If you’re an old fuddy duddy like us here at Two Fedoras, then you’ve been around long enough to see the rise, fall, and subsequent parody revival of many things. But it is truly rare and beautiful thing when the parody itself is a genuinely good example of that which it seeks to poke a little fun at. Well settle in folks, because that’s precisely what we’ve got on our hands here with Zeboyd Games’ Breath of Death VII: The Beginning.
Story
While Breath of Death VII may be a parody, I’m rather pleased to report that its developers took the time necessary to actually create a story that served to do more than simply tie the funny bits together.
The setting is the post apocalyptic world. As is generally the case with earth apocalypses, humankind is the cause of it all. Now devoid of humans the world is inhabited by the undead, who appear to have more or less just gone on to live rather human like lives in towns and villages.
You take on the role of DEM, which is presumable short for DEM BONES, because you see DEM is a skeleton. Actually, everyone in Breath of Death that isn’t a robotic relic of a distant past is a card-carrying member of the undead. Now I know what you’re thinking “How can this be a JRPG parody without a prepubescent lad taking the lead?” I have no answer for you other than to suggest you deal with it.
Joining you on your adventure are three other, equally dead, folk. They each bring their own conversation bits and fill the predictable roles in the party. To add to the story and dialogue there is also a chat action that will provide a little flavor text throughout the game.
Gameplay
As the game is based heavily on the traditional NES era JRPG, it performs much how you would expect it to. It features turn based combat, level ups, items, trash mobs, boss mobs, and even a treasure chest or two. Since it utilizes many of the stapes of the genre, I’ll spend most of this section talking about the more unique flairs of the game.
In terms of progression, the game has levels like many others. As you progress in Breath of Death and gain levels, you’ll be presented with a choice of advancement. The choice always consists of two options that could be anything from a pair of new abilities differing in type or effect, or it could be a wide range of various stat up options.
One of the issues with leveling in JRPG’s for developers is how to balance around players personal play styles. Some games just ignore the fact that you can farm experience and out level the content, others will just assume that you intend on min maxing your characters, and further others will just make the content scale based on your level as you encounter it. Breath of Death has chosen to offer up three different modes to cater to the various camps of the JRPG fan base. Normal mode, allows you to just romp through out level everything as you want and does nothing to stop you. Hard mode will serve up difficult creatures and expect that you’ve done a fair amount of leveling. Score mode takes a different approach, it awards points based on how many levels under the content you are when you beat it. This not only allows for more flexible play, but serves to expand the games replay value as well.
With these difficulty modes nicely laid out for you now, lets discuss for a moment the game’s difficulty. BoD is a pretty accessible game, with very few parts that will cause you any turmoil. Most of the more difficult parts of the game aren’t even boss battles. Rather, there are certain parts where the trash mobs are numerous and particularly hard hitting. This is largely mitigated by the game refilling health to full after each battle. Even if you misjudge your rate of decay, and lose a member or three of your party, as long as you finish the fight victorious, they will all be revived and awarded experience. So it’s all rather lenient as far as JRPG style games go.
Breath of Death VII is a really well made game. There have only been reports of a few bugs. I myself only encountered a mere one crash during its several hours of game play. Since my initial play through of the game, Zeboyd Games has also released a patch with numerous bug fixes.
Audio/Visual
I’m breaking the rules and am going to start this section off with the audio. I’m doing this because the audio in Breath of Death is so fantastic so good that I literally found myself whistling and humming it hours after playing. Roald Strauss, James Ghosh, yesso, Gordon McNeil, and John Osinski all did an amazing job of creating some of the best game music I’ve heard on the XBLIG platform.
Visually speaking, the game looks as good as it sounds. William Stiernberg’s pixel art characters and animations are just really top notch. The characters themselves look great, especially considering they aren’t even remotely similar for the most part. Hell, one of them doesn’t even have legs — which raises all sorts of questions about DEM and Sara’s love life, now that I think about it. It’s also important to note that the game doesn’t simply parody the JRPG giants of yesteryear, but also pays considerable tribute to them. The developers chose to really stick to their guns when it came to the visuals capturing many of the details that were part of this generation of games; for example pillars that are two squares high and cant be walked behind, and the doors that always face you regardless of which way they open. It’s all exceptionally well done and anyone who enjoyed games such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest on the NES should have a blast reliving the aesthetic.
I do have one seriously major complaint about the Audio/Visuals of the game, and this is something I’ve complained about in other games. Where the hell is the victory dance sequence guys? Seriously.
Summary
Shut your whore mouth and buy Breath of Death VII: The Beginning now for 80 Microsoft Points on the Xbox LIVE! Indie Game Marketplace.
