Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter (USA) ISO

Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter is one of those love or hate kind of games. While having the same feel (sort of) as the previous Breath of Fire titles, it has a unique combat system making it a more tactical than the previous titles in the series. The one downside to the game is after you gain the ability to transform into a dragon, the game has a time limit from then on, eventually resulting in game over, so the main point is to get as far into the game as you can before you run out of time and have to export your character's stats to a new game file. If you can get over the repetition of starting over at least a few times this game is interesting enough to check out.

This game is definitely not what I was expecting at all. It is totally different than any previous Breath of Fire / Final Fantasy / Chrono / etc RPG's. You might actually die playing BOF:Dragoon Quarter. I usually get angry at a RPG and stop playing it if I die even once (which rarely happens). But I have died a few times in BOF:DQ (it's a miracle I kept playing the game). It's very difficult, especially if you have not played it before.

At first, this game is fun to play because it's hard to beat. It makes you think, and you must always be cautious. It combines live action play (on the field) with turn-based strategy (during combat). For those of you considering playing this game for the first time, I challenge you to beat this game without dying and without reading any of the strategies / tricks / walkthroughs / etc online beforehand. Figure it out for yourself. It is not easy. Maybe impossible. The first monsters and bosses of most RPG's are usually pushovers, but in this game you can easily die within the first hour if you don't know what you are doing. You don't automatically get healed every time you come to a save point (Final Fantasy has become way too easy, although still great games), and you can't even sleep at inns either! You basically have to earn your healing with money just like your equipment.

Furthermore, if you aren't careful, all your 3 characters can easily lose half or all of their health every turn against some enemies and most bosses. That's right, it is easy for the bosses to completely kill a character in one round. Fortunately, you can use as many healing items as you want during combat. But it gets expensive if you need to heal too often like this, not to mention you are only allowed to carry a limited number of items. As the game progresses, you can carry more items.

And forget about spending ten hours leveling up so you can laugh at the competition. That won't work here, since the number of enemies are fixed, and enemies don't magically re-spawn like other RPG's.

After your first play-through, you may then attempt to attain a perfect 1/4 D ratio. This is also quite difficult. For most RPG's, leveling up and attaining the "ideal game" is very very tedious and is just a matter of time and patience. In BOF:DQ, you have to think hard and play the game nearly perfectly in order to get your "ideal game". Congrats to anyone who has achieved 1/4. I'm still only at 1/16.

Overall, I am amazed that I love this game, but I do. It has very few traditional elements of the standard SNES / PSX / PS2 RPG's. They took a big risk making this game so 'different', but I am glad they did, since I get tired of playing RPG's that are exactly alike in every way except story like many RPG's seem to be.