Zero turned out to be quite mid. SSS squad feels like budget bracers. Lloyd is a hetare Gary Stu protagonist who has the other squad members orbit around him. People will say this game had the advantage of a small group to focus on, but Sky's party members aside from the main duo had ambitions, goals and lives of their own. You can't really say that of Elie, Randy and Tio. Speaking of them, Elie really got shafted, being tacked on as a love interest as if that'd make her a more interesting character.

On the topic of characters, lots of them feel like carbon copies of beloved Trails in the Sky characters, like KeA and Renne, Tita and Tio, Cassius and Arios, Lechter/Randy and Olivier, and so on. With Arios, his backstory is even copied from Cassius's, but not as developed. He certainly does win worst dad of the year award, tho.

Certain tropes get repeated, like dramatically being saved last second when you're about to get owned (happens about 4 or 5 times during the game). At the end, the main questions aren't resolved and you're basically told "lol play the sequel."

Getting on spoiler territory, I didn't vibe at all with the last chapter throwing nothing but brainwashed, mind controlled enemies at you. It's a silly plot device that removes their agency, and is not fun to interact with. It feels low effort. The same plot device is thrown at main antagonist at the last second, as if to absolve their guilt. Where have I seen this before, hmm?

Joshua and Estelle show up again but as supporting characters. It feels pretty odd considering their power level by the end of Sky 3 would be nearly godlike. However, here they're almost like rookie bracers, fading to the backstage. Having them act as small-time helpers by the end of the game cheapens them and your efforts growing them across the first trilogy.

I have to admit, the scenes with Renne and getting to the root of her backstory was fantastic. I just wish they existed in a different scenario.


I completed this on Nightmare and did the "finish the game under level 40" challenge. It was quite fun to challenge myself and try different strats, even ones not even mentioned on top guides (for xp conservation). At the same time, it forced me to not interact with a big portion of the game by not allowing me to engage in optional battles, which is a bit lame.

I'll probably play the sequel. I'm sure there will be good payoff from having played Zero. I just won't jump into it so soon.

Overall a very solid PS2 JRPG and Tales of entry, yet I still feel it doesn't reach the kind of brilliance that would make it completely outstanding. The game feels like it drags on a bit, with you having to visit the same 5 locations every time you need to make the plot advance. I'd say the highlight is near the midway point, where Luke as a character really starts to shine. However, his character direction seemed a bit aimless nearing the finish line.

As I mentioned, it does start to get repetitive and along the same lines, whether it concerns themes or tone.

Certain story events like death of certain characters seem glossed over or with little to no reaction, and certain heinous actions like betrayal are easily forgiven and set aside. The party also doesn't take much accountability in apologizing to Luke.

I do appreciate its attempt to tell a more mature and darked themed story, surely beyond its commercial age rating: dealing with trauma, suicidal tendencies, and mass genocide.

I really liked Karma's accoustic version as a battle theme and wish we got to see more of it.

IN SUM: A JRPG with inflated ratings due to nostalgia rose-tinted glasses that fails to live up to the greatness of its predecessor Breath of Fire II. Please play BoF2 with the amazing fan translation instead!

BoF is known as CAPCOM's first meaningful JRPG franchise. It features very nice graphics, great music, and an anthropomorphic fantastic world. The storylines are sort of what you'd expect from a turn of the century JRPG: good vs evil, man vs god/machine, etc. Other common elements are a dragon humanoid protagonist, a female lead called Nina, and lead party members with specific overworld interactions for puzzle-solving.

BoF 2 was a big failure... but only due to sporting one of the most horrible official translations in existence. This was rectified with the very opposite: possible one of the best fan TLs I've had the pleasure of reading. Nonetheless, it made it so that the western audience had a bad impression of the game. I reason this rationale due BoF 3's status as the best of the franchise. After experiencing it, it's clearly not, but it's explained by the aforementioned barriers to entry.

This game is quick to disappoint. It has one of the most boring, redundant, and pointless early games ever. The first 15 hours have you wander aimlessly with similar events repeating, and very little worldbuilding, character building, or story hints. Most enemies are weak and all but boss battles are solvable by leaving the game on autobattle and stocking up on cheap but efficient healing items. This is a trend that remains throughout the whole game. It does not help that the animations are extremely slow with lots of redundancy, making the game an absolute slog without fast-forward. It also features some real stinkers for dungeons, but soon does the game shift its gears by introducing a story twist and segwaying into Act 2. I would argue, however, that no matter how good the individual scenes, a very tedious Act 1 heavily damages the subsequent acts.

Many of the disappointing points remained. Coming from BoF2, I was expecting the same intricate character-driven story arcs and emotional climaxes rivaling and at times surpassing those of behemoths such as Chrono Trigger. It's only near the end that the games does unravel itself and bring on the moments of character introspection. However, it's not helped by the fact that you don't have a strong affinity for these weakly developed characters, and that the game gives the player fake agency throughout, pretending you have a voice in the happenings.

Gameplay-wise, it features two big systems. First is the apprentice system, where you may leave a character under a master's tutelage. You get a trade-off of positive and negative stat growths and learn some skills in return. If you're careless, you could very well gimp your character and make them useless later on. If you just follow your intuition, you should be mostly fine. One of the best masters is met really early on, so it's hard to screw-up your MC. One of the best lategame ones could be permanently lost due to a simple "Do you like how I look'?" question. Coupled with this, with the usage of very restricted consumable items, you're able to switch master-learned skills around between your characters. So you could use some scrubs to gain skills quickly and transfer them to your powerhouses.

The other one is Dragon transformation. Ryu, the protagonist, has the ability to transform into a dragon. You can acquire crystallized genes from story rewards, or items in the overworld. With 18 choices and being able to combine them to up to groups of 3, there's dozens (hundreds) of different possible choices. It sounds pretty neat, but entering and maintaining this form costs a lot of AP (mana equivalent), so you'll only be using it during boss fights (which can be actually challenging). This actually means you'll be looking up the best choices, choosing cookie-cutter options, or picking the same ones as the situation fits due to overburden of choice. So this system can't be exploited to its fullest.

Since I mentioned translation previously, the game suffers from some issues as well. The dialogue is very weak and reminiscent of NES JRPGs with limited characters textboxes. It can even read contradictorily in the most important story moments, and I give the benefit of the doubt by attributing this due to being lost in translation.

The game has inflated ratings due to rose-tinted nostalgia. We have to keep in mind this was the same console that gave us games such as FF7 (and others), Xenogears, and Chrono Chross. The result was an above-average JRPG that fails to live up to the reputation of its predecessor, in big part due to unfortunate circumstances.

TLDR: Play BoF2 with the fanTL instead!