This Week in Games

Fire Breath, Radioactive Breath, and Tales of Breath

Welcome back, folks! Thanksgiving Weekend was a great time; not only was the holiday well-spent among friends and loved ones, but I was able to catch up plenty in Xenoblade Chronicles 3! I was able to do a good chunk of the personal quests for the main cast and heroes. Don't wanna go too far into it, but they're incredibly worthwhile as character development—especially since they also touch on some dangling plot threads from the main story. I have to wonder if other RPGs put so much narrative weight on the side quests to the extent Xenoblade has. At any rate, the end is in sight... I like to think.

It's another anniversary in the world of Japanese RPGs, and this one is for another beloved RPG: Breath of Fire II. We've talked about the Breath of Fire games before. A chronology of dragon-men and their bird-woman girlfriends as they take on divine threats to their world of cartoonish animal people, the Breath of Fire series is special because it's from CAPCOM, the makers of action games. You wouldn't think they'd be able to make compelling RPGs, but if the success of Breath of Fire didn't put that one to rest, the sequel certainly did.

While most RPG series tend to forego chronological stories, Breath of Fire kept it in the family for its sequel. The game took place 500 years after the events of the first game, with a new dragon-boy named Ryu Bateson serving as the protagonist. (He still had blue hair, too.) After taking a nap and waking up in a strange new world that doesn't recognize him, one where worship of a deity named St. Eva is widespread, Ryu eventually meets a dog-boy named Bow. The two grow to be workers for hire until a fateful day when they're asked to rescue a bird-woman's pet pig.

The first Breath of Fire excelled in its music and its eye-grabbing characters, and Breath of Fire II only took those ideas further. In addition to Bow and his hunting ability, you could recruit a far wider range of loveable characters: Rand Marks, a giant armadillo-man who could zip you around the map with his spin-dash, the ever-famous martial artist Katt, the simian sorcerer Sten Legacy, Spar the plant-person (full name: Aspar Agus), who could walk through forests, and the froggy prince Jean. Of course, this game's Ryu also met with a Nina: a bird-woman with black wings, haunted by a fell prophecy passed down in her family. If you put in some legwork, you could also recruit Bleau the snake-woman, a powerful sorceress who sees a lot of Ryu's former namesake in Bateson's eyes.

In a twist on the prequel's concept of fusing party members, Breath of Fire II instead featured Shamanization. By finding the six elemental Shamans around the world, Ryu could fuse their powers with those of his party members. This could either improve their base stats or, with the right choice of Shaman, shapeshift them into newer, stronger forms with unique abilities. For example, Bow would turn into a vaguely-canine set of sentient armor, complete with an arm cannon. Sten would turn into something more akin to a simian Djinn with even stronger magics than before. And Katt would turn from a cute tomboyish tiger-girl into a feral blue-skinned Amazon with devastating kicks and even a fair bit of magic ability.

But it was the story that really made Breath of Fire II stand out. Sure, it's possibly the "kill God"-best of all "kill God" RPGs, but the twist involving the final boss' identity—themselves a living scar left upon the world from the defeat of Tyr in the first Breath of Fire—definitely holds some impact. There's also something to be said about Deathevans raising the stakes at the last minute, forcing you to watch as he breaks down each party member's greatest insecurities before he kills them in front of you. When Ryu finally rushes past a barrage of Deathevans' explosive magic to face him down one last time, you feel it. The real meat was in the party members themselves, though. Breath of Fire II was a much darker game than its predecessor, with your party members having far greater demons to deal with. The jokey Sten was hiding a tremendous case of survivor's guilt, having survived a war by hiding among the corpses of his fallen countrymen. Katt is possibly the last of her kind, and likely nursing an unrequited attraction towards Ryu. Rand is something of a henpecked mama's boy but his mother gives her life to save the party during a tense moment. The story even manages to show the deeds of the previous game's cast in a new light: it confirms that the previous Nina and Ryu got hitched, but the mixing of Dragon Clan blood and Wing Clan blood cost the royal family their connection to the Great Bird (they couldn't transform into it without sacrificing their memories and humanoid form). This was what led to Nina's black wings; Nina's predecessor even appears before her to apologize for leading to the current Nina's situation. Not a lot of RPGs retroactively implicate the heroes for accidentally making things worse for later generations.

The dour tone extends to the endings; if you don't play your cards right, it's possible that Ryu has to sacrifice himself to seal off the demons from Deathevans' realm permanently. Or worse: if nothing is set in place to seal them away, the game ends on a screen full of monsters with the promise that they'll overrun the world within a short time frame. Victory is often bittersweet in Breath of Fire II.

While CAPCOM has done a fairly decent job of keeping Breath of Fire II (and its predecessor) available, such as with the GameBoy Advance ports in the early 00s, the Virtual Console releases on the 3DS and the current Switch Online releases, it hasn't been to Breath of Fire II's benefit. Put plainly: Breath of Fire II's translation is bad. Not even in a "oh, this isn't what they said in Japanese, let me start a career of complaining about it on YouTube" way. Spelling errors abound, the text is poorly formatted, localized names are inconsistent (is the boy-crazed witch named "Nimufu" or "Nimfu Mani?"), and some lines of dialogue just straight-up don't make sense. Clyde Mandelin, better known online as "Tomato," once took a good look at Breath of Fire II's translation and decided that, yes, it was as bad as people say. Why was the translation so crummy? Likely because CAPCOM handled it alone; Square Enix (née Squaresoft) helped CAPCOM with the English translation for the first Breath of Fire since CAPCOM didn't quite have the experience in translating long RPGs at the time. Sure, they'd localized all of the Mega Man and Street Fighter games, but a few win quotes don't quite match up to the reams of text in a whole RPG. Upon seeing the success the first Breath of Fire had, CAPCOM decided to take 100% of the credit (and profit) for the sequel even if they didn't have the tools for the job. Whoops. Notably, CAPCOM hasn't really amended the translation either; all subsequent Breath of Fire II releases feature the original SNES translation. Even the GBA port featured updates like CGs for certain cutscenes (drawn by series artist Tatsuya Yoshikawa, who redrew Spar's shamanized Mushroom Girl form up there) and a dash button.

CAPCOM has long since voiced interest in revitalizing some of their older franchises, but as any Lost Planet fan can tell you, that desire hasn't really materialized in a meaningful way. Make no mistake; it's great that we've gotten all those Legacy Collections for Mega Man and Marvel Vs CAPCOM—but hey, maybe toss some love at Breath of Fire and give us a collection for those games? As bad as things are for the industry, RPGs are pretty hot right now. I'm sure someone at CAPCOM could pull a few bills out from the couch to make a Breath of Fire Legacy Collection or somesuch. I really have to imagine that the powers at CAPCOM really don't know that folks are still hanging onto the hope for a new Breath of Fire. God only knows, I can't imagine how sheltered the C Suite must be. But man, the wait is getting irksome. Here's hoping it doesn't take another 30 years for us to play Breath of Fire II with a better translation. At least they in made Katt into a costume in Street Fighter V...?

I'm not sure if this kind of thing counts as news anymore, since it doesn't seem like anything would be off-limits for Fortnite. After going so far as to feature Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia, and Naruto, along with the likes of Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid, what wouldn't work? At this point, Fortnite would likely feature a Golden Girls collab just for the novelty of it all. So, with that said: Godzilla collab.

If I sound a little bummed out, it's partly because the design they went with was the Godzilla Vs King Kong design and not Shin Godzilla or Minus One Godzilla or, hell, Godzilla Earth from Godzilla: Monster Planet. (Fittingly, the non-gaming Kong is also coming to Fortnite to join his Monsterverse co-star later in Fortnite's Chapter 6.)

For now, Godzilla Evolved just appears in stages as a raid boss that players can work together to fend off. Godzilla's cosmetics proper won't be released in-game until the 17th, which will include a variety of hitherto-unannounced cosmetics. It'll be weird if they make a Godzilla skin for players; it would've been a great place for one of those weird Godzilla skeletons from the Shin Godzilla ending, but oh well.

Fortnite's grasp on pop culture is no doubt part of its continued dominance in the gaming sphere, along with also costing all nothing to play. Heck, the battle passes also run less than most new games; I don't blame a lot of people for just playing Fortnite, given the general expense of games at large. That, and it's likely a lot easier to organize Fortnite sessions with buddies than maintain a Final Fantasy XIV static. Add to that Fortnite's availability on almost every platform under the sun, and you have a game almost anyone can play. Log in, earn a few rewards in your battle pass, enjoy the serotonin boost, and log off. This is dangerous for the industry at large, given that a lot of people immediately have less incentive to buy an expensive new title when they can grind it out in Fortnite: no matter what game you make, it has to compete with a free game. And it's tough to compete with "free."

I'm not sure I have any strong feelings about Godzilla being in Fortnite; it feels like one more license for the pop culture pile. There's been a lot of ink spilled about how all of these crossovers have watered media down, and I think I'm firmly in that camp. Not that there's some deep, thematic purity that's ruined by Freakazoid making an appearance on Teen Titans or whatever, but it's all pretty obvious that this is all done for the sake of expanding a portfolio. Sure, you can still get some good stories out of it (the Transformers crossovers with The Real Ghostbusters or the Ninja Turtles/Batman OVA were fun), but more of it seems to be along the lines of Droogs in the backgrounds of more Space Jam 2's. Far be it for me to deny mangaka their bag of money (especially if it nets us genuinely neat crossovers like the Naruto/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic or the Ultraman/Spider-man comic, Along Came A Spider), but that means everything has been Funko Pop'd. No time to think about what it means for Godzilla to stomp around Tilted Towers, folks need their action figures smashed together (even if everything else is smashing action figures together).

But hey, you can re-create Godzilla's b-ball skills from the weird Charles Barkley advertising campaign from the '90s. Neat, I guess?

It's been a bit since we've last talked about the Tales of... series! I don't blame Tales of... for being a bit antsy; we haven't really heard anything about the series since the announced remaster of Tales of Graces f. With the Tales of... franchise hitting the big 3-0 anniversary, you'd think Bandai Namco would've announced something else—especially since the Tales of Graces f remaster came hand-in-hand with Tales of 30th Anniversary Remastered Project. Good news: Bandai Namco has announced a livestream this December 16 that'll hopefully announce new projects for the Tales of... series!

The Tales of... series is Bandai Namco's premier RPG series, originally hailing from the "Namco" side of that famous merger. In a lot of ways, it's the quintessential Japanese RPG series—I'd argue even more than Final Fantasy, given the strict anime aesthetic the series has always had, thanks in no small part to the recurring art of Ah! My Goddess artist Kohsuke Fujishima and the late Mutsumi Inomata. The series has also long eschewed typical turn-based mechanics in exchange for a more real-time affair, with the battles playing more like a pared-down version of Soulcalibur involving combo strings and burst meters. A few of the Tales of... games became quite well-regarded in the U.S.; Tales of Symphonia was a must-have for the GameCube since its release in 2004, and Tales of Vesperia was a solid addition to the Xbox 360's library for those fifteen minutes where Microsoft bothered with courting Japanese talent. I'll admit to having missed a lot of the later games, so titles like Tales of Zestiria or Tales of Berseria are quite unknown to me outside of their striking character design. Tales of Arise seemed pretty okay all around when it was released in 2021, having quite good reviews.

And sadly, that's mostly been it; the past few years have mostly seen ports and remasters of older Tales of... games, such as Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia. We also had mobile Tales of... games, such as Tales of Crestoria and Tales of Luminaria, but both of those shuttered in 2022. Tales of... fans have had slim pickings since. I'm not entirely sure how you fix this, at least not in the U.S. Tales of... seems pretty tailor-made to appeal more to the anime-loving crowd in a way that even Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy shrugged off a long time ago. The Tales of... games have just a bit too much of that "chuuni" energy, I think. On the one hand, it's not really a Tales of... game if it doesn't wear its melodrama on its sleeve and feature a kickin' J-pop song as its intro (I'm particularly fond of Ring A Bell, from Vesperia). On the other hand, that's a lot harder to sell to a mass audience in the U.S.—especially if the series doesn't quite have a major anime license backing it. You'd probably have an easier time selling a My Hero Academia or One Piece action RPG to folks, I imagine.

A good idea might be to bank on a younger audience. Tales of... games tend to be fairly earnest in their melodrama, banking on the appeal to the younger crowd that can't get enough of Black Clover or Sword Art Online. Part of what made Symphonia so beloved was that it was enjoyed by a younger audience in 2004 that was just discovering anime; kids today grow up perfectly acclimated to anime (just look at all the kids who love Boruto or My Hero Academia), maybe there's a way to connect Tales of... to that younger audience?

At any rate, we can look forward to the 30th Anniversary Stream on the 16th for more news on the Tales of... franchise's future. A brand-new game seems unlikely, but a few new ports or remasters seem to be the ticket. I'd like to hope we'll see a Tales of Destiny remaster, maybe even a collection with it and its sequel. We'll keep you all posted.

Good news for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp fans; Nintendo bumped up its release date by a whole day, so the offline version now releases on December 2 (so it'll now be available globally by December 3).

The final Kara no Shoujo game, The Shell Part III: Paraiso, has formally been announced for release in the United States via Steam. No release date has been announced yet, but the game can currently be wishlisted on Steam. This is a rather gruesome game, so best to avoid this one if you're under 18.

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is about to feature another crossover! This one will be with Melty Blood: Type Lumina. Starting December 4, players can collect avatar components based on the martial artist Miyako Arima, the executioner Noel, and Ciel-senpai's Powered variant. Fans will also be able to get a new Mag skin based on... la criatura

That'll do it for this week, I think. The day this goes live will actually be my 35th birthday. I normally try to spend my birthdays in contemplation, being that I'm not used to having folks over for them, nor am I used to announcing my birthday to my flesh-and-blood peers. This one comes at a weird time for me, especially since this time last year, I was still in skilled nursing following my accident. There's a lot that I'm grateful for. I was able to heal without becoming someone I'm not, I was able to enjoy the love and support of numerous people in my life, and I was able to return as an appreciated member of a community I care about. I enjoy my work here at Anime News Network, and I especially take great joy and pride in writing this column. Moreover, I greatly enjoy positively influencing my readers and seeing folks dig up happy memories from their experiences with games.

Last week's column, with our retrospective on the Nintendo DS, was especially good about that. This column has brought me a lot of joy and a lot of fun experiences I'd never have otherwise, but none so much as the palpable gratitude from my readers when I touch on something they treasured. I hope for a lot as someone who writes this column: further approaches from studios to spread the word on series that I enjoyed as a kid (be it Izuna or Rune Factory or anything else), further opportunities to celebrate the tiny miracles that still manage to happen, despite the industry's status, even the tough weeks where I've got two news streams to cover at once. I look forward to growing older and sharing what I've learned with others through this column or my panels at conventions. But more importantly, I look forward to the continued opportunity to talk about games. I only ask that my readers extend that goodwill to their peers and their favored creatives.

Take advantage of the opportunity to communicate with our favorite artists, designers, musicians, and what-have-you. Life's too short not to tell people you appreciate them or the impact they've had on your life. Bienvenidos ("Welcome"), an old Venezuelan sketch comedy show I grew up watching in Puerto Rico, would end every episode with their host Miguel Ángel Landa urging viewers, "Hagan bien, y no miren a quién." It's where I learned what I write at the end of each column; "do good, and don't look at who you're doing it to." With that said, be good to each other. I'll see you in seven.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing JRPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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