Welcome to a new segment where I review my favorite childhood games from memory, go back and play the game. Then revise my opinion because, let’s face it, some of those games from the 80’s and 90’s just don’t hold up. The Score above is provisional. I’ll be back (probably, maybe, like… solid 25% chance) after I play the game again and write a new review and link it to this post.
Enough of the preamble… on with the review!
Breath of Fire blew my mind when I rented it from Blockbuster* shortly after it’s release. The character design was awesome, the ability to FUSE characters to change up your gameplay was revolutionary in my mind. I had played a lot of rpg games with my friends and was always sort of disappointed that the “backrow” characters in a party combat scenario didn’t really have anything to do in most of your fights. It had a great easter egg where you could find CHUN LI practicing her lightning kick in the town of thieves (I think it was called Bleak). Every additional character had pragmatic skills on the world map, and they had a reason to be in the story. I don’t remember how grindy it was. I assume not very since I did beat it at some point. Though… that may have been after I got to college and picked it up in a bargain bin… I guess that still counts as a retro memory review. We just time skipped a bit to when I was in college and had a tiny bit more money and a teensy bit fewer things demanding my time.
Regardless of when I first played the game to when I beat it, the game never felt very grindy. I’m sure I did do some grindy bits cause I actually enjoy that playstyle, but I don’t believe I ever felt like the grind was required. Which, in that era, was quite the feat.
The last thing I remember as a vivid + was being able to go underwater and have the fish/merchant companion be situationally significant to both the story, the combat, and the environmental challenges. He was generally a weak character for the rest of the game, but that little vignette made him a genuinely valuable part of the team and the story.
*We should probably keep in mind that, when I was a kid, we didn’t have much money for games. Where others may have experienced the “rent before you buy” phenomena… that wasn’t really a thing in our house. I saved up babysitting money for an entire summer to buy the SNES. If we were doing well, I might get a single game for Christmas or my birthday, but they were almost always used from the swap meet or new from the discount bin. We didn’t have gamestop or many used game store options at the time. In any case, a LOT of my historical game memories are based on a rental window period that had to align with money, time (i had school, sports, occasionally a girlfriend, and a few part time jobs to juggle with my gaming habit), and whether my save file still existed when i rented the game a second time (assuming it was even available).
