Review

After spending a day out in the forest, Ryu returns to his village and finds that his family dissappeared, and nobody else remembers him. Ryu meets Bow, a wandering thieving child his age, and decide to leave together. Rain falls, and they both take refuge in a cave, where a large demon knocked them unconsious. Now, years later, Ryu is forced on a quest to prove Bow’s innocence. However, it becomes much more than that.

The graphics are decent, as long as you don’t expect too much. While the overworld and battle modes are pretty good, this game’s worst hit comes in its submenu. Plagued with a poor font as well as an 8 character limit for items creates difficulty in reading a lot of names. However, even this is not a problem after playing for a little while and get used to it.

It is a good thing that the music in this game is pretty good, as in most cases, and I could spend a long time listening to a lot of them. Effects are mostly heard in battle, or submenu, and a number of them get reused for different spells or attacks. All in all, nobody should be turning the volume off because the sound is bad.

Indeed, gameplay is somewhat of an acquired taste, especially if you have been playing more modern games (likely, having a Wii to download this to) because of it utilizing a turn-based approach. However, the game really starts to pick up quickly, and will draw the player in. As usual with the Breath of Fire series, each character gets a special ability they can do in certain situations, from hunting and fishing, to turning into a giant frog. To make this even more enjoyable, you create your own town through the course of the game. Three different styles, and you can even find certain people who can live there (you’re going to need to pick and choose though) and depending on certain requirements, you can even get your town to fly.

800 points well worth it, yes, I do believe so.