Breath Of Fire Franchise

Well, that's where we disagree. I don't think the "survival of the race" or the culture or whatever has any value whatsoever. If it helps people be happy then sure, why not preserve what you can preserve? If it actively hurts people though, then what the hell are you doing it for?

And, well, what if it turned out in some future scientific study that there is some important and significant difference in the real world races? Would that suddenly validate white supremacism? Would we all suddenly change our minds because "racism was right"? No, of course not. Because equality is first and foremost a moral idea, not a practical one.

The point is that there wasn't.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:37:26 AM by Clarste

oh.

part of the reason i got confused about that was because i mistook metaphysicions posts for yours.

Yeah, people should really get avatars to avoid confusion with me.

Supremacism in real life is wrong on the bases that we are all biologically equal, with a few exceptions.

Supremacism in the Breath Of Fire verse is applicable on the grounds that humans are the lowest race of all, being the only one without a hat (well, except maybe engineering, but that's debatable since Momo in 3 wasn't human), in a world where every other race is superpowered, lives almost forever, or can fly, or can turn into giant dragons.

... On a side note, I'm not racist.

Wait, wait, hold on a second, this whole thing began because I said that there wasn't An Aesop because the values of race as we apply it in Real Life wouldn't work with this kind of 'verse, where regular clanless human beings are the byproduct of racial mixing. I guess it was all a big misunderstanding.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:40:29 AM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

But we're not equal. My family is very unlikely to develop sickle-celled anemia or hemophilia. But we all have very bad eyesight. If you let people marry me, our children can only have worse eyesight. Should glasses wearers be disallowed from marrying those with 20/20 vision?

As I said, equality is a moral position, not a biological one.

But the humans are the same people as the other races. Whether or not they exist "naturally" is irrelevant. Frankly, as a half-race individual myself, I find this idea that I'm unnatural to be kind of freaky.

Yeah, some races can fly, some of them are living gods. So what? How does that create a moral imperative to preserve those traits at the expense of the happiness of their people? Because that's what you're doing. You're saying "you can't marry that guy you love because he doesn't have wings".

No, not really.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:44:32 AM by Clarste

And what I'm saying is that Humans in this setting are not the same as the rest of the races, because it's not just "having wings", it's "having the physical predisposition to be able to survive in great heights and sustain controlled flight regardless of weight".

Again, this doesn't apply in Real Life because the differences are relatively small in the grand scheme of things. sure, you have bad eyesight, but that doesn't make you biologically unique.

And stop it with the Black-and-White Morality. I'm not saying they should throw a fucking police state on the whole thing. I'm saying that preserving a race of BIRD PEOPLE, CAT PEOPLE OR DOG PEOPLE is more important on the big picture than letting everyone do whatever they want. It doesn't need to be prohibited, but at least have the common decency to understand what's at stake. It's not just "getting along" we're talking about here. You can "get along" without necessarily fucking Anything That Moves.

Humans (or clanless) are NOT the same as anyone else in these games because they

• Are not birds.
• Are not cats.
• Are not Petting-Zoo People
• Are not plantlike

See, this is the problem with settings with so many biologically compatible yet incredibly different races, you can't find a middle ground to between racial equality and racial preservation.

I'm not saying things should be banned or mandated. I'm saying that the writers shouldn't have written the story as including "mixing races cripples one of them" in the first place. Its an *unintended* aesop, but its still deeply Unfortunate Implications ( "Congratulations on your marriage! Thanks to your, Nina's entire species will lose the ability to fly!" )

if you say so. -shrug-

even tho i seriously doubt a single marriage would lead to the entire species losing their special trait. its more like "congratulations, you've contributed to a deeply rooted issue in the winged society and are partly to blame for your descendants being wingless freaks. have a nice day"

...so heres a question, does anyone in the games even care about the eventual humanification or is this just something only the fans care about?

and for that matter, what game even mentions the whole "mixed race = gauranteed human anything? sounds like something that would pop up in 3...

I'm not being Black-and-White Morality, I already told you that I personally find that preservation of race has no value whatsoever. You're free to disagree with me, but I'll always think you're wrong.

You know what? Fuck it, if you're so shortsighted not to understand the implications of what you're defending, off with you, have a nice day.

Now can we please go back to talking about the goddamn games already?

I'm shortsighted? I think you're being shortsighted. You can only think of the present and what we have now. You're too afraid of losing anything to move forward. You think the future is worse than the past almost by definition.

Wings, flying, bone structure, whatever. If they value it they'll preserve it. If they don't value it they won't. That's a choice each Windian can make as an individual. I won't deny them that freedom of choice. Guess what? They didn't value it. The Windians did exactly what they wanted to do and lived happily for centuries while slowly losing their traits. That's not a bad thing by default. Could be bad, could be good. It's subjective. You seem to have no imagination whatsoever. You literally cannot imagine the people of this world living as they want to. You can only impose your own judgments on them. You take other people's opinions as an attack on your own, even though I have repeatedly said that it's plausible to me that one might consider it worth the price. I'd hate to be you, because that's a terrible place to be.

The world changes. The future is a damn long time. In a billion years we'll all be dead, our landmarks all destroyed and our descendants will be completely unrecognizable. That's not a bad thing, that's what's going to happen.

edited 5th Mar '12 1:21:12 PM by Clarste

Outside of one scene in 2, during the quest to get the power to turn into a giant bird, Not really. I can't recall it ever being brought up at any other point in the series. Hell, even within that same game, Tiga's attempt to woo Katt/Lin based on the fact that their both Woren is depicted as being rather bone-headed.

As for the games.

Bof 1- Pretty straight forward, the character balance wasn't that great, Gobi was pretty much useless and there was much point to using anyone but Ryu, Nina, Deis/Bleu, Ox, and the fused Karn. The dragon forms, especially the final one, were a bit overpowered, in part because they didn't have any limitations.

Bof 2 was the first game in the series I played. The story is pretty decent for the most part. It earns points for being one of the first to have an evil church as it's antagonist, especially considering Nintendo's policies when it came out. That said, this game has the worse Dragon system. Your dragon forms amount to one attack that costs all of your mp. The characters are still unbalanced, Jean and Spar might have just as well for all they contribute to the team.

Bof 3-Best dragon system in the series. Good variety and the forms drained mp over time rather being a one shot attack. None of the characters were useless, except for Nina, and even that is only at the end of the game. And graphically, it makes a pretty good argument for why we shouldn't have rushed throw sprites under the bus.

Bof 4- Just got it on Psn, haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

Dragon Quarter- Cool story, cool setting. The sol system was a little weird, but it kind of worked. I didn't like the graphic style at first, but it grew on me. It actually fits the game very well. I'd love to see a spiritual sequel to it sometime.

@Clarste- Let it go, I'd rather we not have to bring the mods into this.

My tolerance for stupid only goes so far. If you want to make your evolutionarily repulsive case, be my guest. I honestly couldn't give less of a shit either way at this point. Don't expect a response, though.

ANYWAYS CHANGING TOPIC FOR SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT.

I haven't played the remakes of I and II on the GBA, Exactly how are they different from the original SNES versions (besides the sound)?

You get more experience and gold in the remakes, mainly, as well as adding some artwork. Other than that, it's basically identical.

the portraits.

and the amount of experience given.

thats about it tho. aside from that and the sound its exactly the same, bad translation n all.

and since, arguably, the snes portraits for bof2 are better than the gba portraits (although i took a looooong time to come to this decision because i really like both sets), and there exists a significantly better translation for the snes version which also retains the music quality...theres really no reason to bother with 2's remake.

Sucks, they could've at least retranslated them. I remember this really messed up part where you're chasing patty around the globe and the last location they give you is something like "New town to the south named HomeTown". Of course, I know it meant "New town to the south of HomeTown", but it alwats seemed kind of messed up.

On a slightly different note, that was the part where I got Deis/Bleu to join the party. After that, the game was pretty much over. Come to think of it, does she appear in DQ?

No. I think they had her in the game in some form during development, but they dropped the idea.

edited 5th Mar '12 2:29:19 PM by Alichains

I didn't dislike Dragon Quarter as a game, but I found it pretty disappointing as a Breath of Fire game. It had very few of the qualities that made me like the series in the first place.

My biggest complaint about it though, was that it was too dark. Not thematically, that didn't really bother me, but graphically. When the color and lighting in a game rarely ascends above "dim and gritty," it gets on my nerves. At least it wasn't anywhere near the level of Vagrant Story, which I wanted to enjoy for the plot but absolutely couldn't finish.

Well what did you expect? The entire game takes place underground, the fact that it's polluted is a major plot point, and the main goal of the game is to reach the surface. Why shouldn't it be dim and gritty?

edited 5th Mar '12 6:53:48 PM by Alichains

Its not that it doesn't make sense, its that it wasn't necessarily a good idea in the first place. Breath of Fire has always been a game of vibrant colors, even when the plots go pitch black dark.

By chance, have you tried Ryusui's retranslation patch of Breath Of Fire II?

I don't know then. Just pretend it's just called Dragon Quarter and ignore the Breath of Fire title.

I've seen it, but haven't tried it yet. I'm not really into emulators when it comes to RPG's.

Valid, except that *Capcom* treats the bloody thing as indicative of the franchise's future success. . .

By all rights it should have been a success.