REVIEW: Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
A new directionfor one of the most traditional RPG series around! Is that good?
Tags: Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Aug 3rd, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| No | |||
During the PSone era, Breath of Fire was a series that was often overlooked and underappreciated, except by the most traditional gamers.
That was part of its appeal. It had all the elements down without ever straying into, umm… creativity, I guess. Originality. Something that made it unique and different.
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Now, a lot of people may take issue with that, and have no doubt that some of the Breath of Fire titles offered plenty of gaming goodness. The series dates all the way back to Nintendo’s SNES era, for cripes’ sake… they gotta be doing something right.
But one thing they hadn’t done is blaze new ground.
Capcom attempts to do that, this time out. Unfortunately, what may be fresh and new for the Breath of Fire series are mostly things we’ve seen elsewhere before.
For example?
Well, BoF: Dragon Quarter has a whole new look, for one. It’s cel-shaded!
But, uh, just a second. Didn’t Sega’s Jet Set Radio do that first, in the summer of 2000? Yup. And haven’t we already seen several cel-shaded RPGs on the market, including Dark Cloud 2 and Wild Arms 3 (which at least took the process to a new level, with cel-stroking).
So that’s not really new.
Oh, wait! There’s this new battle system that’s pretty cool. You kinda get to move around in an action sort of way before taking your turn-based action and how far you move determines how much you can pull off in one turn.
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Except… Didn’t we already see variation of this battle system on Parasite Eve on PSone? And that movement radius thingie is just a Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics concept without the battle grid.
Hmm. Okay. So the point is made. There’s not a lot in Breath of Fire so new that we haven’t seen it before.
Still and all, it’s a pleasant enough mix. Dragon-boy Ryu is again the star. Oh, it’s a different Ryu than appeared in previous BoFs, but then that’s always the case. Kinda like Final Fantasy always has a character named Red, a character named Cid and a buncha chocobos, Breath of Fire titles always star someone named Ryu who can turn into a dragon for periods of time.
The new BoF adds a somewhat platform style element into the mix with something called PETS, the positive encounter tactical system. Using this, you can avoid battle by tossing meat an enemy to distract them or damage them by tossing bombs at ‘em, or setting traps for them to trip while pursuing you but before initiating battle.
PETS is incorporated into strategy enough to make a critical difference in some encounters; toss a few bombs in the way of some enemies before engaging them in battle and they’ll start out with some hit-point damage already done to them before the battle begins, giving you a leg up on enemies more powerful than you.
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And some enemies, you’ll just want to avoid. If they’re too big for you, the game only semi-penalized you for selecting “Give Up” or running away. That’s because Capcom’s borrowed a page out of their Resident Evil playbook, adding a survival element to the game.
You’re not meant to engage every enemy you see. There’s too many of them and not enough recovery items, especially in the early going. So pick your battles wisely and “know when to walk away, and know when to run,” as Kenny Rogers would sing.
In BoF:DQ, Ryu lives in an underground city where the surface world hasn’t been visited in generations. So guess where your quest is ultimately gonna take you? Spank you very much, you guessed right the first time!
While the LOGAN’S RUN-esque plot may seem a bit thin, BoF:DQ is essentially a dungeon crawler at heart, much like Grandia Xtreme. While there’s nothing wrong with that, the battle system here is nowhere near as fascinating as GX’s, so you may find yourself wishing for a bit more story and character depth.
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If XenoSaga is story-heavy, BOF:DQ is story-light. The quest to seek the surface world is at times thin stuff to explain everyone’s motivation for being a part of the adventure. But then, this isn’t a title that aspires to the same level of story depth as Final Fantasy or XenoSaga.
The graphics are sharp but not distinctive. There’s not a ton of voicework and the score isn’t likely to inspire any US-released soundtrack.
The real problem here isn’t a wealth of flaws but the lack of a significant amount of outstanding elements. For all its experimentation compared to previous BoFs, DQ is actually just struggling to catch up to other games and developers.
If you get BoF:DQ, you’re not going to hate it. It’s solid and has a ton of dungeon crawling. But don’t expect the story to still be percolating in your mind six months after you finish. It’s just still a bit to generic and typical of current titles to really be much more than that.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
--New storytelling approach --Pretty cel-shaded graphics --More strategic style battle system |
5.2 |
| What Doesn't | |
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--Not as polished as Wild Arms 3 --Not as rich a story as XenoSaga --Not as original as dotHack |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| While it doesn’t have the polished look of Wild Arms 3 or the rich story of XenoSaga or the conceptual uniqueness of .hack: infection, there’s plenty that’s likeable about the latest Breath of Fire title. BoF: Dragon Quarter gets props for taking the series in a fresh direction but ultimately could be overlooked until a relative RPG dry spell, since there’s also not a lot that makes it a must-have. | |
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Tags: Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Aug 3rd, 2003 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
