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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A challenge...or a trial, 12 Dec 2003
Breath Of Fire Dragons Quarter has to be the most complex and difficult RPG I have ever played. It's the only game in the series I have tried, and I decided to play it as I am a fan of RPG's in general, but I wasn't prepared for such a steep learning curve. Maybe if you know the series you will find it easier, but I spent the whole first section of the game having no idea of what I was doing. It doesn't help that the game manual is very hard to understand, I was referring to it all the time, but seldom found answers to the questions that were confusing me.
Basically, the game plays like a standard RPG, with strings of dungeons, interpspaced with "towns". You only have three playable characters (except for the first mission) so you can concentrate your level building quite easily. The battle system itself is quite cool, as it requires that you take into account positioning and distance in all your strategies. Players can run around on the battlefield at will within a specified range, but it consumes points that would otherwise be put towards combat, so you will be playing very tactically a lot of the time, which I found a lot of fun. You have to learn different skills as the game progresses, and then attach them to your weapons and armour to use in battle (a bit like "Materia" in Final Fantasy 7). But the attacks that you dish out only prove really effective if you use the games "combo" system, and it was this that I really struggled with. In addition to this, the many different types of weapons and armour on offer have a bewildering range of benefits and drawbacks that make assembling a selection of "best" equipment impossible. Again, it's all really poorly explained in the manual, and highly confusing to understand. However, there is an even bigger drawback to the game, in my opinion, which is the Dragon Counter. Once you reach a certain point in the game, the lead character takes on the ability to assume a hugely powerful dragon form, which potentially makes every battle a pushover. The drawback? Once you get this ability, a timer appears in the corner of the screen for the rest of the game, counting towards 100. Any use of the dragon form speeds up the counter drastically, and the penalty for reaching 100 is Game Over-permanently. Yes thats right, if you use the power too freely or take too long to play, your characters will die and you have no choice but to restart the whole game from the beginning. There is no way to stop or reverse the counter, and once you get towards the last stage of the game where the final bosses can only be beaten with dragon form attacks, if you don't have a pretty large chunk of counter left over, you simply can't finish the game. Its a hugely unfair and crippling mechanism to have, and one that almost made me give up even after I had worked really hard to get a long way into the game. Think you can just do lots of levelling up to become invincible even without resorting to the dragon? Sorry, this is a linear game...there are no random encounters and no way of revisiting dungeons that have been cleared. Plus, saving is done by means of consumable save tokens, which are far too scarce, as are the save points themselves, so just making it through a lot of the stages is hard enough. To make the game so difficult and then make you scared to save because you are getting low on tokens is just plain mean.
I'm being very negative here, but let me add that I did enjoy some aspects of the game. The graphics look great, and the plot is intriguing, with characters that are very believable. Hmm...I've not left the game with many plus points there!
In conclusion then, a fine looking game with dynamic battles and a good storyline, crippled by a massive penalty for using the best skill in the game. I suppose in accordance with the plot, in which the dragon form is literally eating the players life away from within, it makes sense that there should be a steep price for using its power, but this is too much. There is a restart system to soften the blow in which you retain certain attributes and gain access to new areas when you restart (the instructions say you will get more out of the game by playing it over several times), but that’s not good enough for me. I worked hard and replayed many sections to be able to make it to the end credits just once, and I don't feel much like going through it again. Be warned.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Abolutely amazingly original and addictive, but...., 19 Feb 2004
I haven't played this much, but i have to say that what I've played so far is amazing, loading i cool and smooth, the gameplay is brilliant, and the batle system is original, but surprisingly does not overexagerate. The one feature I have come to despise is the D-counter, a timer that counts down as you go through the game, and when you use certain powerful attacks, when it reaches 100 the game is OVER. Thankfully there is a system ("SOL") which allows you to restart games with some experience and items from last games, although this hardly merits replaying time and time again as is needed. My advice- go for it, but be prepared to do some serous replaying.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Challenge at last, 1 Jan 2004
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is the second best rpg ive played on the PS2, this puts it to comparison with games like FFX, Wild Arms 3, Grandia and Dark Chronicle to name a few. And before you assume anything, FFX is not number one on that list.
Most people assume you are a hardcore rpger if you have a majority of the final fantasy games but the myth ends here. This is positively one of the difficultest rpgs available on all consoles to date, which is a positive factor.
Briefly I'll mull over a few of the features.
- The graphics are good, rendered in a 'cartoony' style. They also compliment the 'underground' feeling of the game as it is set underground by using dark shades.
- The battle system is unique, allowing the player to fight at the *exact* spot they entered the battle. By combining equipment you have to compromise certain skills/stats to give yourself an edge in battle (e.g. an ice wand that only allows level one and two skills or armor that lowers defence but increases speed). This stops you getting an 'ultimate' set of equipment. Also by switching weapons in combat you cannot be caught in a battle that is impossible to win.. You also have the opportunity to drop traps before a battle.
- The game also comes with a unique feature called SOL restore. Basically this allows you to re-start the game with your equipped items, stored items and party exp (seperate exp you gain in battle by performing certain feats e.g. traps.). This allows you to start the game at a much higher level, like lvl 20 instead of lvl 1. This may not seem very advantageous until you have tried it out yourself. SOL restore also unlocks hidden cinematics and areas which allow you to gain powerful items and learn more about the storyline and characters each time through.
- The main character gains the ability to turn into a powerful dragon early in the game, taking on the appearance of a human-dragon hybrid. This gives the character new abilities such as D-Dash (which is used to avoid monsters) and attacks in combat which are about 99 times better than your normal attacks. This ofcourse has a huge drawback. Using your dragon powers raises your 'dragon counter' which, when it reaches 100%, ends the game. This may seem stupid and even annoying but it adds more depth to the game as you have to decide wether to risk using your transformation to beat a boss. This is where the SOL restore comes into play, as when you restart the game your D-Counter goes back to 0% and as you become more powerful you will not need to use the dragon transformation as much.
- My favorite feature of the game is the fairy colony, where you use ants to build a colony that gets shops etc meaning you buy skills/weapons normally unavailable, giving you an edge.
- Another one of my favorite things about this game is that you get a cat girl on your team. Its fun to make her spin around and watch the fluffy tail spin with her.Therefore I conclude that this game is mainly misunderstood as the developers added the SOL restore and D-Counter for your enjoyment, not to annoy you like some people think. Only buy this game if you have the time and patience to play a challengeing rpg that will actually make you think with your mind and question your decisions.
Note - This game is supposed to be difficult so don't give up.
Make use of Lin's profile skill to find out an enemys weakness and because you can carry 3 weapons at a time make sure to have one for each element (fire, ice and electricity) so you can kill bosses with ease.
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