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Man, that part with Gobi could have been the hardest part in the game. If I had to fight two enemies underwater, and couldn't run from them, I was dead. And there were no other enemies that gave enough experience to level up.

Anyway, some rigmarole later, I made it to ox's town, then back to Gobi's town, then got the gang back to Gobi's town, and beat a ghost (more like a Grim Reaper) hanging over Ox.

I think I was supposed to make progress in the game after that, but I went back to the Krypt and got the B-Rang. B is not short for boome, but rather "broken". So, I can't use it yet.

I got a few other items in the Krypt that I had missed, but no gold bar.

I'll need to return to a few other older areas now that I have more party members to help explore.

So, I rescued the ox women. Ox's wife is pregnant. I had a dumb moment when I was looking at Ox's stats, and thought, "Why does it say 'Zero Times' next to 'Intelligence' for Ox? He's not that dumb, is he?" No, it's because his name is Ox.

I then was able to get to the moving town in the desert. At the end, I fought three ghost bosses (two might have been identical to ones I've already beaten -- the third was new, but not that hard) and awoke Bleu. This game has lots of characters that like to sleep in bed. She sent me on another mission, then went back to bed. (In fact, before you go to that town, you get the item that lets you get there from a guy who didn't want to get out of bed!)

I went into an underwater volcano. But by then, I was so tired -- I don't know if it was the game, or something else -- that I couldn't play anymore.





Anyway, I've played this game for a while now, so I think I can start posting some opinions.

I don't know if I'd say it's that special. Unlike Secret of Mana, though, I'm not at a loss for why other people would think it's (at least a little) special. It is, like I've said, in many ways a typical RPG, not all that far removed from what was on the NES.

The story isn't really told all that well. A lot of it involves getting some random item that lets you do some random quest. Example, getting the statue that lets you enter the town in the desert. Now, why would a statue let you enter a town? And the original motivation of the game, rescuing Ryu's sister, is mostly a distant memory by this point. I've talked about this a little with FO, and she said (rightly) that it's not completely random, because at least you never get too far from dealing with the threats of the dark dragons. Even that goofy part where you have to have those cassowary-like birds chase after you because you took one of their eggs eventually related to the dark dragons. She said this is as opposed to, say, Lufia 2, where everything really is random (I can't comment on that too much, since I've never played Lufia 2). Still, I think the story could have been flowed a little more smoothly.

The music is good. I wouldn't really say it's great. There's some variety (Diefwolf once made a point about how all the animal-people's cultures were distinct and had different music to convey that). I think I like *parts* of songs more than full songs, though. I like part of the title theme (mostly the beginning). I liked the ending of the first normal battle theme. I don't like the second battle theme (it changes part way through the game) nearly as much. The second overworld music is good.

The stuff with the different party members and the combining is at least some attempt at being original (As opposed to, say, Lunar, which had nothing original).

The game kind of holds back on the difficulty.

One unusual thing about this game is that, unlike in almost every other RPG I've played, you don't necessarily inevitably take damage during run-of-the-mill fights. The fight order is almost set in stone by your "action" attribute. For example, Ox ALWAYS goes last. And depending on the enemies you fight, you might have all of your characters attack before they do, so you can kill them before they get an attack in.

I don't really agree because the whole reason you're in the situation you're in is because you tried to hop a boat to Scande, but it got sunk. It's sort of like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in the sense that the main plot is finding the gold, but they get into all of these misadventures along the way. Trust me, just when you think you're gonna finally arrive at Scande, there's gonna be something else to hold you back. But as for my BOF vs. Lufia 2 argument, yes, those things are almost always Dark Dragons, whereas in Lufia 2 it's almost always things that come out of nowhere and then are forgotten afterwards. And I think if Ryu had to whine every so often about needing to rescue his sister or get revenge on the Dark Dragons or whatever, it would just be annoying.

Yeah, but in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the gold is NEVER far from your mind. They don't just mention it at the beginning (actually, maybe at the end of act 1), then not again until they get to the grave at the end.

One misadventure is when they get captured as confederates by Angel Eyes. But that relates back to the gold, because Angel Eyes tortures them to get information on the gold, and lets them leave the camp to get it.

If you think about it, they tie a lot of stuff back into the gold.

Or think about Star Wars. You could say, "It would be annoying to have them constantly mention the main plot points -- rescuing the princess or destroying the Death Star." But actually they do always go back to those things. They even cut to the what's happening on the Death Star with Princess Leia as Luke and Han are doing whatever.

If you think about just about ANY good movie, they never just forget about the main plot or don't talk about it.

Like, in Unforgiven, a lot of time goes on from the beginning to when they finally kill the people they were hired to kill, but they always talk about what it'll be like to kill them, what it was like to kill other people, etc.

The only reason you're saying that it would be "annoying" to be reminded of what Ryu is really trying to do is because you're imagining it to be annoying. There are plenty of other stories where it is not annoying.

How much time would it really have taken for them to have said a few words about going to Scande because they thought Ryu's sister was there? It would make complete sense there.

I know that games are not movies, but, heck, think about A Link to the Past. That game isn't even much of a story-telling game, compared to most RPGs. But when you rescue the maidens in the dark world dungeons, they say something about rescuing Zelda or defeating Ganon. Was that horribly annoying?

I took a look at FO's top 100 entry for Breath of Fire to see what things she thought were special about it.

creative dungeons with rotating floors, teleporters, disappearing walls, and other bizarre phenomena

I don't think I've seen any of this yet. FO keeps telling me that I haven't been to any of the "nightmare dungeons" yet. But what are they waiting for? I'm already pretty far into the game.