Breath of Fire: A JRPG Series Tarnished by Time

 

I’ve recently completed the Breath of Fire series. Well, the first 4 games at least. I’m unsure if I’d ever touch BoF5 due to personal technical limitations as well as, frankly speaking, a personal lack of interest in the artistic and gameplay aspects of the title. This is an interesting and truly unique JRPG series with, in my opinion, a tragically confused history of development filled with unrealized ambitions and ultimately flawed overcorrections. However, suffice to say I’ve played through all of the “traditional” titles in the franchise that best represent its core essence, and I have a lot of things to say, as always. Let’s dig deep into this gem of a series!

The SNES Era: Peak Experiences with Some Oldschool Quirks

There were expectedly lots of warnings and signposting on the Internet for the first 2 games when I looked into which entry to start with. Many people don’t seem to rate BoF1 and 2 very highly compared to the rest of the series, citing reasons such as barebones combat, obtuse progression, and overtuned random encounter rates among others as major flaws or even dealbreakers. Regardless, I thought that Ryu’s character design looked cooler in those and there are 4 instead of 3 party members, so I decided to play them regardless. I opted for the GBA ports of these games as I prefer the UI and reduced encounter rate, and I didn’t find the more saturated colours as off-putting as say, the GBA port of FF6. After all, the character designs themselves are already quite vibrant and the setting is much less bleak than FF6 which benefited more from the darker SNES palette. And the soundtrack wasn’t as severely hurt by the downgraded GBA audio chip compared to FF6’s more complex compositions.

My expectations weren’t exactly low either, as I’ve seen still many long-time fans praising the first 2 games, and I ended up utterly charmed despite not playing with any re-translation patches. The stories weren’t too complex and the towns frankly aren’t as artistically stimulating nor were they fleshed out in an engaging way. These are things that would later be expanded upon in their PS1 sequels, to varying levels of success. What truly makes the first 2 Breath of Fire games special to me is the way the games involve you in their world using gameplay through a combination of mechanics: unique non-combat skills for each character, an interactive overworld with upgrades to collect instead of everything only being put in dungeons, and the Township feature in BoF2.

In both games, there is a fairy sizable overworld with environmental elements like trees, forests, rivers, digging sites, and the surrounding ocean that you can actually interact with using unique character skills to traverse. And of course, there are interactable obstacles in dungeons that you need to use specific character skills on. This is especially prominent in the first game and is gradually introduced to the player in a very natural way at the start of the game. It creates a feeling that each of your party member, who are from various different anthropomorphic clans, are familiar (and unfamiliar) with different environments of the world and has unique traits that let them specialize in dealing with certain geographical terrains. It makes the world grander and actually feel lived-in, instead of simply being a place to travel across to get to towns and progress story beats.

BoF1 also excels at introducing things to you, be it characters or gameplay elements. An aspect that is still completely unmatched by any of the later entries is the way the game introduces the “missing sibling” character Sara. She was introduced protecting your village from the invading Dark Dragon clan and bravely fought off the enemy as much as she could before getting captured, and the game starts right after this with the clear goal of rescuing Sara. It’s not a complex, emotionally charged, or nuanced premise, but it simply works to kick off the purposeful journey in an effective manner. This isn’t really ever replicated well in any of the sequels, actually, which made the drive of the journey and overall pacing of 1 to be notably well-done.

In regards to introducing party members, BoF1 truly excels at creating immediate attachment to the characters even if they are fairly straightforward and lacking in characterization depth. A prime example is Karn, the lockpicker, who dropped into the picture when your party fell down a waterfall and got stuck in a dungeon. So he immediately became an integral part of the team by helping you get out of the place. Furthermore, in previous dungeons and even towns, you might have seen a few locked doors that you couldn’t access yet, so Karn will instantly remind you of those missed opportunities and motivate you to go back and see what you can get, a meaningful form of backtracking. Similarly, the introduction of Ox the bull guy will also instantly remind you of the cracked walls in those previous dungeons that blocked you from grabbing goodies. BoF1 handles backtracking with grace, something even more modern games, hell its own successors, fail to accomplish.

Combat is also something BoF1 is often criticized for, but I find this to be grossly exaggerated and dismissive of its finer qualities. This includes giving you earlier access to, thus creating a focus on buffs instead of debuffs. Breath of Fire, unfortunately like many other JRPGs, makes debuffing quite useless since they don't land all that often and are usually completely unusable on bosses. So in later entries where your units can access debuffs much faster than buffs, you essentially gain useless skills more often than useful ones. This does add some variety to the combat, even if much of the combat encounters can be done with Auto-battle. The added variety is especially appreciated because magic is also viable in this game, unlike the next 2 entries, though not as potent as in the 4th game.

Additionally, you can seamlessly switch and rearrange party formation in combat and on the overworld, a much-welcomed feature as character skills are often used while roaming around. It's a tightly paced experience both gameplay and story-wise, without suffering from unmemorable characters thanks to the strong gameplay integration in their introductions and continued usefulness of character skills. It's the best feeling game in the franchise to play through mechanically,  which is ironic considering it's the earliest, most "primitive" entry, not to mention it was literally Capcom's first attempt at an RPG ever. And the soundtrack is the most consistent in terms of quality in my opinion, as the later games will vary more in quality or application of when the soundtrack is used.

The second Breath of Fire game is, frankly, a mixed gameplay experience. The bosses are more varied in design, though 1 did have a unique Guts mechanic, and fishing became more naturally integreated into the game flow. The dungeons, even if worse in terms of mechanical design, have a more memorable setting that can really make you laugh out loud or create an immersive atmosphere. However, combat in general and how Ryu's Dragon transformation ability were handled were… not the best. The formation system is not really utilized much, since Defense is almost always the best stance to take. The game also opted to give each character a unique combat skill too, not just on the overworld, and…. I never use them except for Nina's skill that recharge some AP for herself. What’s worse is that the switch of the universal “Change” command into unique skill command for each character in combat means BoF2 does NOT allow you to switch party members in combat like 1 did. And for some reason, not in the overworld either! Only 3 party members can travel together with Ryu at once (this will only get worse in the third game) and you need to switch out via Dragon Statues were you can also rest and save your game. It’s such a major, frankly puzzling downgrade from the 1st game for a mostly useless new feature.

However, coupled with the Shaman system that only work on Ryu's friends, I get the feeling Capcom was trying to make Ryu's friends more special like him too. So they too can transform physically and get stronger and stay as their individual selves, instead of being fused into a single being like Karn and feeling "replaceable". Even though the Agni fusion sequence at the end of BoF1 was simply iconic and neatly tied the emotions of the crew’s journey together. However, they lose their overworld skills when shamanized, unlike Karn's fusions that keep Bo's ability to go through forests and Gobi's ability to swim underwater, so it's a mixed bag. I appreciate the effort though, and this theme of "trying to improve what was lacking in the previous entry to varying degrees of success" is a recurring one throughout this series. And this is why despite not being completely in love with the PS1 games and feeling a bit betrayed to some extent as a fan who loves the first 2 so much, I can’t help but be touched by this passionate mindset of its developers.

Speaking of, another “improvement” that really worked out was Township. In BoF1, your town Dragnier got destroyed by the Dark Dragon clan after the prologue and was never rebuilt. Surely this serves as a constant reminder and motivator for Ryu to go after the enemy, but the very next town you visit, Camlon, was initially in ruins but was rebuilt after you took care of the monsters in the castle. It always felt bittersweet that your own town never visibly recovered in-game, and this seems to be something BoF2 wanted to remedy in its own unique way that, in my opinion, was one of the best features in the series that was, sadly, once again never replicated.

In 2, you are driven from the town you call home after the early parts of the game (technically twice after the prologue cutscene). As such, the Township feature was introduced where you collect tenants from all around the world through exploration to build your own town, carving a place for yourself in the new world. And this feature, although definitely not perfect, is pure genius. The emotional drive to engage with this optional “minigame” is extremely strong and it’s also naturally integrated into gameplay via exploration. Later on in the story, Township even gets a big story moment and expanded gameplay feature if you spend enough time building it up - it’s simply awesome!

In terms of overworld activities, BoF2 takes one step forward and another step backwards. Specifically, fishing spots are randomized now and appear at easily accessible places, working more like how hunting was in BoF1. However, hunting itself was kind of “nerfed” and separated from the overworld experience. Now there will be randomized grass patches that you can enter to go to a separate screen for an optional hunting minigame, instead of having the animals roaming around on the overworld itself. This creates a sense of isolation from the overall world flow and scope, which is a step down from the first game in my opinion, as even its less frequent fishing mechanic is more of a reward for exploration than an isolated experience.
 
What has to be the game’s strongest aspect is the super tight thematic vision of the writers reflected in every aspect and especially, every important character in its cast. In BoF2, every single character in the main cast is part of the game’s “freedom vs duty” dichotomy, and it creates a strong sense of narrative and thematic cohesion. This creates a strong emotional bond and connection not only between the player and the game characters, but also between the protagonist and his party, even when there isn’t a lot of party interaction. This is why despite being a silent protagonist, Ryu’s bond with his crew is 100% believable and the emotional impact of the final game sequence along with the gorgeous, natural cinematic sequence just works so well despite being an old cliche “power of friendship” trope. 

Similarly, the moment with Mina just works so well because of the strong writing and adherence to a singular vision and theme of the game. So that even if you never get to “play as Mina” or witness her fight off any baddies like Sara, it still turns the player into an emotional mess, and it’s a beautiful accomplishment of Breath of Fire 2 that puts it above other highly-rated SNES JRPGs for me. The gameplay isn’t perfect, but the emotions created by its supportive mechanics and just the way it develops its world and characters (except for Yua, unfortunately) make it truly stands out as a video game experience. And I’m frankly unsure if I like 1 or 2 better, but for now, I’d say 2 brings the most emotion out of me so I will tentatively place it on the top of the series.

The PS1 Era: Polish, Overcorrections, and Underdevelopment

Right off the bat, the PS1 games are much more visually stunning than their SNES predecessors. Not that the first 2 games weren’t visual treats especially for their time, but the next 2 games are simply on a whole other level in terms of spectacle. This is especially beneficial, as mentioned above, for towns, as they are much livelier, and larger in the case of 3 than, ever before. Something awesome that BoF3 does, similar to Grandia though to a lesser extent, is allowing town NPCs to simply carry on with their daily tasks in a way that showcases the culture and history of the region it’s in.

A prime example would be Wyndia with the outdoor cafe, the chain of bakeries on the upper side of the city, and the town square with the kids playing hide and seek. Not all of these NPCs have story progression relevant things to say, and this helps to flesh out the world and make these towns feel like lived-in places instead of locations to just go through to progress the game. In BoF4, even though the towns are super small and claustrophobic, something lampshaded even by the characters themselves in-game, they feel even more culturally rich and lived in as they all have very strong architectural variety, something it truly does the best in the series.

Additionally, the PS1 games also have a much stronger musical identity in their soundtracks, though as mentioned above, the consistency in terms of quality is a lot more mixed. BoF3’s soundtrack has a strong jazz influence which makes going through most of the game really pleasant and chill. Too chill in some cases that it’s seriously jarring. I was taken out of the experience in particular during a segment when you’re trying to stop a poison gas leaking incident at a factory, and the music was still super comfy like nothing serious is happening. It was extremely jarring. In general, the music tend to lack tension even if I’m a huge fan of jazz, so I can see why the OST was actually quite the controversial topic when the game was first reviewed in the 90s.

As for BoF4, I was very impressed by the heavy Chinese influence of its soundtrack that complements its unique world… whenever the music is played that is. You see, in a peculiar but artistically ambitious decision, Capcom decided to use only naturalistic ambient noises in open areas you traverse through before reaching named locales, as well as in most dungeons. And frankly speaking, it didn’t work out too well and create a jarring inconsistency in the game’s audio. This is why despite BoF4 being musically my favourite soundtrack in the series, I can’t in good conscience rate it higher than BoF1 in terms of its implementation in crafting the overall game experience.

The PS1 games also implemented blue magic, allowing party members to learn skills from enemies. This was almost perfected in the 4th entry via the universal use of the Guard action instead of using the Examine action on a specific target in 3, but the problem of useless skills persist as debuffs and status effects are practically unusable when you really need them. Overall, blue magic wasn’t perfect but still a welcome new feature, even if it had a heavy bias towards physical attack skills. Ryu’s Dragon transformation is vastly improved here mechanically, especially compared to BoF2 one-time use per full AP bar. The innovative Gene system does a good job of incorporating exploration into progression as well as bringing back the underrated “fusion” mechanic of the first game with the Fusion Gene allowing Ryu to combine his powers with his friends, though it is admittedly not made into a major story and gameplay aspect unlike in 1. In BoF4, Dragon transformations are significantly less varied and has much less visual flair but it's still better than the system in 2.

Additionally, the new Masters system acted as an evolution of the Shaman system in 2, allowing players to customize each character with a plethora of neat skills. However, the process of learning skill is frankly, quite poorly implemented at least in 3. For some reason, the PS1 games decided to remove the Exit and Warp spells almost entirely and replace them with “warp portals” and “Shift” universal spell. For one, in terms of UX, this is a lot worse because they require more menuing and even cumbersome backtracking around the worse-designed maps. Also, and this might sound like a nitpick but it mattered to me, I always appreciated the first 2 game giving Warp and Exit only to some specific characters. It incentivized me to use different party members and create a subtle sense of emotional attachment to them since only those characters can help me warp around. In 3, you have to backtrack which gets worse if you’re inside a dungeon, and there are some locations that can’t be walked through as an overworld point even if you’ve already “cleared” it before, which adds to the tedium. In 4, it’s less tedious thanks to added features in the camp, but the new universal spell felt more systematic due to the reason I mentioned and also zooms in on its biggest weakness: the overworld map.

… And let’s finally address the elephant in the room: the degradation and eventual death of the world map in the series’ transition from 2D to 3D. It’s clear why they decided to do this. Obtuse progression was always one of the biggest complaints levied at the SNES titles and the random encounters. It makes sense why Capcom decided to do this with the PS1 games, to eliminate random encounters on the overworld and allow players to freely explore the worldmap at their leisure, only worry about encounters in the dungeons. However, this streamlining made the world maps of BoF3 and 4 extremely unsatisfying to traverse, and almost kills the use of unique overworld character skills. This is especially egregious in the 3rd entry as you cannot freely swap party members on the fly when already inside towns and dungeons, though they did add overworld camping to mitigate the annoyance. There is also no free-form “airship” or ocean traversal in the PS1 games, only very limited sailing in small specific sea areas and land-only sandflier travelling. Overall, BoF3 has a much smaller and more linear, almost point-and-click style world map more in the style of Chrono Trigger, and BoF4 completely killed it, which is a shame considering it was one of the highlights of the SNES entries.

Furthermore, there are more “clickable” areas on the overworld to go into instead of them naturally taking place on the overworld like BoF1’s hunting and fishing, creating a more obvious environmental isolation and thus, a less seamless game feel than ever before. It’s telling that now, only Ryu is seen walking on the overworld instead of your current party. They just completely dropped the ball in this department, unfortunately. However, I do appreciate BoF4 for trying to bring back a forgotten element of the first 2 games: hunting, even if it’s still in isolated map events you can enter.

Additionally, the PS1 games suffer from uneven distribution of character skill utilization. What I mean by this is that in 3, it is basically almost always required to bring Momo as her bazooka shots is too often needed to progress or unlock hidden goodies. Hell, in the last dungeon a large part of it basically locks your comp to be Ryu-Momo-Rei. Unlike FF6, a game that actually handles the concept of forced party splitting well, this makes the game feel unnecessarily restrictive and uneven in its utilization of different party members. BoF2 had moments where you need a specific character to progress due to the area or dungeon gimmick, but you get 4 party members at once and frankly, it was never overtly skewed towards just a specific character. And though BoF4 has a pretty big bias for Cray and Ershin for overworld characters, at least you can switch your guys in and out on-the-fly.

Another area where this “overcorrection” philosophy applies is regarding the town-building minigame. Township was indeed quite flawed, but it was emotionally resonant and well-integrated into the gameplay loop of exploring the overworld. It even affected the potential ending you can get, which made it all the more powerful even if that story moment is frankly, quite ridiculous in terms of logic. In BoF3 and 4, Township is “evolved” into the Faerie Village building minigame, where you help a bunch of mischievous faeries rebuild the lost home they just reclaimed. This is especially emotionally jarring in the 3rd game where the story is about Ryu being the last of the Brood dragon clan as his bretherens have mostly been exterminated systematically by the decree of the Goddess. Why am I building a place for these frankly obnoxious little creatures when my entire race is extinct and there is essentially no place for me in this world since everyone feared the Brood and wanted to exterminate them? 

This is a major missed opportunity since the gang in 3 comprises of pretty much social rejects by their peers - Nina who didn’t want to be forever coddled by her parents, Momo the eccentric emotionally dense scientist, Rei the outcast thief of Yrraal region, Peco the supposed “abominable failure” as a result of a twisted bioengineering project, and Garr the Guardian who dared to question his Goddess-given purpose in life. There is also no real sense of exploration associated with the Faerie Village building. It’s basically a point-and-click interface, you don’t gain more faeries in the village by exploring the world, you only find new flower rings to access the faerie world, and these flower rings are clearly displayed in the overworld.

In BoF4, they made the faeries less obnoxious and had a faerie Master whose learnable skills are unlocked based on your Faerie Village progress, but again it does little to resonate with the player’s emotional core unlike Township in BoF2. The minigame is enjoyable for what it is, but the theme of an environmentally and emotionally isolated experience continues in this regard. This is something I feel the first 2 games do much better than their more polished successors, seamlessly connecting their story and gameplay mechanics together and creating a unique emotional experience using gameplay instead of fancy cutscenes enabled by modern tech.

Speaking of modern tech, let’s quickly talk about the enhanced characterization enabled by the newer PS1 console and how BoF3 and 4 tackled this. In BoF3, you get to actually play through the child section for a significant portion of the game instead which is a “step up” from BoF2. The antagonists also get much more screen time and development in the PS1 titles as the villains were never the stronger parts of the first 2 games. Teepo is used much more in the story than Yua ever did, but his face-heel-turn after a long coming reunion at the end of the game was still extremely jarring. Which was most definitely what led to the… heavy-handed implementation of Fou Lu into 4’s story. I personally really enjoy Fou Lu and think he’s one of the strongest aspects of BoF4, but it’s hard to ignore how criminally undeveloped the 2 protagonists Ryu and Nina are next to him, or next to all of the main cast of the game, really.

This leads me to my last, very personal remarks…

Deeply Personal Sentimental Ramblings

Lastly, I’d like to talk about some more personal and perhaps subjective aspects of the series that I feel became worse over time. My first ever tweet about Breath of Fire was about Nina in BoF2 and how she became one of my favourite characters ever, and frankly as a Nina fan I grow more and more disappointed as I play the PS1 sequels. 

In BoF1, Nina was a young but strongly determined princess who set out to find a cure for her ill father despite all the concerns and warnings of people around her. You get to play as Nina accompanied by 2 guards and made great progress to find the cure. And in the end, she was only beaten by the dungeon master who specifically used a type of poison effective against her race, prompting Ryu to take action and rescue her. Once again, BoF1 demonstrates strong and engaging writing for its female characters by allowing them to take action in impactful ways before going down and needing to be rescued by the male hero. This is something worth celebrating, not simply because of the more egalitarian representation, but because it is a shining example of developers creating impactful narratives and drives for the player to engage with the story and its characters. 

In BoF2, Nina initially hid from the world after being banished from her Kingdom by her own parents for possessing the “cursed black wings”, but possesses an affinity for powerful (lore-wise anyways) black magic, perfectly fitting with her headstrong personality. She went out of hiding to rescue her carefree little sister Mina who was kidnapped by a gang of thieves, and dealt with harassment from the devious men with fiesty spunk. Despite being cast away by her own parents, Nina never truly resented them and worked to better the world alongside Ryu, willing to go so far as to sacrifice her individuality and soul to become The Great Bird for the party to progress their journey to save the world. And when Mina, through Nina’s unfortunate oversight, made the ultimate sacrifice in place of her sister, Nina remained headstrong and refused to shed any tears until she’s saved the world, swearing to not let Mina’s sacrifice be in vain. Here, she’s an even more admirable character, yet never becomes infallible, which showcases the developers’ masterful writing and vision for creating engaging characters.

BoF3 Nina starts as a sheltered and incredibly naive kid who was so naive she opened the lock for 2 imprisoned hooligans who visibly harassed a caged child in front of her face. She, along with child Ryu, were also trusting of adults who turned out to be tricking them to be captured for a bounty. When she grew up, Nina became a morecharismatic leader who led the Wyndian army to arrest a corrupted mayor but kept struggling with her overly protective parents who didn’t want her to go out there and make a positive change in the world. She also fully trusts in Ryu’s goodness after being saved by him multiple times as a child. This is, honestly speaking, not really poor character writing at all… But it’s undeniably much more generic than the Nina we knew in the first 2 games, and as a result, she lost much of her charm and uniqueness as a character for me. This is even reflected in her character design and in-game sprite as she feels much more like a “magical girl” both in looks and mannerisms.

In BoF4, the writer tried to pull a reverse card with Nina, in that she essentially becomes the “Mina” to her sister Elina being “Nina”. This Nina is sheltered and ditzy, got lost a lot as a child, and is overall always overshadowed by her older sister who usually visit struggling regions to help children affected by the war, as well as always being under the protection of Cray, her sister’s boyfriend and finance. She is exposed to more of humanity’s dark side throughout the story and does develop to become more mature. However, her development is greatly overshadowed by her brother figure Cray who, in a questionable writing decision, got entrusted by Elina to mercykill her as she has now become a man-made Endless to be used for war and destruction. Without even mentioning how wrong it is for Elina who doesn’t have a strained relationship with her younger sister to NOT confide in her own flesh and blood to essentially “pull the plug”, this is a moment that could’ve added some much-needed development for the underdeveloped Nina instead of Cray who already has a clear character arc and strong personality. As a character, this Nina still pales in comparison with her first 2 incarnations.

Additionally, Breath of Fire has always had many humorous elements and jokes. However, I couldn’t help but notice a recurring joke that was twisted in the later games. In BoF1, there was a joke about an old man asking Nina to cure him of his aching back, but it was worded somewhat suggestively for such an innocuous request. Later in 2, an old man asked Katt to give him a kiss in exchange for information, and our feisty catgirl immediately proceeded to beat the crap out of him. All well and good, right? 

Well in BoF3, Nina had to kiss an old man for information, and it was played for laughs as well as to have a moment about Nina’s crush on Ryu. In 4, Nina had to be kept as a hostage for Marlok while the crew did his dirty work, and it played out as a jokey harassment situation with Nina being forced to give Marlok various types of massages until he asked to return the favour. In the original Japanese version, there were also jokes about Ryu accidentally groping Ursula’s boobs and her pulling down her pants to prove to the pirates in Shikk she’s a woman to show her lack of regard for the sensitivities of her gender. There was also a scene of Ryu peeping when Nina and Ursula were bathing in a pond, and all of these along with more significant details regard Scias’ actual characterization and Fou Lu’s actions in the Imperial Castle were cut from all non-Japanese versions of the game. And from what I know, her characterization in BoF5 isn’t really any stronger. Suffice to say, it’s rather sad to see this unfortunate shift the series has when it comes to portraying gender, especially since the first 2 games felt so special to me partly because of this aspect. It’s almost telling how in this artbook keyart, we see BoF1 and 2 Ninas strutting confidently, while 3 and especially 5 fumble around, and 4 is just…. unconcerned….

A smaller but almost equally important thing to me was the side activities in each game. This is a famous quote from the series director, Makoto Ikehara, whose meaning I think has changed quite significantly over time: “If you don’t have stuff like that, things for the players to do outside of the main quest, or when they get stuck or lost, it makes for a dull experience, you know? Just reading dialogue and going from story point to story point, that’s not really that fun.”

Personally, I feel that this vision was most masterfully realized in the first 2 games. Their worlds were more open and progression wasn’t as straightforward, which means you actually get lost more often, thus creating a natural inclination for players to stop and hunt or fish, even if these activities weren’t all super well implemented mechanically yet. They are also optional, even the White Antler in BoF1, was in a dungeon chest so technically you never had to engage with the hunting minigame. It felt like a natural activity for you as Ryu to do in these worlds, fumbling around to the next objective and stopping for a bit to fish or hunt for the journey, even if there were no overworld. camping mechanic yet.

In BoF3 and 4, there is overworld camping that also adds to building the characters, but map progression becomes more linear - more forceful. Yet minigames have now become forced upon the player. There was a forced fishing segment in 3 to progress the plot and multiple minigames, some of which were fun and fitting like the hide-and-seek game and others felt rather unnecessary like training Beyd. In 4, the minigames are mandatory to progress, two per area in fact, though they aren’t necessarily the traditional hunting, fishing, and town-building minigames. It doesn’t help that the pacing in the PS1 games were arguably worse than their predecessors, so the mandatory minigames felt more detrimental at times than beneficial. I was pretty indifferent towards this overall, but I do feel that the quoted design philosophy of the creators was gradually lost, or at least twisted, as the series develops and it’s rather disappointing to witness in my opinion.

Closing Thoughts

The Breath of Fire series has been in a coma for a while now, with its last “mainline” entry being a free-to-play mobile gacha released in 2016 and shut down less than a year after. Capcom still sometimes run user surveys about franchises fans would like to see come back and Breath of Fire is still usually included officially in these polls. Recently, miraculous revivals such as the polarizing Soul Hackers 2 and the much0anticipated Suikoden 1 and 2 HD remasters have given fans of older JRPGs hope for the resurrection of niche titles seemingly long forgotten to time. With how the Breath of Fire series develops throughout the year, it’s hard to say if I’d be completely happy if a new title ever gets announced, especially with how much BoF6 art style changed towards a much less desirable direction for me. But perhaps, like Konami, Capcom would only be incentivized to take some kind of action to revive this series if indie developers make their move first. All and all, even if the series never gets revived, or is resurrected in a way that ended up more upsetting to me, I’d still be glad I got to experience these first 4 games with all their beauty and flaws.