So, I've finally finished
Breath of Fire. I can't tell you how many hours it took me, but I started it on the 28th of July and finished on the 24th of September. Bear in mind that I was studying over this period, and didn't play every day. I must also confess that I also dabbled in browser based games like
Frontierville on facebook,
Alter Ego, and
Dreamworld and
Epic Battle Fantasy III on
Kongregate.
Frontierville is heavily addictive. It uses pretty much every trick described
here. It keeps giving you goals, and items to collect. It uses an energy bar that refills over time, making you come back and over, so you're not wasting energy. It doesn't charge, but it tries to encourage you to buy items rather than earn them, and advertise the game to your friends by making success dependent on having lots of other people you know playing (many people circumvent this by friending strangers who are already playing, who advertise on the official fanpage for the game). Your frontier continually grows grass, trees, wild flowers and stones, which you need to keep clearing, basically running to stay in the same place. These and other activities give you random drops of rare items.
That last bit is what makes the game easy to quit. Ignore it for forty-eight hours, and your frontier is so overgrown that it's just not worth it any more.
Dreamworld uses very similar techniques. It has an energy bar that refills over time, and it encourages you to return every day. It's not really a bad game, not fully text-based, but not really not, either. It's a bit meh, overall. No plot to speak of, really, just a series of repetitive missions, and some goals.
Alter-Ego is a text-based life sim. You start off as a baby, and your character goes through various experiences as he or she grows up. Often the game will let you choose how your character feels, and how they react. Well, I say it lets you. Actually, the game describes how you feel, then asks you, and rebukes you for contradicting it.
I found the game to be very sexist, in many ways. Mostly, regarding sex. Girls can't initiate it, or be eager for it, or feel ready for it at a young age - they always feel bad, after being pressured into it (despite the player choosing options like feeling good about it, and agreeing to it). Your character will always feel bad if she chooses not to have children.
It's not a bad game, just quite close-minded. The creator's opinions seem to come through very strongly, and they're not someone I would really like to spend any time with, to be honest.
I played
Epic Battle Fantasy III after someone complained about it
here. She's not wrong - the game does have all these things. But, for some reason, it offends me much less than
Alter-Ego. I think maybe because
Epic Battle Fantasy III knows it's silly and immature and sexist. It's a very tongue-in-cheek, fourth-wall-breaking style. I'm not saying that this makes it okay to be sexist, just that I feel it's better to know that you're immature and sexist, rather than having an overbearing opinion that this is the way people are, by some divine right. At least that way, there's hope? Maybe?
I may be biased though, I read Cracked for fun.
I may add the
Epic Battle Fantasy series into my competition project. I've got quite a while to consider it. There's also a few other games I found in a friend's collection that I want to add, old psx games like
Crash Bandicoot 2, and
Spiderman, and so on. We'll see.
Regarding
Breath of Fire; I did manage to achieve my goals. I finished the game, having found all of the Rod5 items, all of Puka's doors and Mogu's dig spots, and all of Karn and Ryu's transformations. I also had everyone's best weapons, and possibly armour (I'm not sure, and don't really care). Nina and Deis both had all of their spells learnt, unless they actually did have one left in that final slot (I really suspect they both have an odd number of spells). I made posts listing where to find all those collectible and character-enhancing elements above, and I also wrote a post detailing the entire storyline. It doesn't read terribly well. I was trying not to embellish it too much. I wanted to see how elements of the storyline show up in later games, and if I took too much artistic license, it wouldn't be an accurate representation. That said, I wanted it to flow well.
At tricky points I referred to
this guide (to make absolutely sure I didn't miss anything), and to
this one (when I got stuck in Obelisk, although it looks pretty thorough in other areas too).
I kind of feel the need to defend myself, here. Firstly, I have defeated the game before, secondly, I used them to double-check. Besides which, I don't think there's anything wrong with using guides. There is a huge amount of satisfaction that comes from finishing a game yourself, but it's up to the player whether they want to use a guide on the first playthrough or not. I generally try to get through a game once by myself, then use guides to complete it 100%. If the level of frustration I feel at a certain part is ruining my enjoyment of a game, I will use guides to help me get through it. Anyway.
I've also uploaded the maps I drew of the trickier areas (I wanted to be absolutely certain I didn't miss any treasure there), for future reference. Once I'm done transcribing those into paint, I'll be ready to move on to
Breath of Fire II. For that, my goals are similar - best weapons, all dragon forms, and all unlockables/collectibles/enhancements/whatever. I'm going to write out boss lists, but not a plot description. I'll probably get started on that tonight or tomorrow, once I'm done with the maths coursework I need to finish.
