TBT - Understanding Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter As a Punk JRPG

Breath ofFire V: Dragon Quarter (BoF V) is an unusual sequel and an unusual JRPG. Much of the game’s conventions are akin to Vagrant Story and other well-crafted dungeon crawlers: the player’s time is largely spent scouring hostile environments while contending with an above-average difficulty in the form of extreme resource management (health points and money) and daunting enemy encounters. Story exposition is left minimal, and much of the game’s charm is found in its combat system.

PETS

BoF V’s focus rests on its compelling combat and exploration. All enemies can be seen on the field, and once they are defeated, they remain dead for the remainder of your playthrough. Additionally, many enemies are carefully hidden in the field, often attempting to confront Ryu and his party by dropping down on them, or attacking them out of view of the party as they enter new areas. What results is the sense that the player must act cautiously when exploring the game’s world, including being selective about which foes to attack, as HP can only be recovered by using items, which are often uncommon and cost valuable resources.

Once the player engages an enemy the game transitions from exploration to combat. The field that you had been exploring moments earlier becomes a de facto battlefield, with the differences in modes being illustrated chiefly by a more craned, almost isometric view of protagonist Ruy and his party.

During combat, the player must adhere to the Positive Encounter Tactics System (PETS), a modified turn-based combat system. The player is responsible for manually moving allies, similarly to how you would when exploring. That said, during combat, movement takes up Action Points, which is also used to attack.

What’s particularly interesting about PETS is that it forces the player to be mindful of enemy and party positioning. For instance, playable party member Nina can lay traps on the ground during combat, which activate when an enemy moves over them, causing sizable damage. Most enemies won’t simply walk onto these traps, but another playable character, Lin, can forcibly knock back enemies. By combining these techniques, the player can essentially chain ally moves to increase damage output. It’s a great deal of fun.

The Black Sheep Entry

Thanks largely to the game’s heightened difficulty, BoF V managed to distance itself from much of its ilk, making it a black sheep in the series. In contrast, the original BoF up until BoF IV were each largely ho-hum JRPGs: their worlds and stories were rote fantasy fluff and their core gameplay comprised of random encounters, most of which were lacklustre attack/defend/repeat affairs. Many longtime fans who presumably identified the series with espousing a more traditional design and inoffensive aesthetics have expressed outrage at BoF V’s often radical changes.

Some of these complaints are well-founded. For instance, the character designs and world are much more stylistic than in past entries, with characters looking lean, animating stiffly and lacking many minor details that made BoF IV’s sprite-based graphics so attractive. Additionally, the player can only hard save by using tokens, rare items found in the game’s world and purchased for a hefty sum. To circumvent this, players can quicksave whenever they want, but are forced immediately to quit their progress and return to the game’s main menu upon doing so. And after accessing this quicksave, the game delete’s this soft save permanently.

It is my opinion that much of these complaints are part of what makes BoF V an endearing game. Rather than becoming disintegrated into an indistinguishable blog known as a “traditional JRPG”, BoF V is a perplexing and almost punk statement which stands antithetically to this institutional way of understanding the genre...It would seem that my fondness for this game grows with each passing thought.   

Final Thoughts

Almost by virtue of being unusual in the manners outlined above, I find myself attracted increasingly to BoF V. The entire experience feels lean and focused; the post-apocalyptic setting makes for a nice thematic backdrop, justifying the increased combat complexity as well as its greater focus on resource management; and each party member feels distinct and useful. It’s what more JRPGs should be striving toward, frankly. But these words are coming from a cynical contrarian, so take them as you will.