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User Rating: 8 | Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter PS2
Dragon Quarter, the next in the Breath of Fire RPG lineage, is very much a different beast from its predecessors. Whether or not this is a good thing, depends largely on your ability to accept massive changes in a long-loved series. Think of Final Fantasy changing from RPG to action/adventure. It's these sorts of massive changes from standard RPG gameplay that will most likely limit the title's appeal. In most games, when you die, you can either continue on the spot, or from the last save point. In Dragon Quarter, you die, you die for good, and have to restart -.from the beginning. Granted, you do retain all your goodies and XP, but Dragon Quarter is often a be-quick-or-be-dead ballbuster, in the grand tradition of Way of the Samurai and Steel Batallion. I suppose Capcom wasn't content to leave the whole "no continue" thing to only those who shelled out 200 clams for their mech simulator: now they're making RPGers feel the pain, as well. If you can look past the boot camp style save feature, Dragon Quarter is quite a bit of fun. The only thing I can compare it to is the lesser-known Squaresoft classic, Vagrant Story. Your combat takes place in real time, but is still turn based. Each attack will cost you a certain amount of points, and you only have a limited amount of said points in any given turn. When going up against a group of enemies, or perhaps when looking to evade them, you can use traps/diversions before combat even starts, in order to sneak by – or get the drop on your foes. Also, like Vagrant Story, Dragon Quarter has oodles of customization options and depth, which should make any hardcore RPG fan worth his/her salt giddy with joy. Dragon Quarter's presentation is also a thing to behold, and the cel-shaded style of the characters set against the many apocalyptic backdrops of the game works better than you may think. It's not on scale with FF7's Midgar, but what is? In addition, the music of battle is top notch, though a little more spoken dialogue would have been appreciated. If you can look past its horribly cheap tactics to extend the already short gameplay duration, chances are you'll have quite a bit of fun with Dragon Quarter. -George 
