You are not. I don't care for the music in BoF2 (oh boy, MIDI Metal Guitar samples everywhere), the character designs likewise fall flat with me.
Well, probably we are both very sensitive to music, and that plays a huge role why we don't enjoy BoF2 nearly as much as BoF1. The difference is really glaring, the music not only fell in quality but also in quantity with music pieces being much less varied in BoF2 than 1.
In BoF1 it's a shame they were probably limited with memory and something, but I find the music to be particularly of great quality, but it often loops too fast sadly. And that with only a single instrument set which never changes again !
but I got up to the part where ...I dunno, the religious undertones start up or something.
If you think Breath of Fire II has religious undertones, then you definitely missed a large part of the storylines and the plot twists at the end of the game.
The whole thing is like milk and water compared to BoF1, to me. I'm with ya Breg. I didn't care for 3 and I've never played any further into the series. I realize they are respected games, but the first installment was the only one that ever made me want to finish the game or get invested in the characters.
Well, 3 is actually pretty good I found, especially compared to the extremely boring 2. It still have a huge balance problem like it's two predecessors (probably even worse) - Nina is completely useless in 3, and there's another very muscled character that actually does very little damage when attacking - basically Ryu is the only useful playable character and the others are barely there to heal him.
I don't think either SNES BoF is a masterpiece or anything, but BoF1 definitely had fewer dumb quirks than its sequels. BoF2's combat balancing is awful, the encounter rate is way too high, there's too much backtracking, building your town involves a bunch of factors that can only be known with a guide, and fast travel in the late game is abysmally slow.
My point exactly - I travelled with whale only since I didn't have the town ship, ever. I didn't even guess you could have one before having access to the interenet.
By the way going inside a whale is one of the very few "cool" parts of BoF2. The other cool part is the tournament. (Or was it in BoF3 ? Or both ? I don't remember). The rest is boring, particularly the quest where you should cook insect for frogs. That part which took hours of doing something stupid getting stuck in that stupid castle with awful music. S.T.U.P.I.D.
BoF1 might have a simplistic story (it just resolves after finding a collection of keys and travelling 'round the world) but at least you visit interesting parts, desert places with arabic music, underwater village, a tower which uses mode 7 to give you the impression you are shrunk, and there is mazes and puzzles a little everywhere, plus optional chest backtracking. BoF2 have none of this, and it's a huge step backwards for the series.
For me the combat is secondary - BoF1 being too easy or whathever plays a minor role in it's enjoyment - while visiting interesting places and having good music is more interesting. BoF2 is basically a huge grindfest, especially in the last dungeon which is incredibly HUGE and BORING and HARD as well and requires hours and hours of grinding to have any chance to get to ever reach the 413th underground floor where the last boss is located.
I 100% disagree about the utility of magic in 1 vs 2--attack magic outside dragon spells in 1 were rarely useful once you got dragon powers, whereas physical attacks and magic are generally on par with each other in 2 until endgame
Then the balance is broken, magic is supposed to be significantly more effective than physical attacks of your best attacker, because you waste MP for it ! If this is not the case, then magic is useless, and I think in Bof2 it's not completely useless (as it is in Bof3) but borderline useless.
he balance only really breaks here if you know what you're doing or spam dragon magic/WiseBls
Dragon can't be "spammed" in Bof2 since you can only cast it once, after that Ryu has 0 MP, and only by healing his mana you can do that again, but it takes time and is weak if his MP weren't full at the time of the summon.
Hell, even your physical attack in 1 was obsolete from the 2nd dungeon until roughly when you get Bo by the infinite auto-30 damage per hit Quake key--and there are more than a few other simple exploits that make an already easy game even easier (don't even get me started on lvl 50 characters before you get Karn).
I have no idea what you're talking about - but in all cases when I mentionned that playing BoF1 is a better experience than BoF2, I meant on a normal playthrough - without guides, cheats or anything. I didn't mean exploiting the game or whathever.
I don't know what you are referring to.
May I add at this point, totally unrelated to anything else in the thread, a little comparison/contrast chart for you guys.
Breath of Fire 1 - = = = - Breath of Fire 2
You go into a I dunno, God is
person's dreams evil and screw you
to save their life..............for praying?
Did you play like even 75% of the way through BoF2? :P
Also in Spoony's comparison between the first two games.
No. They can turn into birds. They just have to face a trial in which they're tested to see if they can handle it. But there's a downside; once they turn into birds, they forget about being human and everything.
I'm guessing that was still part of the curse.
In BoF1 they could freely transform back and forth (such as the soldiers who bring Ryu to fight the Wizard after he poisons Nina).
Although why they don't fly there directly instead of walking, I don't know.