steampunk Link!

See you soon, gamers!

Game ON!

-ME0

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.