Breath of Fire V Screen Party
- April 30, 2003 14:39 PM PST
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And you're all invited! Capcom reveals a bit more about the new stuff they're busy cramming into the most interesting Breath of Fire yet.
It's been a very long time since we took a close look at Capcom's Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter?in fact, we've hardly mentioned the game since the first screens dripped out of Capcom HQ two months ago. They were showing the new PlayStation 2 RPG in video format only at last month's Tokyo Game Show, and what we saw made us extremely excited?it's all so new we can practically count the stuff Capcom kept from the other BOF games on one hand. Really.Capcom unveiled their new Dragon Quarter site today (Japanese only), and we thought we'd celebrate by posting up a few of their latest screens. These pix show off the new BOF's battle system, which Capcom has obviously been futzing with quite a bit. First off, Ryu (the hero) has the ability to use items on enemies before falling into battle, one way to avoid needless fighting or give himself a tactical advantage. For example, you can throw meat at some monsters to divert their attention while you sneak right past them?there are no random battles, so this is helpful when you're trying to avoid wasting resources (or simply in a rush). If you do want to fight, you can throw bombs, poison mushrooms and other junk at monsters to reduce their HP or give them status ailments before the battle even begins. Capcom calls this the Positive Encounter and Tactics System (PETS for short), which sounds like a very fruity name to us, but it may help reduce the tedious fighting some Japanese RPGs get bogged down by.
The battles themselves use an odd mix of strategy and action that moves the game away from strict RPG gameplay and nudges it towards something like Parasite Eve. (With turns, that is.) Like Square's infamous PSX adventure, Ryu and crew have a little area of the battle map they can move freely in each turn; if an enemy lies within this area, you're free to attack them. Your moves are governed by an AP (Active Point) system: every character starts out with a set amount of AP, which go down as you walk around, use special skills, and so forth. The catch: unused Active Points carry over between turns, so you can store 'em up and unleash 'em all at once for massive combo attacks, as shown in the screens below.
Breath of Fire V is getting its playable debut at an event in Tokyo October 20; we'll see if we can't get a report to you then. There are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding this game?What's your mission? Who's the cat lady you're fighting with? What's that percentage display on the top right? When's this game coming out again? ...Oh, dear. That last one, at least, we can answer: It hits Japan November 14 and America sometime in 2003. Stay tuned.
