Genre: RPG
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Square

Breath of Fire is one of the prettiest looking tile-based JRPGs this review has ever seen. The various towns, dungeons, forests, and all of the rest, are meticulously drawn, from cracks on the floors, torches on the walls, and so on. What's more, the battles are drawn from an isometric view, and very often mirror-- but re-drawn in the new perspective-- the setting where they took place! Characters are evocative and fiendishly animated, like the fat pig guys with the slings. Menus are clean and have "Shining in the Darkness"-esque pictograms. Sometimes there are even rats scurrying around on top of dungeon walls, or wildlife on the world map. Polish, polish, polish!

As with the visuals, Breath of Fire's soundtrack is fantastic. Yes, some of the tunes lean too heavily into the pre-canned Super NES "hummmmm!" sample-- but they are well-written, catchy, and make superb use of the platform's sound chip. The dripping water in some of the caves sounds like it's from a 32-bit console's DPS, it's so crystal clear. The bass line in the "Profit" shop song really blurs the line between chip music and pre-recorded Red Book. The only complaint might be that compositionally the songs don't paint as strong of an atmosphere as competing games in the genre.

On its face, Breath of Fire is the standard-fare "town -> overworld -> dungeon -> town" style JRPG, with random encounters and turn-based battles. But there are some nuances: unlike the "Final Fantasy" games, which have simple dungeons and are story-driven, Breath of Fire is more akin to the "Phantasy Star" releases, in that it has a high gameplay-to-story ratio. What's especially interesting is that it almost has WRPG aspects, where the player needs to supply his party with stacks of items like "Herb" and "Acorn", giving greater-than-average pre-thought to activities versus most Japanese role playing titles.

Between its artwork, absurd levels of polish, and incredible music, Breath of Fire has a phenomenal aesthetic. And the gameplay isn't bad either, with lots of meaty enemy encounters and elaborate dungeons to explore. The game's pacing could have used some work however: where a game like 3DO's "Lucienne's Quest" feels like a condensed JRPG experience, Breath of Fire is its opposite, stretching things out, at times, to the limits of patience; heck, the player doesn't get an "exit dungeon" spell for fifteen-plus hours of gameplay! But even with that caveat in mind, anyone who has an interest in this genre really ought to give Breath of Fire a try.