You should play BOF1 that way.
Play the SNES retranslation of BOF2 and use the emulator speedup to pump out that grinding. The good translation is far more important than a few extra seconds of grinding.
Is this good? What makes it unique from other RPGs?
Robert Allen
Jack Richardson
Pretty sure the retranslation got patched into the GBA version too
Levi Wilson
Nope. In fact, Ryusui - the dude who worked on the original translation - warned someone who attempted that project that it would be a very complicated task to port it.
Wyatt Collins
>Is this good?
Not really. Its alright for the most part, but the late game has hours upon hours of padding, you get to one of the final dungeons, but suddenly you need to find a random guy in a town who will give you a pass to enter the place, then you need to fix the broken elevator, so you have to back out and find some random guy in a town with elevator parts, but they're broken, so you gotta go to another twon where a smith can repair the parts, then once you fix the elevator, you're blocked by a cloaked figure who tells you to obtain some magical weapon before he'll let you into the dungeon. As if all that shit wasn't already bad enough, you also literally need to play mailman, passing letters back and forth between two old people in different parts of the world, just to gain access to the final dungeon.
The game also has some big balancing issues where enemies and bosses are just too powerful or too weak, like a boss you fight about 7 hours in has more HP than the bosses you'll encounter in the next 15 hours. Also party members require very wildly different amounts of EXP to level up, like the protag requires like 500,000 total EXP to reach level 40, but there's a woman who requires only 80,000 total EXP to reach that level, and some of the more powerful spells actually cost less MP than their weaker counterparts, its all over the place
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>What makes it unique from other RPGs?
There are dragon shrines around the world, where the protagonist can unlock his true potential and transform into drakes, and later full on dragons, which are really powerful and fully heal him when he transforms. Everyone also has their own special abilities than they can perform outside of battle when you make them the leader.
Protag can fish, there's a guy who can hunt animals for items and can walk through trees, a guy who can disarm traps, a guy who can dig holes, etc.
One party member can also learn how to fuse with certain other party members to combine abilities.
Jayden Thompson
Nah man. That shit's fucked forever.
Also the retranslation includes a pretty nifty opening with the JP licensed commercial music.
youtube.com
It's pretty cool, and it makes the impact of the cold open way, way better than hearing it on the title screen.
youtube.com
Grayson Green
The series is 100% worth playing for the sprite art and the music alone. It's absolutely fantastic in that regard.
Ryan Gomez
They don't really make up for the boring combat in most of the games.
Gabriel Thompson
I’m actually playing BoF2 right now, about 25 hours in. The translation is dogshit and the writing isn’t much better. I still don’t have a real villain, and I’m most of the way through the game.
The gameplay systems are actually interesting though, although barely anything is explained and there’s some buggy bullshit. It’s worth a look if you’re interested in JRPG design, but if you’re not even into JRPGs then run the fuck away. This game will teach you why games like Chrono Trigger are so highly revered.
Hudson Myers
>I still don’t have a real villain
you literally fight the villain in the first ten minutes
Jace Parker
Yeah, but we have emulators and cheats for that. The first two are worth examining just from a gaming history standpoint given the staff.
I'm butthurt the series got snuffed out when Ikehara finally found something that worked, but it was probably for the best given how Capcom was consolidating (and re-consolidating after the mass exodus) during that period.