I guess I should start this review with what is most prevelent on my mind. Nina. Who designed her? My Lord God Almighty, she's the skinniest lassie I've ever laid eyes on. Sure she's supposed to be like malnurioused and all, but I mean, aren't they stretching it a bit far to say she's that thin and can fight on your team? Yeah if I were trying to win the compitition of "most anerexic female" perhaps I would make a character thinner than that girl in Dark Angel, but then again, I would never, and I mean not in a million years, or at least a million days, make a game with that thin of a hero. Ryu's amazingly thin too, which is extremely scary looking. And his haircut is atrocious. Rin manages to look at least a bit healthy thru the entire game though, and it is a good thing you can change party leaders, cause I couldn't look at starving Ryu and dead Nina the entire game through.

Now that I am done complaining about starving children in the future, let's look at the game. It is another Breath of Fire game, even if it doesn't like to recognize it is number 5 in a series and instead ops to go with a subtitle: "Dragon Quarter." What the hazy is a Dragon Quarter anyways? Perhaps in the future when people live underground a dragon ran for president. He was so loved by the people, even the cat people, but not really the monkey people, and he rebuilt the backup generators so people could breathe down underground that everyone decided unanimously that they should replace the long-dead Washington, whom no one even remembered who he was, with the Dragon president. But then again, when does a quarter come into play with the plot of the game anyways? Didn't they change the currency to zenny? There are no different denominations of zenny, so I guess they don't even have quarters. Thanks for confusing the world Capcom!

Capcom made this game thinking, "Let's throw in bunches of new ideas that should go in different games all in one game. And while we are at it, let's use some old ideas, but give them fancy names."

First off there is the PETS system, Positive Encounter and Tactics System. This is basically the Grandia - Hit the enemy first and you get first strike, let the enemy hit you and they do. Nothing really new here, except you can leave meat to distract enemies, or throw bombs at them before the fight.

Next is APS, Active Point System. Basically everything you do in a battle, ie move around on the battle field, attack or cast magic affects only your AP bar. You only have a certain amount of AP, so you have to decide whether you will keep attacking the enemy or use AP to get some distance between you and the enemy before it attacks. Each turn the AP bar replenishes, and if you didn't use all your AP, it will continue to the next turn. But don't try to save them between fights, it doesn't work like that. This is nice for there are no magic points to worry about between battles, so you can just cut loose with Nina's magic for every battle.

The dragon system is quite different in this game too. Ryu gets embedded with a Dragon spirit early in the game and slowly loses his mind to the dragon within, which makes the plot dramatic and enjoyable. But this means that the game punishes you for using the dragon form. You have a dragon counter that goes up as the game progresses slowly, and goes up faster whenever you use any dragon power. When it reaches 100.00%, the game ends. Completely. So whatever you do, don't let that happen. Ryu also has only 1 dragon form, and 4 or 5 attacks and that's it. But if you play the game correctly you should never have to see the dragon form and never use the attacks, except once. But just so you know, he looks really cool in his dragon form, which is very similar to BOF IV's Hybrid form.

I haven't been able to get the fairy village to work yet, but I'm sure it is fun. Drat my luck, I lost the item that lets you visit the fairies. Also, don't expect any fishing minigame. Fishing underground in an post-apocaplytic world doesn't make that much sense.

What liked: Yay, it is a new game in my second favorite RPG series, (first being Suikoden). The game's in 3-D and has lots or replay value supposedly.

What disliked: Character designs, replay value includes just extra scenes, you have to have this coin to save and when you want to start over you don't retain your levles.

What to expect: Hard. This game is hard as bot. And confusing to boot. The first dungeon I died on quite a few times before I figured out exactly what to do.

What not to expect: Breath of Fire IV. I spent the first 5 hours of the game wishing it was BoF IV with a new story and new characters.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: It's a cool cellshaded 3-D rpg. Wait, so is Dark Cloud 2 and Wild ARMS 3. It's set in a post-apocalpytic future. Wait so is... every rpg since FFVII. It's extremely hard and mixes a lot of cool ideas together. Wait so does... Grandia, Star Ocean, Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile, etc... Ok so it claims to be extremely new and different, but basically it is a conglamorate of many rpg ideas that companies have tried before.

Ratings on:

Control: 8 - Controls are fine, they take a little bit of time though. Looking around corners for monsters is a bit terdious.

Graphics: 7 - I really like the cartoony style, it is a little dark on the screen and I had to deduct points for the anerexic hero and heroine.

Sound:

Style: 7 - They tried a bunch of new things in this game, and faked trying a bunch of new things too. But if you ask me, they tried to add too many new things to their "stale rpg series." I loved the direction Breath of Fires were going before this game.

1st hour: 3 - Ok, how does the restart system work exactly?

5th hour: 4 - I've already died once, that sucks, and I started over at level 1 again? I thought I got to keep levels!!!

1st week: 5 - Yes I still don't know exactly how the restart system works.

5th week: 8 - Ok, I figured it out finally. Now I sorta like this game, for all it's flaws.

#1 reason why I hate this game: No its not the not being able to save except when you find one of like 15 save coins, it is that when you die, you don't get to keep your levels when you start over. That would have made the game sooo much better!!!

by Hawke