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Breath of Fire
- Thread starter FelixSH
- Start date
That is a great design. The Goos from the BoF series are the DQ Slime knockoff that might just be better than the original.
I don't know if it's intentional, but I always thought it neat that Garr sorta resembles Deathevan's demon form. It may not be intentional, since 'is a gargoyle' is probably all they were going for and thus the resemblance is superficial, but since Garr got his power from Myria and Deathevan was also a fragment of Myria (or however his backstory went, I never did play a version of BoF2 with a good script) I always liked to think that resemblance was intentional. Just a neat think to bridge the two games, and a nice visual reminder that despite Myria's insistence to the contrary she just isn't as benevolent as she claims to be.
I like that quite a lot! It's been awhile since I went through 3, but last time I got the impression that the Guardians were made as a race to fight the dragons as a kind of artificial dragon-human hybrid; something that could match the power of the dragon clan. But tracing their linage back to the demons of 2 is a theory that has a lot going for it and ties into the themes of moral grayness that run all through the game.
So, I finished my playthrough (it only took me three weeks longer than Felix) and wrote up my full review:
A baby dragon is freed from a chunk of crysm ore in a remote mine and goes on a rampage; it’s captured but escapes into the woods, where it transforms into a boy named Ryu and is adopted by fellow orphans Rei and Teepo. What starts as a rough-and-tumble found-family adventure grows into a harsh journey across the entire world to confront God and learn what happened to the Dragon Brood.
It’s been 15 years since I last did a proper play-through of this game, and while I remembered a lot I also forgot many of the details. I had forgotten how much they took character designs from both of the previous games and made 3D versions of them to use as NPCs: The monkey-people, the armadillo-people, the little cloaked desert guys. The animation really is some of the best of the era, with lots of custom sprites that weren’t totally necessary but are lovely. I’m always delighted that Ryu's attack animation changes after you get to Wyndia: While he's with Rei and Teepo, he's uncertain and waves his sword wildly. Once he's with Nina, he switches to a more standard chop.
This game doesn’t have a lot of narrative thrust, something it inherits from the earlier games in the series. BofF1 has one overarcing goal (collect the goddess keys and defeat the dark dragons) and BoF2 splits the game into two official quests (rescue Bow, find out what’s going on in Gate), and everything is just sidequests off of that without a lot of twists or changes. In this game, you spend a lot of time kind of meandering without much urgency. In the first half Ryu gets dragged around by the plot (do some stuff with Rei and Teepo, flee Balio and Sunder repeatedly, find your way to Angel Tower), and in the second half Ryu gets stymied from the single quest a lot (the only goal is “go meet God”, but every single sidequest is something in your way). The game does a good job of conveying exactly how much Myria doesn’t want you to get to her, and that meshes with the gameplay of just running into obstacle after obstacle as you try to get there.
This game tried very hard with the minigames, but most of them don’t actually hold up as fun. Training Beyd always entertained me, though I think that’s my brain and not a mark of quality. The various rope-pulling and timing games are annoying. I hate the controls for the boat. Honestly, I’m not crazy about the controls on the isometric maps in general, but the boat segments would be fine-but-forgettable if not for the stupid control scheme they inflicted upon them. The Desert of Death is a challenge (and an interesting one, and a good way to tell the story as a game) but it’s not something you actually enjoy doing. It’s an hour of walking through the desert, stopping to sleep or fight and hoping you don’t screw up the directions by looking at the wrong star. And that’s brilliant in terms of using the gameplay medium for storytelling, but it isn’t fun.
I always enjoyed the fishing minigame, but it’s an unnecessary side-game that gets you relatively little for the time it takes unless you go crazy getting rare fish and selling them to manillos. (BoF4 improves it, too.) And I suspect that I was speeding through the game in this play-through more than was intended, but I never got the Fairy Village off the ground—I raised the culture and built some new houses but never got any rewards out of it.
The one mechanic I’ll never complain about is the dragon transformations: They’re the best in the series and probably one of the best transformation mechanics in any game. You get 18 dragon genes and combine up to three of them to create custom forms, with a lot of quirks and bonus forms mixed in. (The Fusion gene alone could be an entire character’s moveset.) When you take the form, it costs MP each turn to maintain it, and when you run out or get knocked out, Ryu resumes human form right where you left him. There are dragon forms that take the place of the full party, but most of them just replace Ryu with a stronger, more varied character. And by endgame, some of the forms are useful but inexpensive enough to actually use in random battles. It’s great.
I understand the reason for the Container Yard from a gameplay perspective: Because of the master system and fishing minigames, you need a way to get back to the mainland that doesn’t involve re-crossing the desert. On the other hand, from a story perspective the teleporters are the most insanely frustrating thing. You can get from Wyndia Castle to Myria’s doorstep in two short hops, but because of a closed door on Steel Beach you have to cross the sea, and because of a badly-placed crate in the Container Yard you have to cross the Desert of Death. From a story perspective, this feels like a slap in the face and not being able to ever go back would have been much better.
I had forgotten how much the game hits you with endgame foreshadowing right off the bat: Teepo basically tells you who he is in his first few lines, but you don't have the context to understand it or Ryu's subsequent dream until 40 hours later.
That said, I think Yggdrasil was insufficiently foreshadowed. Yes, he was introduced and it was made clear that Peco had a connection to him, but his sudden role in the ending as the party’s savior feels unearned. Peco needed more setup, more something, besides just being the weird little mascot who hopped along behind the party.
Peco is also consistently my least favorite character to have in my party for battles, because he doesn’t really have a focus. Garr is the slow, tough, strong attacker. Momo is the glass cannon healer. Rei is fast and gets EX turns even when nobody else does. Nina is your black mage and is the only character whose attack magic is reliably useful. Since you only have a part of three and Ryu is always in it, that means four character to rotate through is plenty, and Peco is superfluous. I used him for a chunk of the Lost Shore with Deis as his master to get all of her magic, but then he went back on the bench and remained there.
I used Examine to collect a lot of skills (which I then remembered to use to hit "weak points" for extra XP) in the early game and put off using Masters until late in the Child era; and then I flipped to carefully logging which Masters would be finished at which levels and didn’t use Examine again. I remember obsessively following guides in early play-throughs to get the “best” Master for each character, but I think my conclusion in this play-through is that you don’t necessarily need Masters at all. It’s nice to be able to focus characters into various archetypes more than they otherwise would be and there are a few really useful skills that are annoying to get otherwise, but your characters are also perfectly capable without them. (Both of those mechanics would be refined and improved in BoF4.)
As for the story: It ties together the first three games in the series, though in-game it leaves it as a “broad strokes” canon: Clearly the first game happened far in the past, but so much has changed in the intervening millennia that “the Brood fought the Goddess” is the only detail that remained relevant.
My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the games follow Myria through the stages of a human life, and that she’s a terrible person at each of them but in different ways. (There’s also at least two full games worth of material that we never see.) I’m also of the opinion that BoF4 was a prequel to the first three games which showed how the first member of the Dragon Brood came to the world (and how the previous dragons were banished).
Some time after BoF4 and centuries before BoF1, the dragons had grown populous enough to be an entire nation, and Myria was summoned or created as a child goddess. Then Myria (aka Tyr) offers power and favor to the dragons and they split into the Light and Dark clans fighting over it, and eventually seal her away using the Goddess Keys. Years later, the dark dragons are in political ascendance and release her, forcing that generation’s Ryu to defeat her and decimating much of the Brood in the battles.
That Ryu marries Nina; both the Windian line and his Dragon line are weakened by this union. (It’s unclear whether his children are represented among the later Brood, though that would explain why some dragons have wings in human form.) But other dragons also survive and they form a society to watch the remains of the fallen goddess and keep her sealed away. And they watch as a fragment of Myria coalesces into a god separate from her: Deathevn. This era represents Myria as a mother, but when she had been a spoiled child breaking her toys with no care for who it hurt, she was an absentee mother who let her child run rampant. The “good ending” of BoF2 sees at least two members of the Brood still out in the world to live their lives (and repopulate the clan) while the others stay below and keep the remains of Deathevn sealed—though his dormant remains poison the land and eventually create the Desert of Death.
Millennia later and more than 500 years before BoF3, Myria re-emerges. Now, she’s in her “matriarch” stage, believing she knows what is right and necessary for the world and seeking to control it all. Everything we leave about her makes her sound like an abusive parent, “I’m only doing this for your own good, you can’t be trusted to take care of yourself, I’ll keep you safe from all the danger so long as you only do what I say.” In this guise, she creates the Guardians and has them kill the Brood, directs the ocean to seal the central continent away from the rest of the world, shatters the Techno Age and strictly limits technology. The Brood living in the greater world (descendants of Ryu or his sister from BoF2) decompose into crysm and hide their last few eggs within; the Brood who guarded Deathevn remain in Dragnier, forgo their powers, and await their last hope.
And then BoF3 happens. And I think the takeaway from the ending is that for all of her kind-sounding words, Myria is wrong. She wants complete control to barely maintain the world as it is; because her power isn’t actually sufficient to improve things and she can’t relax her control to allow anyone else to help. We see it all throughout the journey to her: Humanity is surviving and thriving even where she believes they can’t. We see it in the ending when Yggdrasil sprouts in the Desert: He can heal the land where she cannot.
And I don’t believe that Deis speaks a true word to Myria in their final scene. I think she tells Myria sweet lies because she knows that Myria has come back before, either as herself or an offshoot like Deathevn. Deis isn’t there as comfort or compassion—we’ve had three games of Deis, and when has she even acted out of compassion? She does what needs to be done in the most expedient way she sees. (As Sondheim put it, “I’m not good, I’m not nice. I’m just right.”) Deis is there to make sure that Myria dies and stays dead.
And with Myria finally dead, the world can heal without her. There will probably always be the scars from her works, but with her gone Yggdrasil can heal the land, the Brood can protect the people, and humanity can advance.
Or maybe the scars are so deep that humanity can’t survive through the healing process without hiding underground for millennia. Until the remnants of the Brood, long fused with technology, are able to set them free.
Overall: I’ve always loved this series, and this game was one of both the strongest and the weakest, because it did some very interesting things but also made some poor gameplay choices and less-than-ideal story beats. In the end, I think it was brilliant for the story it managed to tell and the ideas it put forth.
A baby dragon is freed from a chunk of crysm ore in a remote mine and goes on a rampage; it’s captured but escapes into the woods, where it transforms into a boy named Ryu and is adopted by fellow orphans Rei and Teepo. What starts as a rough-and-tumble found-family adventure grows into a harsh journey across the entire world to confront God and learn what happened to the Dragon Brood.
It’s been 15 years since I last did a proper play-through of this game, and while I remembered a lot I also forgot many of the details. I had forgotten how much they took character designs from both of the previous games and made 3D versions of them to use as NPCs: The monkey-people, the armadillo-people, the little cloaked desert guys. The animation really is some of the best of the era, with lots of custom sprites that weren’t totally necessary but are lovely. I’m always delighted that Ryu's attack animation changes after you get to Wyndia: While he's with Rei and Teepo, he's uncertain and waves his sword wildly. Once he's with Nina, he switches to a more standard chop.
This game doesn’t have a lot of narrative thrust, something it inherits from the earlier games in the series. BofF1 has one overarcing goal (collect the goddess keys and defeat the dark dragons) and BoF2 splits the game into two official quests (rescue Bow, find out what’s going on in Gate), and everything is just sidequests off of that without a lot of twists or changes. In this game, you spend a lot of time kind of meandering without much urgency. In the first half Ryu gets dragged around by the plot (do some stuff with Rei and Teepo, flee Balio and Sunder repeatedly, find your way to Angel Tower), and in the second half Ryu gets stymied from the single quest a lot (the only goal is “go meet God”, but every single sidequest is something in your way). The game does a good job of conveying exactly how much Myria doesn’t want you to get to her, and that meshes with the gameplay of just running into obstacle after obstacle as you try to get there.
This game tried very hard with the minigames, but most of them don’t actually hold up as fun. Training Beyd always entertained me, though I think that’s my brain and not a mark of quality. The various rope-pulling and timing games are annoying. I hate the controls for the boat. Honestly, I’m not crazy about the controls on the isometric maps in general, but the boat segments would be fine-but-forgettable if not for the stupid control scheme they inflicted upon them. The Desert of Death is a challenge (and an interesting one, and a good way to tell the story as a game) but it’s not something you actually enjoy doing. It’s an hour of walking through the desert, stopping to sleep or fight and hoping you don’t screw up the directions by looking at the wrong star. And that’s brilliant in terms of using the gameplay medium for storytelling, but it isn’t fun.
I always enjoyed the fishing minigame, but it’s an unnecessary side-game that gets you relatively little for the time it takes unless you go crazy getting rare fish and selling them to manillos. (BoF4 improves it, too.) And I suspect that I was speeding through the game in this play-through more than was intended, but I never got the Fairy Village off the ground—I raised the culture and built some new houses but never got any rewards out of it.
The one mechanic I’ll never complain about is the dragon transformations: They’re the best in the series and probably one of the best transformation mechanics in any game. You get 18 dragon genes and combine up to three of them to create custom forms, with a lot of quirks and bonus forms mixed in. (The Fusion gene alone could be an entire character’s moveset.) When you take the form, it costs MP each turn to maintain it, and when you run out or get knocked out, Ryu resumes human form right where you left him. There are dragon forms that take the place of the full party, but most of them just replace Ryu with a stronger, more varied character. And by endgame, some of the forms are useful but inexpensive enough to actually use in random battles. It’s great.
I understand the reason for the Container Yard from a gameplay perspective: Because of the master system and fishing minigames, you need a way to get back to the mainland that doesn’t involve re-crossing the desert. On the other hand, from a story perspective the teleporters are the most insanely frustrating thing. You can get from Wyndia Castle to Myria’s doorstep in two short hops, but because of a closed door on Steel Beach you have to cross the sea, and because of a badly-placed crate in the Container Yard you have to cross the Desert of Death. From a story perspective, this feels like a slap in the face and not being able to ever go back would have been much better.
I had forgotten how much the game hits you with endgame foreshadowing right off the bat: Teepo basically tells you who he is in his first few lines, but you don't have the context to understand it or Ryu's subsequent dream until 40 hours later.
That said, I think Yggdrasil was insufficiently foreshadowed. Yes, he was introduced and it was made clear that Peco had a connection to him, but his sudden role in the ending as the party’s savior feels unearned. Peco needed more setup, more something, besides just being the weird little mascot who hopped along behind the party.
Peco is also consistently my least favorite character to have in my party for battles, because he doesn’t really have a focus. Garr is the slow, tough, strong attacker. Momo is the glass cannon healer. Rei is fast and gets EX turns even when nobody else does. Nina is your black mage and is the only character whose attack magic is reliably useful. Since you only have a part of three and Ryu is always in it, that means four character to rotate through is plenty, and Peco is superfluous. I used him for a chunk of the Lost Shore with Deis as his master to get all of her magic, but then he went back on the bench and remained there.
I used Examine to collect a lot of skills (which I then remembered to use to hit "weak points" for extra XP) in the early game and put off using Masters until late in the Child era; and then I flipped to carefully logging which Masters would be finished at which levels and didn’t use Examine again. I remember obsessively following guides in early play-throughs to get the “best” Master for each character, but I think my conclusion in this play-through is that you don’t necessarily need Masters at all. It’s nice to be able to focus characters into various archetypes more than they otherwise would be and there are a few really useful skills that are annoying to get otherwise, but your characters are also perfectly capable without them. (Both of those mechanics would be refined and improved in BoF4.)
As for the story: It ties together the first three games in the series, though in-game it leaves it as a “broad strokes” canon: Clearly the first game happened far in the past, but so much has changed in the intervening millennia that “the Brood fought the Goddess” is the only detail that remained relevant.
My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the games follow Myria through the stages of a human life, and that she’s a terrible person at each of them but in different ways. (There’s also at least two full games worth of material that we never see.) I’m also of the opinion that BoF4 was a prequel to the first three games which showed how the first member of the Dragon Brood came to the world (and how the previous dragons were banished).
Some time after BoF4 and centuries before BoF1, the dragons had grown populous enough to be an entire nation, and Myria was summoned or created as a child goddess. Then Myria (aka Tyr) offers power and favor to the dragons and they split into the Light and Dark clans fighting over it, and eventually seal her away using the Goddess Keys. Years later, the dark dragons are in political ascendance and release her, forcing that generation’s Ryu to defeat her and decimating much of the Brood in the battles.
That Ryu marries Nina; both the Windian line and his Dragon line are weakened by this union. (It’s unclear whether his children are represented among the later Brood, though that would explain why some dragons have wings in human form.) But other dragons also survive and they form a society to watch the remains of the fallen goddess and keep her sealed away. And they watch as a fragment of Myria coalesces into a god separate from her: Deathevn. This era represents Myria as a mother, but when she had been a spoiled child breaking her toys with no care for who it hurt, she was an absentee mother who let her child run rampant. The “good ending” of BoF2 sees at least two members of the Brood still out in the world to live their lives (and repopulate the clan) while the others stay below and keep the remains of Deathevn sealed—though his dormant remains poison the land and eventually create the Desert of Death.
Millennia later and more than 500 years before BoF3, Myria re-emerges. Now, she’s in her “matriarch” stage, believing she knows what is right and necessary for the world and seeking to control it all. Everything we leave about her makes her sound like an abusive parent, “I’m only doing this for your own good, you can’t be trusted to take care of yourself, I’ll keep you safe from all the danger so long as you only do what I say.” In this guise, she creates the Guardians and has them kill the Brood, directs the ocean to seal the central continent away from the rest of the world, shatters the Techno Age and strictly limits technology. The Brood living in the greater world (descendants of Ryu or his sister from BoF2) decompose into crysm and hide their last few eggs within; the Brood who guarded Deathevn remain in Dragnier, forgo their powers, and await their last hope.
And then BoF3 happens. And I think the takeaway from the ending is that for all of her kind-sounding words, Myria is wrong. She wants complete control to barely maintain the world as it is; because her power isn’t actually sufficient to improve things and she can’t relax her control to allow anyone else to help. We see it all throughout the journey to her: Humanity is surviving and thriving even where she believes they can’t. We see it in the ending when Yggdrasil sprouts in the Desert: He can heal the land where she cannot.
And I don’t believe that Deis speaks a true word to Myria in their final scene. I think she tells Myria sweet lies because she knows that Myria has come back before, either as herself or an offshoot like Deathevn. Deis isn’t there as comfort or compassion—we’ve had three games of Deis, and when has she even acted out of compassion? She does what needs to be done in the most expedient way she sees. (As Sondheim put it, “I’m not good, I’m not nice. I’m just right.”) Deis is there to make sure that Myria dies and stays dead.
And with Myria finally dead, the world can heal without her. There will probably always be the scars from her works, but with her gone Yggdrasil can heal the land, the Brood can protect the people, and humanity can advance.
Or maybe the scars are so deep that humanity can’t survive through the healing process without hiding underground for millennia. Until the remnants of the Brood, long fused with technology, are able to set them free.
Overall: I’ve always loved this series, and this game was one of both the strongest and the weakest, because it did some very interesting things but also made some poor gameplay choices and less-than-ideal story beats. In the end, I think it was brilliant for the story it managed to tell and the ideas it put forth.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Thanks for the writeup. I already forgot the details, of Myria and Deis speaking with each other, but your interpretation sounds pretty valid. Generally, I like your whole summary/interpretation of the timeline and Myria.
And you're right with Yggdrasil. Could have used more time with him.
I wonder how I could make this excellent dragon system more useful for me. Random battles were too short and plentiful for me to use a turn transforming. So I mainly used the dragon forms in boss fights, and then didn't want to experiment, of course. That's a my problem, I know, just wonder how it could be adjusted, so I would use dragon forms in each battle.
Right, before I forget, masters certainly aren't necessary (for anything). The game isn't hard enough for that (which I appreciate), and even if you use only masters on Ryu to increase his magic and ap, hurting his attack, it doesn't matter much. He is still at least a decent attacker, and you are just a Warrior gene away from super strength. Still, I guess without Bunyan, Garr wouldn't have been the wrecking ball he was. damn, he crushes everything, if you let him, such a powerhouse.
And you're right with Yggdrasil. Could have used more time with him.
I wonder how I could make this excellent dragon system more useful for me. Random battles were too short and plentiful for me to use a turn transforming. So I mainly used the dragon forms in boss fights, and then didn't want to experiment, of course. That's a my problem, I know, just wonder how it could be adjusted, so I would use dragon forms in each battle.
Right, before I forget, masters certainly aren't necessary (for anything). The game isn't hard enough for that (which I appreciate), and even if you use only masters on Ryu to increase his magic and ap, hurting his attack, it doesn't matter much. He is still at least a decent attacker, and you are just a Warrior gene away from super strength. Still, I guess without Bunyan, Garr wouldn't have been the wrecking ball he was. damn, he crushes everything, if you let him, such a powerhouse.
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I replayed BoF3 a few years ago and had a different interpretation - that it actually follows from BoF1's bad ending, while BoF2 followed from 1's good ending. The main evidence is the mural in Dragnier showing BoF1's cast fighting Myria. It only shows her child form, suggesting that they never saw her true form. Also, Deathevan and Saint Eva's church are never mentioned in BoF3, which suggests that they didn't exist in its past; otherwise, it would be weird that there's no historical record of them, since they were the world's dominant religion for a while.
Also, regarding the geography of BoF3's world: it's muddled a bit by Dragnier being in a different place in each game, and the fact that you can't see BoF3's whole map at once doesn't help, but you get to the Desert of Death by crossing the sea heading north, after traveling a ways east of Wyndia on land. If you did that in the previous games, you'd get to the desert region where Wisdon is, so I think that's the Desert of Death. Caer Xhan and Station Myria would be near where Highfort is in BoF2.
With that in mind, it's hard to say how expansive the desert really is. It already covered most of the southeastern part of the continent in BoF1, so it might just be about the same as it was then. On the other hand, it didn't take multiple day/night cycles to walk across it in that game, but maybe it's just gotten much harsher, so the pace at which it can be crossed is slower now. In any case, the general devastation of the world seems to get worse the closer you get to Myria, who is known as a goddess of destruction and is also known to play innocent when she thinks she can get away with it, so I'm not inclined to take her speech about protecting what's left of a dying world too seriously.
I enjoyed y'all's write-ups, too! There's a lot about these games' stories, and the connections between them, that's open to interpretation. I remember when Dragon Quarter came out, I had a not-very-well-developed theory that it was connected to BoF2 because the dragons had moved underground in that game; someday, I'll have to replay it and see if there's any other evidence for that.
Also, regarding the geography of BoF3's world: it's muddled a bit by Dragnier being in a different place in each game, and the fact that you can't see BoF3's whole map at once doesn't help, but you get to the Desert of Death by crossing the sea heading north, after traveling a ways east of Wyndia on land. If you did that in the previous games, you'd get to the desert region where Wisdon is, so I think that's the Desert of Death. Caer Xhan and Station Myria would be near where Highfort is in BoF2.
With that in mind, it's hard to say how expansive the desert really is. It already covered most of the southeastern part of the continent in BoF1, so it might just be about the same as it was then. On the other hand, it didn't take multiple day/night cycles to walk across it in that game, but maybe it's just gotten much harsher, so the pace at which it can be crossed is slower now. In any case, the general devastation of the world seems to get worse the closer you get to Myria, who is known as a goddess of destruction and is also known to play innocent when she thinks she can get away with it, so I'm not inclined to take her speech about protecting what's left of a dying world too seriously.
I enjoyed y'all's write-ups, too! There's a lot about these games' stories, and the connections between them, that's open to interpretation. I remember when Dragon Quarter came out, I had a not-very-well-developed theory that it was connected to BoF2 because the dragons had moved underground in that game; someday, I'll have to replay it and see if there's any other evidence for that.
...I had never considered that, but I really like that idea. That puts the Brood/Guardians war much closer to the end of Bof1; basically Myria only stays dormant for few generations, long enough for technology to rapidly advance (though I suppose BoF1 was pretty close to magical robots already) and the number of dragons to increase again. The map is generally unchanged, but the "known world" of BoF3 only stretches from Gust to the Tantar region, with the Duana Mines and Syn City possibly not even being as far west as Gust (though because there's a checkpoint that you never pass, it's easy to believe there are more lands farther west). Heck, there's a Dragon Palace in that area that could have been a "last stand" of the Brood and the geographic upheaval there turned it into the Duana Hills. The Inner Sea is just the bay north of Winlan, and Angel Tower stands somewhere near Tantar. The "southern Wyndia" region could encompass Camlon and Nanai. If the tunnels to Auria and Bleak were destroyed, there's no way to the Arad desert by land. So Kombinat is at the far south of that desert Wisdon becomes Myria Station.
Which means that Caer Xhan probably isn't what we think: It was built on the desert, not destroyed by it. 500 years is a long time, Myria might have started her resurgence by becoming a goddess to a technologically-advancing society and used them as part of the war against the Brood, before deciding they didn't meet her long-term needs and wiping them out herself.
Heck, the world might not actually be dying! Nothing we see in the known world of BoF3 actually implies that. Life seems to be going on as usual, besides the stagnation of technology, and even that people like Momo and the Plant scientists are actively working on. That may just be the story Myria tells Teepo and then Ryu to try to win their trust without a fight.
It raises the greater question about the state of the rest of the world, though (economics hat on), one assumes there's trade going on in places other than the greater Wyndia area and the two regions east of it. Dauna is the world's big source of Crysm and Steel Beach is where machines come from: If places like Gust, Spring, Gramor, Carmen and Tunlan still exist (not to mention Prima and whatever took the place of Scande), they'll all have a market for those products. It's not clear if the seas south of the known world are as rough as the Outer Sea, but there's little reason to believe they are, just that Ryu and company have no reason to go there.
Then in the good ending of BoF1, Myria is fully defeated and Deathevn is all she leaves behind; and no games follow any ending (demons eventually rise, Ryu seals Gate, Ganer seals Gate) of BoF2.
Fascinating. I love it!
I am enjoying BoF timeline debate. If this were approximately 2003, this thread would be flooded with my own theories on the whole universe. As it is, I have chilled. I like everyone's theories here!
That said, to be a pedantic nerd...
By all accounts, the Church of St. Eva is fairly new in Breath of Fire 2. There are still Dragon God statues literally everywhere, and, while the Dragon God laments that he is not as worshipped anymore, there is nothing indicating this has been the status quo for a long time. Additionally, places like FarmTown, Guntz, SimaFort, and HighFort distinctly do not have churches, with St. Eva is trying (and failing) to get a foothold. Windia and Tunlan are kingdoms that have monarchs that are being menaced into "accepting", but "our queen is too fat" isn't working, either. Bando Church and Evrai are grand locations for believers... that are not super sustainable, because their populations keep getting fed to demons. Once you get past everything previously mentioned, the only "sustainable" St. Eva locations are Coursair, Gate, Capitan, and maybe HomeTown, give or take how much the richest guy in town being a believer/demon was contributing.
All that said, I can completely see "St. Eva" fading from the historical record within a generation or two. By the finale of BoF2, the whole organization has no leadership or purpose any longer. TownShip crashing into Gate and making a double town was probably more relevant worldwide news in its epoch, and even that was probably eventually believed to be nothing more than a myth.
And, for further information on my obsession with BoF2's ridiculous world, please enjoy this article about how I doubt that anyone even noticed Ryu saving the whole planet.
Crap, I am so close to writing ten pages about BoF3 again.
That said, to be a pedantic nerd...
By all accounts, the Church of St. Eva is fairly new in Breath of Fire 2. There are still Dragon God statues literally everywhere, and, while the Dragon God laments that he is not as worshipped anymore, there is nothing indicating this has been the status quo for a long time. Additionally, places like FarmTown, Guntz, SimaFort, and HighFort distinctly do not have churches, with St. Eva is trying (and failing) to get a foothold. Windia and Tunlan are kingdoms that have monarchs that are being menaced into "accepting", but "our queen is too fat" isn't working, either. Bando Church and Evrai are grand locations for believers... that are not super sustainable, because their populations keep getting fed to demons. Once you get past everything previously mentioned, the only "sustainable" St. Eva locations are Coursair, Gate, Capitan, and maybe HomeTown, give or take how much the richest guy in town being a believer/demon was contributing.
All that said, I can completely see "St. Eva" fading from the historical record within a generation or two. By the finale of BoF2, the whole organization has no leadership or purpose any longer. TownShip crashing into Gate and making a double town was probably more relevant worldwide news in its epoch, and even that was probably eventually believed to be nothing more than a myth.
And, for further information on my obsession with BoF2's ridiculous world, please enjoy this article about how I doubt that anyone even noticed Ryu saving the whole planet.
Crap, I am so close to writing ten pages about BoF3 again.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Maybe it's a sign, that you should do BoF III next. Give me all your thoughts, GoggleBob.
Thanks for the writeups, Beowulf and gorha. Interesting reads. Uh, didn't someone talk about how they think Deis just wanted to really make sure that Myria finally dies, being a pragmatist through all the games? Am I misremembering?
Anyway, it's fun how much food for thought this series, maybe specifically this game in combination with the others, is offering. Good stuff.
Thanks for the writeups, Beowulf and gorha. Interesting reads. Uh, didn't someone talk about how they think Deis just wanted to really make sure that Myria finally dies, being a pragmatist through all the games? Am I misremembering?
Anyway, it's fun how much food for thought this series, maybe specifically this game in combination with the others, is offering. Good stuff.
Peklo is correct about BoFIV, even tho I loved that game to pieces and it's narrative, that issue aside.
Felix. I am looking you in the eyes. I am begging you to play Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter. Please do it. It's the best game in the series and one that affected my outlook in life. However, please note it is not a JRPG, it's an SRPG like Tactics Ogre. Play it with that in mind and it's so-called difficulty is proven to be a falsehood thrust upon it.
Make sure you DO NOT PLAY THE EUROPEAN VERSION tho. It removed the ability Quicksave which the game RELIES upon. It's utterly integral to the gameplay loop. Play the NA version!
Felix. I am looking you in the eyes. I am begging you to play Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter. Please do it. It's the best game in the series and one that affected my outlook in life. However, please note it is not a JRPG, it's an SRPG like Tactics Ogre. Play it with that in mind and it's so-called difficulty is proven to be a falsehood thrust upon it.
Make sure you DO NOT PLAY THE EUROPEAN VERSION tho. It removed the ability Quicksave which the game RELIES upon. It's utterly integral to the gameplay loop. Play the NA version!
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Oh, I did play DQ. I played the whole series, all five of them. Still, thanks for the suggestion, it's an excellent game. I agree, it's an excellent game, and, if you play carefully, not that hard. Proven by the fact, that I made it through without dying, by being very careful (I think it's not even that rare to do so?). And yeah, I know about how they changed the whole way saves work in the EU version (which is the one I played - due to not dying, it wasn't a problem). I had planned to just play through it a second time, to see all the scenes I didn't get the first time, but never got around to it. Right, I think I made a fixed save before the final part, and made it through there with a few tries - not how it was intended.
Should really replay that one, though. It's not like it's that long, and I would like to experience the correct version. I understand that I didn't really get the right experience. I don't quite remember the EU changes, I think you only have a limited amount of regular saves, or something? Really weird, changing that.
Should really replay that one, though. It's not like it's that long, and I would like to experience the correct version. I understand that I didn't really get the right experience. I don't quite remember the EU changes, I think you only have a limited amount of regular saves, or something? Really weird, changing that.