Breath of Fire 2 (SNES) Playthrough #1 (No Commentary)
13Breath of Fire Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPO56tlewLYTlDdd6dBCGDdn4HiCaaogF
This came out the year after the original Breath of Fire did, still making it a nearly 30 year old game. I am also using a fan retranslation patch given BoF2’s notoriously awful original translation.
Please note that this is segmented and edited.
Notes
This game is on the harder side of classic JRPGs. Of course, understand that difficultly in these games is pretty much simple math and luck. It’s also the kind of JRPG where offensive magic kinda sucks outside of multi-targeting because it scales poorly and debuffs are incredibly dangerous to you but basically anything you’d want to hit with a debuff is immune to it.
It is typically the case with classic JRPGs that you do some grinding at the very start of the game before you can begin progressing through it and as long as you fight every encounter you get into after that initial grind, it should be possible to get through the entire game without focused grinding.
You can do this in BoF2 but there are sections where you have to use a specific character and you can really make it hard on yourself by not grinding.
Due to this, before going to Highland for that crazy dungeon, I stop to grind until every one is at least level 25. I did this mostly outside of Guntz for a little while before moving directly south to “Monster Island” or the island with the BoF1 easter egg on it, where I heavily abused save states and Bosch’s snipe ability to one shot the enemies there for ~10k xp a pop. The Tyorkin can be one shot by using the Shaved Ice you can buy in Guntz. It still took several hours.
Something that is very rare for JRPGs is the ability to make choices that actually have some kind of consequence. Even minor ones. In BoF2, you can make choices that have consequences. For example, if you let Lin get hit by the poison darts, she doesn’t join the party immediately and you have to fight the boss there with only two party members, which would be pretty rough. Lin joins afterwards.
Another choice is saving the villagers in the well. You can save 5+ villagers and learn a revive spell that has a 70% chance of success or save less than 5 and learn Rejuvenate. Rejuvenate is more useful than the revive spell, so I go for it. This choice has a minor knock on effect later in the game for Township, where if you don’t save 5+ villagers in the well, the third carpenter won’t be available in Capitan.
The third carpenter builds a pub in Township where you can talk to people for various statistics regarding your gameplay and that’s it.
In the Queen’s Body, you have to clear all of the rooms of random encounters. The green thing at the top of the menu screen tells you whether or not the room you’re in has encounters.
00:00 Intro
22:11 Early Game Grind
42:29 Boss #1 - Parreaux, Pijo & Putti
44:15 Mount Futabi
1:18:15 Colossea
1:37:54 Boss #2 - Bunyan
1:39:04 Colossea Cont.
1:59:35 Boss #3 - Argus
2:01:56 Colossea Cont.
2:20:39 Mount Rocco
2:41:32 Boss #4 - Joker
2:43:04 Mount Rocco Cont.
2:51:53 Wyndia
3:13:14 Capitan
3:23:07 Boss #5 - Goncharo (Good Lord)
3:31:11 Capitan’s Well
3:51:07 Township Back & Forth
4:35:22 Witch’s Tower
5:02:22 Boss #6 - Nympho
5:03:39 Witch’s Tower Cont.
5:23:07 More Township Back & Forth
5:32:42 Wildcat Cafe
5:39:03 Fort Nageur
6:24:17 Boss #7 - Giant Worm
6:26:00 Fort Nageur Cont.
6:42:47 Boss #8 - Giant Cockroach
6:44:38 Boss #9 - Greenbottle
6:45:17 Fort Nageur Cont.
7:02:30 Boss #10 - Quadra
7:05:01 Fort Nageur Cont.
7:22:38 Newhaven
8:03:17 Whale
8:24:19 Boss #11 - Munmar
8:26:31 Whale Cont.
8:38:37 The Circus
8:47:45 Boss #12 - Algernon
8:55:33 Upa Cave
9:10:29 Boss #13 - Ringmaster
9:13:00 The Circus Cont.
9:26:18 Highland
10:05:18 Boss #14 - Magic Gate
10:13:07 Boss #15 - Spuke
10:14:34 Highland Cont.
10:23:26 Melodia
10:50:40 Queen’s Body