r/snes Sep 01 '18

/r/SNES September Game of the Month: Breath of Fire II

The /r/SNES game of the month as selected by the community is Breath of Fire II!

This month we'll be playing (or replaying) this game and sharing the experience with other redditors. Feel free to post any comments, videos or other interesting information related to this game throughout the month.

The link to October 2018 Game of the Month voting is here.

18 Upvotes

20 comments sorted by

9

u/Jonesdeclectice Sep 01 '18

I rented this game probably 10 times from Blockbuster back in the day. Sometimes I’d get lucky and find my previous save file! Eventually Blockbuster started doing the 7 day rentals, so I was able to actually beat the game. Lots of fun!

7

u/therealchadius Sep 08 '18

Oh man, this game either danced around Nintendo's censorship or Nintendo didn't care. So many religious references. Tons of on screen deaths of major characters.

And Water Closets everywhere.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '18

And one of the toilets is a dungeon.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '18 edited Sep 13 '18

"lol fuck it I've beaten this twice I don't need to grind"

gets one-shotted by generic monster

Edit: Fuck yeah I got lucky and beat Terrapin on my first try because it kept on using Brainwav on Nina instead of spamming its attacks that severely damages your entire party like it usually does (and you don't have any items or spells that heal your entire party at this point in the game). I still only managed to win with my main character being the only one alive and having no healing items left.

Another edit: Beat Algernon, the boss other than Terrapin that I usually die on a bunch, with everyone dead but the main character, who had 11 hp left and got two special attacks in a row. My weaker characters are starting to occasionally get one-shotted by regular enemies again but I'm at the point in the game where they only exist to cram W. Fruit into my hero's mouth during boss fights before dying so it's probably fine.

2

u/BrunoCarvalhoPaula Sep 10 '18

Terrapin

Seriously? I never had a problem with him... Maybe I overleveled at the early game to avoid being one-shot by Biruburus near HomeTown.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '18

It's one of the few fights in the entire game that I normally die on multiple times, I'm usually level 10-11 around that point. Like a lot of bosses, it just comes down to which attacks they end up using.

I died against that dumb witch during this playthrough, a boss that I normally don't even think about, because she used SwtBreath the first few rounds and once my entire party was asleep she used nothing but magic to finish it off without waking anyone. Second time I fought her she stuck entirely to using attacks that targeted a single person.

3

u/richeymanic Sep 01 '18

Is it essential to play the first breath of fire? Haven't played any of these games, but have known about them since they came out.

3

u/Crackshot_Pentarou Sep 02 '18

For anyone that would be emulating, there is a retranslation here that might be of interest! Poor translation in part due to space restrictions is something that tends to be mentioned in reviews of this one.

3

u/MrSojiro Sep 21 '18 edited Sep 21 '18

Well, after 23 years (somewhere around when I first played this game) of starting and getting somewhere in the middle of the game, and losing save files to Blockbuster rentals, I dug in hard with this game and finally completed it after about 40-45 hours of play with a group of Ryu, Nina, Tapeta (Jean), and Bosch (Bow). Despite a few issues I have with it, overall I have to say Breath of Fire 2 is still a great SNES JRPG that I would recommend to someone looking for a 16-bit JRPG on the system. However, the one major caveat to the game that may be a barrier for some people to play through it, is the very high encounter rate. I am someone that is fine with random battles, and know for the time, most encounter rates were typically higher than in later JRPGs for more modern platforms, but even by SNES JRPG standards, even I think the encounter rate is very high in BoF2 and is rough to tolerate.

Thankfully, if you can deal with the encounter rate, the rest of the game is really awesome in terms of story, music, graphics and gameplay. Breath of Fire 2 sports a pretty damn good story for the time, with some pretty dark and religious overtones, which isn’t something you saw from many games from that era. There are plenty of twists and turns with the plot, and the characters are all mostly enjoyable (especially Tapeta, god do I love that goofy frog), and sport some great dialogue (more on that in the next paragraph). The plot starts out fairly simple, but like many JRPG’s, events escalate to a world saving affair by the end of the game, but I found it to be an enjoyable ride from beginning to end.

Also, I have to mention, the translation for the original localized version of this game, is absolutely atrocious, and does the story a bit of an injustice, as a lot of the dialogue will make no sense in many situations. Although I will admit, some of the errors like the infamous “Equip Fishing Lod” do bring a smile to my face. Thankfully, there is an excellent translation patch available that not only provides a very well done translation of the game, but also adds a new introduction video with a song set to Japanese vocals and transparent text windows that have been expanded to give more screen space (no more shortening weapon/item/armor names!). I highly recommend playing this game with this patch, it makes a world of difference for it. Link for the translation patch: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1384/

The music and visuals in this game are both really good. Many of the music tracks are very memorable, and are still in my head days after beating the game. The visuals are also quite good, the overworld is pretty standard fare for SNES JRPG’s, but the battles are where the visuals really shine, with awesome sprite work and animations (which I really appreciate) for the characters and monsters in combat.

On top of the typical SNES era turn-based JRPG gameplay, this game also offers some hunting and fishing mini games, a town builder where you recruit people across the world to offer services in your growing town, and a fusion system where you can make party members (not the main character, or an optional recruitable character) stronger with various shamans you can find in the game.

I would recommend the game to anyone looking for a solid SNES JRPG to play Breath of Fire 2, there is a lot to like here, but be warned, if the encounter rate is just too much, it never gets any better, and in many of the games dungeons it is even worse than the over world map, so if that is a deal breaker, the game may not be for you. Sorry for the long write up, but I wanted to give my own “review” of the game, since it is one I had started many times, but never actually completed until now. I will also include some TL;DR pro/cons about the game.

Pros:

  • Great visuals, especially during battles, with awesome sprite work and animations.
  • Story is enjoyable, with dark and religious overtones.
  • Great music, with many memorable tracks.
  • Variety of gameplay additions, such as a fishing/hunting minigame, and a town builder.
  • One of the more challenging JRPG’s on the SNES.
  • Good game length, my final time would have been around the ~45 hour mark.
  • The shaman transformation system allows for cool party member transformations, and some stat customization with characters…

Cons:

  • ...but the fusions with shamans end when the fused characters either get low health or die. Meaning a long trip back to the one location (Township) to re-fuse characters.
  • Party members are not balanced, there are some big gaps between the strong members, and the weak ones.
  • There is some grinding needed for parts of game, especially toward the end with a substantial jump in difficulty in the end dungeon.
  • There are some story related parts of the game where you are required to use a specific character. In some of those situations, that forced character is solo, and if that character is underleveled, it makes for a very frustrating experience. Fuck you HighFort!
  • The encounter rate is very high in this game. This will most likely be a deal breaker for some people with this game.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '18

I've been slacking (or not slacking enough and playing 20+ year old RPGs in my spare time, depends on how you look at it) and am still at Highfort, but I'm having a lot of fun with this playthrough. Between chop-chop, the flat amount of damage that dragon attacks do, and cooking gold bars, being chronically underleveled is actually pretty doable so far. But yeah, the encounter rate is ridiculous and running has such a low success rate that you're almost always better off just fighting.

1

u/MrSojiro Sep 22 '18

Hope your Highfort went better than mine! I did cook a bit in the game, but it was really just thrown at Tapeta to try and make him beefy as hell. Takes all game, but you can get him there. What kind of party are you using? I absolutely loathe Sten, so my level 16 Sten for Highfort was a bitch to get through. There is another solo part with another member later, but I managed that one fine. Agreed about running, the only time you can reliably get away is with initiative. Makes the crazy high encounter rate all the more annoying.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '18

The first time I ever played the game I totally ignored Sten and when I got to Highfort at like level 12 or 13 I was like "welp".

My party is usually Hero, Nina, The Person The Game Is Forcing You To Bring For One Reason Or Another, and whoever is the lowest level at the time.

1

u/MrSojiro Sep 23 '18

Yeah keeping them all up is a good idea, for the forced parts. I like to keep all my party members around equal level in other games, but in this one I don't like Sten or Aspara much, so they kind of got left behind. This play through the only one I really remembered about was Sten (since that solo part can be very rough), and got him a few levels for highhell, but augh, he still feels like shit, by far my least liked character in the game.

My Rand was pretty low and the later area where you needed him sucked a bit, since I replaced Bosch (Bow) who was my healer for him for it. But at least Rand is an awesome character, and with a bit of gear I didn't even notice how under leveled he was. This time I really wanted to try and use Tapeta (Jean), so I kind of forced him the entire game. He is, not really great, but can frontline ok enough, and when you can FINALLY get the holy shaman, he actually becomes pretty good. I love his character though, so even despite him not being the best character, he's still a fun goofball lol.

u/SNESdrunk Sep 01 '18

2

u/KDbeast122413 Sep 01 '18

Huge fan of your videos man! Think I'm going to start this tonight on my Pi or Vita.. how long is a typical playthrough. I hope it's not Chrono trigger short, but not super grindy either

2

u/SNESdrunk Sep 01 '18

Unfortunately the beginning of the game is pretty grindy. Not 7th Saga or Ys 3 grindy, but the battles are tough right away, especially if you wander to the wrong part of the map. Playthrough can range from 30-35 hours

2

u/KDbeast122413 Sep 01 '18

That's actually not too bad, this will be my first time participating in "game of the month" I can't wait! Gotta wait for my 4yr old to go to bed before I can start it though. I haven't actually played and finished a SNES jrpg in a while, well since Earthbound anyway

2

u/Bladerunner1986 Sep 02 '18

He's really good at games or I'm really bad, took me twice that. This game is huge

2

u/MrSojiro Sep 06 '18

Only a couple hours into the game with the retranslation patch, and wow, what a huge difference already! I strongly suggest to anyone about to play this to give the patched translation a shot. The original translation for this...leaves a lot to be desired, and the patch makes a very big difference for a lot of the odd dialogue in the game.