 The original Breath of Fire for Super Nintendo is the epitome of a classic early 90s Super Nintendo RPG. But if you want to play it today, there's some glaring flaws that make the game totally outdated that you should know about, so let's get those out of the way right away so you can decide for yourself whether or not you want to play this game. First, the encounter rate is insane. If you've played Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, it's about on that level, and that's not a good thing. But the silver lining is that the developers kindly included an auto battle button, so you can simply switch over to that anytime you want, and the B button cancels it anytime. It's like the developers knew the encounter rate was ridiculous and prepared for that in advance. Second, you move painfully slow anywhere you go, there's no dash button. This makes the high encounter rate that much more frustrating, especially when you have to backtrack out of dungeons. Third, the item menu is a complete mess. Sea stone? What the hell is that? You can use it during battle, gee thanks, that really narrows it down. So yeah, those are your hurdles if you want to get into Breath of Fire, but thankfully even if those things are a big hang up for you, you can always play the Game Boy Advance version which lowers the encounter rate, adds a dash button, and cleans up the menu significantly. Anyway, other than those three aspects, Breath of Fire holds up just fine. The story isn't anything revolutionary, it's an evil dragon clan, set against a good dragon clan. The main character Ryu can turn into a dragon, that's pretty awesome. What I really like about the story is how it's told, with its no nonsense approach. I mean, you start the game being woken up as your house is being burned down. Yikes. The game wastes no time letting you know what's going on and what's at stake. I will say though that the translation leaves the story a little flat. The game is perfectly playable, obviously, but it feels like there's something missing since there's such a limited translation. The battles are turn-based, pretty standard stuff. This might seem minor, but visually I think the Breath of Fire series has the best battle screen of any RPG on the Super Nintendo. The 3D perspective is great looking, and the enemy artwork is inspired. And I really appreciate seeing the headshot of each character, that adds some personality to the game. So yeah, for the most part the gameplay is what you'd expect from an early 90s RPG. There are some wrinkles here and there, like the sheer amount of playable characters is very cool. And there's also a day and night mechanic on the world map, which comes into play right away. That's kinda neat. And there's all sorts of different stuff you can do on the world map, depending on who's leading your party. Boken hunt animals, Mogu can dig into underground dungeons, ox can find hidden items and trees, and eventually Nina can turn into a bird and fly around. The soundtrack is very good, but what I really like about it is that it's so different from any other RPG of the era. Capcom used a unique sound palette that really stands out among other games in the genre, like Lufia or the Final Fantasy games. You hear just a couple seconds of music from this game, and you immediately know you're playing Breath of Fire. One thing though that kinda bugs me about this game is how much empty space there is. So many of the houses in the towns are empty, and a lot of the people say the exact same thing. If you've been conditioned to check absolutely everything, and talk to every single villager like I do, then that's kind of a pain in the ass. But here's the thing, you still have to talk to everyone, because there are story triggers here and there. Like this lady upstairs, if you don't talk to her, you are stuck. That's a problem. But still, Breath of Fire is a very good RPG that holds up fine. It compares favorably to games like Lufia and the Fortress of Doom. I don't think the story or dialogue in Breath of Fire is as good as that game, but I'd put the battle system, the soundtrack, and the artwork ahead of it for sure. Another great thing about Breath of Fire is that it's relatively cheap. It usually goes for less than $30 on eBay, so yeah, go check it out.