Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter Overview

Players take control of a boy named Ryu, who lives underground just like everyone else. Humanity in this story has fled underground because of a cataclysmic event in the far past. Sadly, they have started to stagnate, and the underground societies are falling apart. Ryu is a ‘lower class’ member of said society, and so is confined to the lowest, most polluted areas of his world. His friend, Nina, is experimented on, and is unable to live underground anymore. So, Ryu sets out to save her from her eventual death by making his way to the surface world, inadvertently coming to blows with the leader of the society, a man who wants to steal Ryu’s shape shifting capabilities.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter Screenshots

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Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter Video

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Full Review

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter Review

By, Ronald Wartow

Backdrop

.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.

The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).

Gameplay

Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.

The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.

Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.

Combat

Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.

Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.

Fresh Features

Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.

To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)

Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.

Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.

Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.

Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.

Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.

In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.

Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.

Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.

Time for Completion

Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.

Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.

Shortcomings

While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.

From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.

The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.

The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.

Final Word

We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!

Final Grade: B

Backdrop

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (BoFDQ) is the highly anticipated fifth installment of a much admired series of RPG’s. So, why not call the game Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter? Though this is the title of the Japanese version released months ago, our version’s title clearly omits the “V”.

Perhaps, this is because this game is absolutely nothing like its highly thought of, old school, 40+ hour RPG predecessors, whose large, beautifully-drawn populated overworlds, multiple dragon transformations, and clever puzzles are gone. All that’s left is “Dragon Boy” Ryu, the winged-mystic, Nina, and but a single dragon conversion for Ryu. Not only is the game completely different and shorter, but expect a particularly tough challenge.

All the action takes place in an almost deserted, claustrophobic, dank, gloomy, cavernous complex, where narrow corridors are the norm. NPC dialogue is threadbare, and few settlements exist, though the game’s merchants follow the party.

Does this make for a positive new direction, a forgettable side trip, or a severe body blow destroying all the positive elements that the games’ loyalists fondly remember? Online traffic since the game’s recent release shows a deep division among players. Many applaud the innovation and challenge, while others complain that the series is ruined because of the exact same things. (Maybe, it’s best to be new to the series, without preconceived notions, so the game can be judged on its own merits.)

The setting is a future world torn asunder in a dark future. No one can remember ever having seen the sky. Everyone lives in diminutive settlements over 1000 feet deep underground. All cringe at the mercy of a dastardly biological research lab, performing experiments too unspeakable to reveal. In this bleakness, our old buddy, Ryu, toils as an unranked Ranger protecting society, when he discovers what all of us knew was coming, his ability to transform into a mighty dragon. After messing with the wrong people, and a shocking discovery about a cohort, Ryu and company embark on a long and dangerous trek upward to the world‘s surface. The storyline is reasonably gripping, and a few twists and turns occur before the climactic ending.

Gameplay

Far from standard RPG fare, BoFDQ debuts three systems for the series, one for pre-combat, one for combat, and one that encourages restarting and replaying the game often. The three together plus other gameplay features make this kind somewhat unique.

The Positive Encounter and Tactics System (PETS) is designed to give the player a pre-battle advantage. The player finds or buys a healthy variety of traps and decoys. Flinging some meat at a group of monsters will lure them into any location you desire, or separate single monsters, easily picked off, from a wandering group. The well-hurled dynamite or bomb will give monsters a taste of what’s to come, and your party an advantage when combat starts.

The Ability Point System (APS) during combat lets players to take only so many skill or melee actions within the limits of accumulated, available ability points. Every move you make, every breath you take costs ability points. When those points are reduced to zero, or a party member wants to accumulate points for the next turn, the current turn ends . Use your points cleverly, and your next turn may allow multiple attacks next turn. Do the opposite, and you may find yourself in the midst of three monsters bent on your destruction before your next swing.

The Scenario Overlay System (SOL) gives the player two primary options when the dreaded “Game Over“ screen appears, or you are in an untenable position: Restart the game from scratch, but with all experience points and equipment intact, or Restore the game from the last save. Normally, the Restore choice seems to be like many RPG’s; however, in BoFDQ, saving games is very difficult and limited. In a twist, restarting the game with a more robust team also unlocks new story interludes and doors previously bolted, creating, in effect, a different dungeon to be explored. (Does Chrono Trigger come to mind?) We are reminded of the inscription Imhotep scratched on the underside of his sarcophagus after being mummified alive in The Mummy – “Death is only the beginning.” (Was the acronym “SOL” was chosen for its real-world “SOL”, a common invective meaning “S*** Out of Luck”?) It is clear that to unlock all the story interludes and doors in the complex, several retries or restarts are necessary.

Exploring the complex is eased by three helpful and easy to read maps. On the main game screen, a map showing the party’s immediate vicinity is very helpful. A simple button press brings up the level map, showing only those areas already explored. Another button press brings up a global map of the entire complex. Many floors have one special treasure chest with something very worthwhile inside. The toughest monster on each floor usually carries the key.

Experience from combat victories, necessary for character leveling, builds up in two ways. One, the customary method of awarding each character in the party some experience points for combat victories. The other, for efficiency in the combat victory, global party experience points are awarded, and can be split up any way you want among the party members. If you have amassed 300 party experience points, for example, and each of the three in the party needs about 100 points to level, just split up the party experience points three ways, and voila, everyone levels.

In addition to the changing dungeon on replays, BoFDQ contains some engaging, major side activities that provide the player welcome diversions from the constant combat-filled trek upwards. Without giving anything away, there are rumors of many secrets and goings-on. The creative gamer may uncover something huge for exploration, and even something colonial. Both are major undertakings, not just frivolous extras

Saving games is available at Telecorders sparingly scattered throughout the complex. Their scarcity, and that of the unbuyable Save Token to activate it, increase the game’s challenge by several fold. (When you Restore a game, you receive a Save Token.) We fail to understand why the designers made saving the game so harrowing. This system is brutal at times. The designers definitely did this to increase the difficulty, but did they have to make saving so hard? The player can perform a soft save that preserves the gamer’s current position, with everything intact. However, when you restore from the soft save, the data is erased. Worse yet, you cannot copy a soft save to another slot or memory card.

D-counter

The D-counter appears as an animated globe on the main screen after a certain plot event wherein Ryu regains his dragon transformation power. Whenever you use this power, which is incredibly awesome and blows away most every opponent in the game, your counter rises. Other factors can cause it to rise, but, by transforming into a dragon, you pay the heaviest price. If the counter reaches 100%, the game screen literally splashes “GAME OVER”, just as if the party had died in combat.

Constant use of the power guarantees restarting or restoring often. The counter can never, ever be reduced. Of course, restoring a game resets the counter to what it was when the restore took place, and restarting a game returns it to zero. All this is further evidence that the game’s designers want you to replay often. (When the game boots, that scene of Ryu floating clearly expired is definitely a preview of coming attractions.)

Unlike other RPG’s,. this game all but encourages you to die constantly or give up voluntarily, just so you can restart from the beginning. In fact, the main menu screen contains a prominent notice that pressing a particular button will let you “Give Up” While the character is stronger for the experience, repeated restarting requires retracing (Say those last four words three times fast!) of one’s steps. Luckily, the levels are not large, and some monsters do not regenerate. So, getting back to the place where you bought it or gave up can be done in a short period of time. Helping to shorten replay time is your ability to terminate story interludes at any time. (Of course, this would not be advisable for new story interludes opened up by your current replay.) Helpful ways to teleport or warp around the complex do not exist.

D-ratio

The D-ratio is a fractional score based on how quickly you completed the game, how much of the map was explored, and number of saves, among others. Ryu begins the game at an anemic 1/8192. Once you complete a game, the ratio is reassessed. As if by magic, when replaying, certain doors, formerly locked, are now open, additional story interludes play, and the game experience changes. This places the replay value as very high for those who wish to attain a better D-ratio.

Combat

Look forward to turn-based combat, allowing for calm reflection on what strategic steps to take. The APS resembles such games as Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. Unlike those games, the battleground is confined to narrow corridors and spaces, restricting strategic movement somewhat. Like those games, and unlike traditional RPG’s, the monsters are not static. They move around and, depressingly, always seems to head for most-damaged character, or the one inflicting the most damage on them. Amassing action points eventually gives the player one powerful turn against the monsters, with devastating multiple skill attacks called combos, reminiscent of Xenogears.

In combat, the game lets you view the exact order that your party and the enemies will take the next turn. Even better, one of the characters can choose an option to display an informative profile on the monsters being fought. Especially helpful is that the profile gives you information on what elemental attacks will do more damage. When overwhelmed and about to buy the farm, there’s a safety value for escape with a slight performance penalty for the party.

The combat’s tactical feel is a welcome change, and I found combat to be a constantly fresh and rewarding exercise. This is especially so because of the tremendous variety of offensive, defensive, and status magic skills attachable to weapons and armor. Each character can attach up to three skills per level. New and more powerful skills are earned during the more difficult encounters.

Unfortunately, there is no skill to heal, an indefensible oversight, in our view. (One skill very difficult to acquire will heal Ryu, but only to the extent he takes damage.) While healing items are for sale and discoverable, the number the party can carry is limited early on. (A handy Backpack increased items able to be carried, and, from the beginning, a merchant is a portable locker for excess items.) If you need to drop an item to make room in your inventory, it unfortunately disappears into the great void, unable to be retrieved in future. After a few dicey combats, the need for backtracking to buy healing items becomes pressing.

A dungeon foray of any length quickly exhausts the healing items, causing you to backtrack great distances to repurchase more, or press ahead, in constant danger of being wiped out. Often, I found myself devoid of healing items, far from a restocking source. (At least when a character succumbs in combat, it automatically revives with a single hit point, if your party wins.) The player will find no inns or places to rest and restore. This is even true when the team voluntarily returns to a safe haven. Precious currency is wasted on simply healing the returning heroes back to hit point max.

Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff what skills to equip. Do you activate a skill that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill.

Time for Completion

I completed the game, restarting several times, and exploring most areas available, including new areas uncovered by restart, in 15 hours. I could have lowered the time by cutting down on the restarts to about 12 hours. On the other hand, game time can be extended upwards of 30 hours by continual restarts and runs through the game to earn a lower D-ratio, or spending time with the engaging side activities. Any online buzz that criticizes the game for being just a few hours long is completely way off base.

Multimedia

The game employs cel-shaded graphics, something that boils the blood of many a gamer. The characters are drawn deformed, and, frankly, look like candidates for anorexia therapy. Actually, I found them out-and-out unattractive, and when they change emotions, a so-called special feature, I generally winced with disgust. Playing the game is like being forced to constantly gaze upon an ugly baby for hours on end.

The monsters are nicely drawn and animated, but not in a fist-twirling way. All navigable portions of the complex look about the same. While there are a few graphical differences with certain transitions and areas, do not expect wildly changing eye candy. In keeping with the game’s desolate setting, many areas are rather dim and dark. (There’s no option to brighten the screens.)

Sound and music are excellent, and really get you into the mood for battle and exploration. We particularly liked the death gurgle when a character buys it.

Bottom Line

If you want to relive another game with the same tried and true Breath of Fire RPG formula, we suggest returning to I through IV. Only there, not in BoFDQ, can you find Ryu able to transform into multiple dragon forms, and old school RPG exploration and combat.

For the hardcore RPG’er, this game provides a dynamic challenge that should not be missed. Anyone else should note well that the difficulty level, heightened by the limited saves, item-only healing, and discouraged dragon transformation make this game unsuitable for casual RPG gamers.

Obviously, to get the most out of BoFDQ, you need to play through multiple times. This will not appeal to many gamers, who cherish a game for its length, and that wonderful sigh when the end game cut scenes begin.

Before leaving, we have just 5 words to live by while playing BoFDQ: “When in doubt, go up!”.

Final Verdict: 78%

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