I bought this game from this website called 'eBay' (you've probably heard of it) about two years ago, although it doesn't feel that long ago. No matter. After two years of not touching it, I felt like playing it again. So, let's get onto a very idiosyncratic review.

Only, let's not. You see, Breath of Fire, if my memory's working better than usual, is in fact the first 'RPG', or Role-Playing Game, which I've reviewed. Such games put you in the role of somebody, who you should - in theory - actually be, as far as the games are concerned.* Now, these RPGs are one of the absolute weirdest to convey, review, or indeed understand under any kind of common bubble. With these games, it's astonishing as to just how many different ways of appreciating/hating them there are. Somebody who loves one of these games can positively hate another, almost identical one, just because it somehow doesn't click with them the same.

Where I'm leading up to with this is that I don't really think you can review Breath of Fire properly, to satisfy every possible taste, at least without dedicating some five years to studying it and writing a 500 page book on it. And even then, someone will come along and have another side of the story. From a very early age, I've grown up with RPGs to love them for completely different reasons from everyone else. Since I threw these games all over the place with my imagination, I had more fun just wandering around and 'levelling up' in tune to my own story than anything else.

Did you understand any of that? Don't worry. Maybe the review will help.

So, as you can see in the image above, you have blue hair, and it's time to escape from a house/village which has decided to go on fire. After a nice, simple flow of events, this game kicks you out of happy-story mode and, in the traditional fashion with these old SNES RPGs, decides to let you wander the world for a while; fighting against and getting beaten by creatures which are considerably stronger than yourself; and asking you take up that classic quest of waiting near a town, barely escaping one battle, and finding a place to get better inside said town. After fighting this impregnable slime-type-thing for a while, you'll accrue enough 'experience points' to be a better fighter than you were before! Hurray! It only took five battles. Now, fight several hundred more before the boss of this castle, or you will die.

I always loved wandering around in my mind and getting pointlessly stronger in these games, so that's music to my ears (kind of)! If you ask me, when it comes to not enjoying this kind of game, I think it's because the player isn't playing the game in his mind, but rather with the controller. If you, em, well, yes, know what I mean. You don't, do you?

However, I think it's why you might have needed to grow up playing old, SNES, Japanese games to have your imagination in the right place for these games. Levelling up, I'm sure, IS the most boring thing in the world if your mind isn't somewhere else. Imagining is fun, however! I wrote a book years ago thanks to my imagination/these old games, so it just goes to show. Yes, it was terrible.

There's the castle up where that door is, as you can see. That's a king standing in front of it, as you can see. And as you can also see, our plucky hero (you) is facing the opposite direction, but he really means to go inside to walk inbetween a bunch of maze-like walls, and eventually meet a giant frog which, despite being right at the start of the game, I prefer to find my way to Level 12 before saying hello to. Being an RPG, you must fight this frog, of course.

Picture taken from GameBoy Advance version, I assume (because it looks strange)

So, you can rest assured that you will be fighting anybody/thing who/which doesn't like you from within a wonderfully pleasant battling system. After walking around in a dungeon/on top of the world for a while, the screen will look unusual, and our hero (YOU) will find his (YOUR) self facing something which doesn't like him. Something must be done at once!! So, don't worry. Press the A button, then press it again, and our hero (yes, YOU) will do something to cause pain to this enemy! However, what if the enemy is not defeated?! Then the enemy will attack you! And then, well, assuming you're alive, you must begin the process again! Or press another button before selecting 'A', in order to use an item. Or, indeed, to run away. This all changes when you make some friends, as you will have to press buttons to tell them what they might like to do, as well. That was a lot to take in, wasn't it? They say these modern games are confusing! Well, I like this system, and I can't explain why. So, well, I suppose I won't.

I think I've done a better job than I'd thought of making a review which will make people who hate these kinds of games hate this one, while appealing it to those who I think would like it. While you might not think it, I didn't mean to sound negative in this review, however much it might do. Still...

There's one thing which cuts the RPG (or, these days, just flat-out video game) line in two, and that's plots. Most games have a plot of some form, such as 'Super Mario Bros.', in which you must stop an evil person as a plumber called Mario. Well, the reason plots cause a lot of fuss is because a common argument is that a game must have a 'good' plot; of course, the age-old problem is that defining 'good' is pretty much a subjective thing, I'd say. Can you really say there's such a thing as an inherently 'good' plot? Plots can work wonders in their field, but there's really no 'perennial' plot, is there? A serious game, with a serious plot, really can't hope to perform well when scaled as a comedy, for an extremely general example. So too, Breath of Fire's plot would be thrown into the 'let us save this cliched world' vault by many, but my imagination's always shone past these plot generalisations when it comes to games. Do what you will with Breath of Fire's plot in your mind, and you can't be disappointed. Anyway, as expressed before, the game prefers to encourage the improving of levels and attacking things than to force you to worry too much about the plot, so it's best not to worry too much about it.

As is the style with my reviews, and more-so for this one, I don't mean to criticise or praise any aspect of the game. How I get through reviews doing this, I just don't know. But I like to think that I do. If you came hoping to find out more about Breath of Fire, I'm sorry, but at least there are some pictures to look at. Also, an appendix is coming up, carrying on from something said much earlier on!

*: (Hence the (seemingly) now-unpopular RPG concept of your 'mute hero', i.e. one who never speaks. Why? Because they're you, and it wouldn't make much sense for the game to force words in your mouth. In Breath of Fire, you happen to have blue hair, and you'll not find yourself speaking much. I believe the main character says approximately ten words over the course of the game, or something along those lines. While many detest and can't get their heads around having to play an RPG where the main character never speaks, and hence never 'develops', this isn't a problem if you want to be the hero. That's convenient, since it ties with my theory that the kind of person who enjoys these games is the one who puts their imagination to work with them. Golden Sun revived this 'you are the hero' idea a while ago, but I don't think all those fancy-dancy 3D ones [which I never play] agree with such a resurrection, which is ironic, since resurrection is the kind of word that these games are quite fond of.)