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: 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: 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

Breath of Fire: Tale of Two Thirsty Towns

 So I'm in town for the weekend and decided to scratch my RPG itch. So here are the results. I didn't get too far, but some nifty stuff happened and I wanted to show ya.

After picking up the controller I just went to playing. While in Wyndia I checked out the shops to make sure all my equipment was up to date and took off to the south. Wrong move, ME0. I was supposed to go into the castle dungeon and use their secret tunnels. It was only after I wandered around, going back to zombie-ville, levelling up a bit, until I realized I should probably check the blog to make sure I was going the right way. Good thing about blogs is, its a journey journal, and I should have checked it. So, I went ALL the way back to Wyndia and used the stupid tunnel to get across the humongous bridge to the East. Once across I found a copse of trees that said I couldn't enter because a big tree was blocking my way. So I went further south until I came upon a couple of towns.

They're called Tantar and Tuntar

One was full of wolf humanoids called The Forest Clan. The other seemed to be regular humanoids. Turns out, these guys are suffering a drought caused by a damn built by the baddies. The villagers say that there's a big Robot that can help out, but only the chief knows what to do. However, the chief said he had no clue. So I was confused and interrogated (pressed A when adjacent to) a bunch of people and one guy let let slip that he saw the chief go into the Forest of Despair, but the chief was in his house...odd?

Went back to Tantar (wolves) and the blue haired chief was pretty adamant about some kind of treasure that they didn't want to give to the Dark Dragons.

 So that didn't help the current problem.

 And neither did this guy...

That was when I found the blacksmith. A big dude in the wolf clan. He said he'd give me a Saw if I gave him an I.Ore. Which...for some odd reason, I apparently had...

And I'm not questioning it.

Then I made an immediate trek to the Forest of Despair.

Ryu Used Saw

It's Super Effective!

The forest was pretty creepy, and I must say I HATE the enemy called "Stool". For those of you who aren't  familiar with my hatred for poison, please go back to here: http://16bitwarriors.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-not-safe-to-go-alone-take-300-gold.html

So I weaved through the dark and spooky trees, trodding on many skeletons before coming across a stone building. Inside was another basic maze-like dungeon, but this one had sneaky floor drops in the middle of hallways. By the end I defeated three guards and saved the "Chief". The "Chief" took us to steal the bad guy weapons and locked us in a room. This is where the "Chief" said Pog would have a nice tasty snack.

Not so bad...

WRONG!

Pog and I went at it, and it took almost all of Nina's AP worth of healing, but we killed the sucker. The "Chief" could believe it and he was getting pretty angry but then this guy showed up...

It's Bo, yo!

Just in the nick of time, I got a sweet, range weapon dude to join me in a battle against...

The General!!!!

I currently forget if this guy had real significance. He very well coulda been the dude who fought Sara at the beginning? I'll read back and probly regret writing that...oh well. So the General went down pretty easy, seeing as Bo had some powerful moves (Frost is my fave) and I just got Nina to either heal or use E.Key. He had a few things to say about it though, and it wasn't even cliche...

I lie.

So that was that, the real chief was there now and said he'd try and figure out a way to move the rocks in the damn...but I already know the answer...oh well. Bo tells me he's go beef with the Dark Dragons, so he joins me.

 Breath of Fire is about diversity.

And we made it back through the spooky dungeon and the spooky woods. On the outside world, I quickly realized that characters beneath the top level of the party quickly advance due to speedy battles. So I leveled up a little and went back to Tantar and Tuntar. Wolf Chief still won't shut up about his treasure, and other chief seems to have failed on the new information thing...

Robot secret is in another castle.

And proceeds to add another step on this side quest. Oh well, at least I got a wolf-faced archer added to the group. Got one more slot before I get full-party action.

Keep on gaming gamers!

-ME0