So after I gave up on Final Fantasy IX, I started playing Breath of Fire IV on the PlayStation, and it is a beautiful game.
I love the graphics –hand-drawn by Capcom–, the character design, how the story is told –e.g. you play a character that is not part of the party to know about his story–, the combat, how you can learn new skills from enemies –it is amusing learning the “command” special from the duck commander and use it to ask its minions to kill him–; there are a lot of things to love in this game.
Shame I don't have a better screenshot
So, why I am bouncing from this game after roughly 10 hours? Because I wanted to play a JRPG, and this one has a lot of mini-games that ask me to navigate screens to do uninteresting things.
And that is the main problem. The game looks fantastic, but the way they implemented the isometric graphics requires you to constantly rotate the camera to see where are you and where are you going. So having to do that chasing some sort of wild boar to find the mayor of a weird town so you get permissions to cross some tunnels is not only uninteresting but annoying.
The combat is alright, I found it to have the right amount of options and strategy, so I didn’t mind when I had to fight cute mice and roaches –big, strong ones– when I was already used to fight undead and zombies.
But when I start missing the combat because I spent one hour finding orphans playing hide and seek so I could continue my main quest, having to kill a few mice and roaches is too little when the game asks me again to play one of those mini-games.
It is a shame, but considering how little time I have to put on a game like this, I don’t think Breath of Fire IV is for me!