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Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter Review - PS2

This RPG is a tiny tale of time.

In a disaster similar to what happened 80 million years ago which wiped out the entire Dinosaur race, human beings were forced underground to live a life of tunnels and caves. A disaster shook the Earth, tearing apart what humans once loved and gazed upon with glory. Rivers of poison seeped through their cities, and the skies disappeared while being covered with fiery blasts. Sheldar is now the main home for human beings, a giant capital city underneath the Earth's crust.

Ryu, the main character, has discovered something very odd at a Bio-chem facility during his routine patrol for the Sheldar Rangers. What lies ahead for Ryu and his friends Nina, Lin and Bosch (no not the home hardware)? You'll have to challenge yourself through this whole new Breath of Fire adventure to find out!

Gameplay

Just like in any old RPG, you have your two bars HP and AP HP is your health points; AP is your action points. AP in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter works differently to most RPG's though. In a battle, your character can move around inside a green circle, however every step will take off a couple of AP points, and your attacks will also take off a few of AP points. You can control a character for as many strikes as you want up until they run out of AP, and then you must end their turn manually. If you like, you can end the character's turn straight away and then in their next go, they'll have twice as many AP points.

You also have several other stats that you upgrade gradually as you do battle, including Attack, Defence, Magic, Speed, and Movement. All of these get upgraded automatically as you progress, so you won't have to worry about adjusting them to suit your needs, it just depends on what sort of skills you use throughout the battle that determine how your different characters will turn out. There's also one last stat and that's your XP which you'll need to fill to go up a level. Of course in the earlier battles it's a lot easier to upgrade to the next level, as you need a lot less XP points than in the later levels.

When approaching an enemy, if you strike them first before they strike you, then you'll get a bonus turn in the battle. However if they strike you first, you could be in a bit of trouble. This system has worked well in other RPGs such as Paper Mario on GameCube, and works just as good in Dragon Quarter, except in the early stages all you have to attack them with is your foot. You can set out a trap such as a piece of meat too, which will lure the enemy away from you so that you can sneak (continued next page)