XNA: Breath of Death VII

How about we kick this off with the game that cemented my faith in the Indie channel in the first place? Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, a retro style RPG that parody’s pop culture and the RPG’s of days long gone. It might not sound terribly exciting, and truthfully I’m one of the few people who still really enjoy JRPG’s, but it really is amazing.

The setting is fantastic. The world ended in a war, and hundreds of years later the undead now rule the land. The opening cinematic is fun and sets up the bizarre, comical mood that is seen throughout the entirety of the game. The graphics are obviously 8-bit retro inspired, so they look a tad aged, and there aren’t too many exciting looking locales, however what’s there looks nice, portrays what we’re supposed to be seeing, and fits in with the rest of the world. There are also hand drawn portraits for characters when they talk, which are mostly hideous, that work surprisingly well due to the absurd nature of the game.

The writing is the next thing you’ll notice. It’s not technically spectacular, and it’s definitely not some high level English that’ll paint an epic story for you. The story is really cliché, but that was sort of the whole point anyway. See Zeboyd Games, the guys who made this, really wanted to make RPG’s. They had a lot of ambitious ideas, but they’d seen how many RPG’s failed to take off due to how overly ambitious they were. So instead they settled for a nice, simple, quick 8-bit RPG to get started. So no, nothing overly complex plot wise. Where was I?

Right, the writing is nice and clever. The hero is a typical silent protagonist, but this is due to him being a skeleton that obviously lacks the proper organs for speech, so we can read his thoughts. The first party member you get is a ghost who can read his mind as well, so he’s not really left out of things. The dialog between characters is usually clever enough to; if not warrant a chuckle, make you crack a smile. They really used the cliché’s to their advantage too. Late in the game as you enter a dungeon the ghost chick professes her love to you, and then claims she can see the same love in your eyes. You then gain the combo move “True Love”. Right after this exchange, your other two companions have a similar exchange. Where the male professes his love and the lady rejects him, which unlocks the “Scorned Love” move. Which I thought was really clever. They reference other games as well; the Earthbound reference stands out above the rest for me personally.

Simplicity is the name of the game here really. Like I said the graphics are standard 8-bit RPG goodness, the battles harken back to the original Dragon Quest with black backgrounds. When in battle you have the option to Fight, Tech, Magic, Item and Unite. Fight’s obvious, Tech are your non-magic based skills, Magic contains all the spells you’ve learned, Item is just potions, and Unite are cool Chrono Trigger inspired super moves where two party members unleash a, usually, brutal attack. The simplicity even reaches to the items in the game. Potions and equipment, that’s all you get, and you only get five weapons and five sets of armor for each character. That is so limited, yet it works. Usually I’d complain about how little the game is offering, but again, it works in the games favor. You don’t have to stress finding those really rare items, because as long as you’re diligent you simply won’t.

The best part of this game by far, however, is the combat and leveling system, I don’t get why it hasn’t been done before. It’s just a thing of beauty. First off each area has a set amount of battles, so you’ll never over grind and just rape everything in your path. They don’t leave you weak, mind you, you’re just not able to become a Superman and destroy everything by staring at it hard enough. Secondly, random encounters are a breeze for the most part and you can rapidly get through them by bashing A and attacking. Thirdly you don’t really need to worry about health except during boss battles, for at the end of every battle you heal completely. Do you not see the brilliance here? This eliminates the main reason grinding is horrible, the constant need to heal back up, by either wasting items, mana or trekking back to the last town. That’s about it for the combat itself. It’s one of my favorite combat systems in an RPG, so simple and easy to level up, but boss battles are still bitches, but the game gives you room to be more tactical about it, and those boss battles are not only challenging, but pretty rewarding once you finally kick their ass.

The other half of the combat system is leveling up, which they handled in a really neat way as well. Every level up gets you the standard stat boost, but along with it you get to choose between two options. This is a choice between the same spell, but one hits more guys for a little less damage, or one for more. Or stat boosts for either physical or magical stats. Sometimes it gives you the option to add an extra hit to your attack and a few other pretty cool things. It’s definitely not as engrossing as some complex systems other games offer, but for a one dollar RPG on the indie channel it is really cool. There isn’t a level cap, so to speak. You stop getting the cool bonuses at level thirty, but you can level up into the thousands if you so chose to, though I have no idea what would possess anyone to do that.

This game is spectacular! It’s fun, it’s simple without being dull, easy enough to play, challenging enough to be worth it, has a hard mode and a score attack mode that unlock after beating it, a secret boss you can fight to get a rare sword, and it’s only a dollar. For a first attempt at making a game Zeboyd Games did a fantastic job. I’m so looking forward to their next game Cthulhu Saves the World, which is set to release in a few days.

I highly suggest this game, if you enjoy RPG’s at all its well worth the dollar. Hmm, this one was pretty up beat. So next up I’ll talk about a pretty bad game.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning is owned by Zeboyd Games