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

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!"

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.