Breath of Fire

Here's your generic title screen with the title and the copyright mentions that no one will ever care about.


Here's where I get to name the hero, unfortunately I won't be letting you guys choose the name as I'll be choosing the default name.


The default name is Zack in the English versions and Ryu in the Japanese version and every version of the sequels.


So starting the game gets me some screen with a dragon telling me to wake up because disaster has struck.


So the village is on fire, I wonder if that fire breathing dragon had anything to do with it.


Like every RPG with a fire scene, it is always good practice to search every cabinet in a building before it burns down for good.

This here is the first stat boosting item in the game, it boosts my vigor which may or may not actually be a working stat.


The old lady here is actually casting a spell to put out the wall of fire.
Note: This spell will never appear again in this game or any other game to come.


Oh no dragons! I wonder if that one from before is one of them.



Here we see the hero's sister Sara who insists on fighting these dragons by herself and petrifies us in order to protect us. Anyone who has played FFVI will know how badly that could turn out.



Here we see Sara fighting Jade, the commander of the invading army and her terrible terrible aim. Seriously is she even trying to hit him?



The goddess keys? I'm a bit lost on who the goddess is and what these keys do.



Okay at least we know the goddess' name. Quick question for Breath of Fire fans, is her name Myria or Tyr?



After using up all her mana to cast lightning spells, Sara finally lands a fire spell on Jade but it only ends up tickling him.



Here's some information about the game and honestly the first game in a series should have been the one about the hero locking the goddess up.



With Sara gone without a trace, seriously after that fire attack the game just continues back at the village without you getting to see what happens, the petrification has now been undone.

This blue chest here contains 300g by the way.


This here dragon statue is the save point in Breath of Fire.


Anyway I'm going to buy the armour that costs exactly the amount of gold I have.



Here's me finally showing everyone the main menu.


Here I will be equipping the ArmPad and I'll also explain what some of these stats do.

Attack increases physical damage dealt and defense lowers physical damage received.

Active I presume is an agility stat of some sort and affects the order in which characters will act in battle.

I have no idea what Intelligence and Fate do since all magic spells deal and heal damage at a fixed amount.

However I do know what Magic Defense does and it is useless. Since magic deals a fixed amount of damage you'd think the Magic Defense stat does nothing. What it actually does is lower the amount of damage you take from magic attacks if you choose to defend instead of making a move. There will never be a time when you want to defend since the game's cleric is faster than 90% of the enemies.

Anyway on with the game.



This is a glitch in the game that I have just abused.

To do this you'll need to have exactly 0g and be equipping something that is more valuable than the item in the shop. You do a trade option where you normally trade your equipment and some gold for better equipment. Here I offer a trade for a piece of equipment with less defense and then I decline the trade. The shop keeper being unable to comprehend my madness accidentally gives away all his life savings.



Anyway let's stock up on some medicinal herbs and head for the world map.



Here's the battle menu, it's pretty self explanatory. The faded out change command is for changing party members during a fight, but Zack has no friends and his sister ran away from home. So he's all alone and has to fight by himself.

The auto command will just make all my characters use the attack command and will keep doing so until you press the B button.

Also you'll notice that I have no spells and no other party members. Zack also doesn't learn spells via level up but through plot related points which won't happen for a long time. So until I get another party member my only course of action is to attack and use herbs when needed.


I leveled up after two fights but as you can see, just two fights at the start of the game has left me crippled. But don't worry I bought magical herbs capable of fixing my broken leg.


Big deal, Zack's home town was burned down by them.


Why don't you get your Dark Dragon overlords to go kill them for you. I'm sure they wouldn't mind a castle to stay in.


Don't you hate it when people messaged you once on Facebook and then they act like they know you? By the way Sara's favourite pass time was hacking Zack's Facebook.


But putrid monsters are a whole another story.


This fountain here will recover my health every I drink from it. So I'm just going to grind to level 5 here because there really isn't much I can do at this point of the game. Like I said my only option is to attack and eat herbs.


This here door will open by pressing A at it, later there will be doors with locks on them preventing me from getting the wonderful treasures I seek.


By the way I found this bronze sword behind the door. Here I have to make a choice between 4 attack or 1 active. I think you all know the right choice here.


I also find a gauntlet behind another door, this will replace that wooden shield I have.


As shown above Zack has activated the first of many traps to come, however this one happened to heal the thieves who try to steal from it.


Unfortunately not all traps are beneficial, this one depletes my AP, the games name for Mana. Although I don't have any spells to cast so it doesn't matter.

Both chests contained an antidote.


So a tiny frog managed to rule the castle infested by putrid monsters.


Okay not so tiny.


It looks like I'm dealing a lot of damage to this guy but bosses in Breath of Fire will go into hyper mode after depleting their health. They then have an invisible health bar and increased stats. Some bosses' invisible health bar can be multiple times bigger than their visible one while some have roughly one of the same size. Old toad man here has one that is slightly bigger than his normal one.


He'll say some message after you kill send him on a long term vacation which I believe is the only time a boss will do.

Also he gave me enough experience to level up twice.


Apparently after defeating a frog the king believes me to be a true hero. However we all know a true hero isn't measured by the size of his strength but the strength of his heart. However Zack's heart has been crushed since his sister petrified him and left him alone to be with some evil warlord.


An earthquake actually happened here but I'm not skilled enough to make a GIF to show you guys.


Off to the next town to get back the quake control.


Luckily for us half the guards have fallen asleep on the job. Unluckily for us, the guards that are awake have eyes at the back of their heads so I have to keep my distance or else they'll kick me out.


Also the armoury is still open for business.


This Long Sword is actually one of the best weapons you can get for a long time and this is the only opportunity to buy it before better weapons show up. It's also very expensive and would require a lot of grinding to obtain, in fact so much grinding that it would make the sword obsolete. However, the other shop keeper gave us his life savings and we'll be investing it in a Long Sword.



So this is the temple at the center of town and also our first dungeon.


Literally.


After trecking through that cave we reach the end and good ol' Garland is here to greet us.



Here I'll use two items I found, F.Stn does 40 fire damage and B.Stn deals 80 bolt damage. So I did a total of 120 damage and I've taken a bit less than half his visible health away.


This is the pitiful damage I deal even with the Long Sword equipped.

If not equipped with the expensive gear in town, this is actually one of the more difficult bosses of the game. This guy will deal a lot of damage with his attack, he's pretty much the same as Zack but I have herbs and he has like 700 HP. Without my current gear he could take me out in maybe 3 or 4 hits. So this fight is just a matter of whether your herbs will run out first or his health.


Chances are though, it's going to be his health.



The machine is vibrating and I take the first goddess key. Only 5 more to go. Probably.


I was never sure who says this, is it Garland or Tyr screaming through the machine that is related to the key that is related to her?

Anyway that blue circle will warp me outside.


Anyway a cut scene starts and the King admits that he was going to send me for slaughter but I turned out to be stronger than he expected.


This here is the E.Key, this is very useful at the start of the game as it has a hidden effect that I assume the creators were expecting half the players to not notice. When used in battle it will deal 30 damage to all enemies. So Zack can finally start deviating from his usual strategy.

I'll end the first post here. Hopefully someone will be interested in this and I'll be back with more updates.