RPGs are my favorite genre of game, but sometimes, I don't want to spend 50 hours playing the same quest. Sometimes, I want an RPG that's quick and trims the fat. "Breath of Death VII" is a breath of fresh air that harkens back to the days of the NES and SNES-era RPG, a time when graphics were simple, numerous text boxes ruled, and stories were paper-thin. Taking the role of Dem, you travel the world with your partners (unwittingly) and gradually unlock the mysteries of the past. With witty dialogue and banter, adventure, and a few laughs, are never too far away.

At first glance, the game appears too basic to be worth one's time. You have your standard Attack, Tech, Potion, and other such commands to battle. But after a couple of rounds, you'll begin to see some of the game's gimmicks unfold. After inputting everyone's commands and moving on to the next round, the enemies' attack stats gradually increase. This gives each battle a kind of "timer," where dying becomes more possible than in other games. The game also introduces a combo system; as the battle continues, the combo counter in the top-right of the screen will also begin to increase as you boost it. This makes certain attacks more powerful, such as Deathblow or Chill Blast. These two properties make simply mashing the A button not necessarily the best decision in the grand scheme of things, so you'll need to experiment with how to win battles quickly.

And you're incentivized to do so! Winning a battle automatically restores all your HP, status, and some of your MP, depending on how fast you won. This also immediately revives any fallen party members. While this sounds like a bad handicap, the items that restore you from death during battle, Potions, are in limited quantity. Plus, they do not refill your MP upon use, so you cannot get overly-reliant on them. There are locations where you can refill your MP in dungeons, but aside from these, you cannot simply use Ethers or other such items to maximize your MP. You'd have to go back to a town. If you want to level grind, finding these locations is a must. This does have the unfortunate side effect of turning these places into "grinding hotspots," as you can briefly walk into a random battle, then move two squares over to fill your MP. But in the event that you find yourself on the short end of the stick and get a game over, don't fret - you can save anywhere you like.

Each location also has a limited number of random battles. On the pause menu, you'll see a counter in the top-right saying how many more random encounters are available. Once they run out, you can explore at your leisure with no fear to pick up treasures, or use the "Fight" option to trigger another battle automatically. This lets you have more control over how over-leveled or under-leveled you want to be as you progress through the game. Leveling up gives you standard stat increases, as well as two bonus options to pick from. Some of these options increase your stats further, others teach you spells or techs. How you want your character to pan out is up to you, though I would say you are pushed in certain directions of growth more than others.

Customization is another thing that's trimmed way down. Everyone has the ability to equip one armor and one weapon. There are no items except for the aforementioned Potions, so no Antidotes or anything like that. If you want to detox your party during a fight, you're going to have to use a spell. As such, grinding to get gold only matters insofar as getting better gear. Your mileage may vary on whether you like this or not.

Despite all the handicaps in the game, it can still be surprisingly difficult. Once you get used to the random encounters in a new location (and sometimes you'll dread seeing certain enemies), the boss battles tend to be far rougher and more punishing. Remember when I said that the enemies get tougher as the battle continues? In boss fights, you'll definitely feel the pain if you go in under-prepared. You shouldn't be surprised to see their attack stats increase to 150% power, if not higher. The bosses are, in essence, the game's way of reminding you that while it may hold your hand at times, it will not shy away from punching you in the face if you don't take the time to master the mechanics.

Despite the game's wit, the adventure itself is pretty short. The game can easily be beaten in under 5 hours, and the ending does feel slightly tacked on, despite me saying that I liked its paper-thin approach. Nevertheless, there are other game modes and difficulties to make the overall experience more challenging, which gives the game some replay value. If this game were more expensive than it actually was, I would not be so keen to say it's worth buying.