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Breath of Death VII: The Beginning
PC (Steam)
Xbox Live Indie: Vindicated
4/5 stars
“Breath of Death 7: The Beginning” (“BoD”) is the little Indie RPG that started it all for Zeboyd games – two guys with a weird sense of humor and a love of turn-based, retro-styled games. While Zeboyd has moved on and become an honest-to-God success, now providing the technical knowhow behind Penny Arcade’s ‘On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness’ series (a privilege which once belonged to Hothead Games, everyone starts somewhere, and for Zeboyd is was this game on the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace.
Presentation
“BoD” looks like an NES game from the 8-bit era. Characters on the games variety of tile-based maps are represented by simple sprites with two frames of animation, while enemies in the game’s first-person battles are represented by static images. There is nothing in the way of battle animations for spell or technique effects, but the game proves that those are really just superfluous fluff that drives up budgets while contributing next to nothing to the gaming experience. It is also amusingly noteworthy that “BoD” uses town layouts and tilesets that are ripped-off almost identically from the original quartet of NES ‘Dragon Quest’ games.
The soundtrack in “BoD” is pleasant enough, with a higher quality of synthetic tunes than the chiptunes one would expect based on the game’s visuals. There is a bit of a looping issue with individual tracks, however, as they don’t loop smoothly. Instead, they fade out after one or two smooth loops before abruptly restarting.
Story
In the tradition of so many beloved NES games, “BoD” takes place in the aftermath of a world-destroying war that occurred in the year 20XX. This war saw the deployment of an unknown new type of weapon that wiped out all life on Earth.
As a side effect of this new weapon, however, all of the victims rose again as undead. Our heroes include Dem, the skeleton warrior (as in Dem Bones… hurr hurr); Sara, the ghost historian; Lita, the hipster-tech-geek vampire; and Erik, the noble French zombie. Initially, Dem starts out on an arbitrary Heroic Quest set out for him by the Fourth Wall-breaking narrator, before bumping into Sara while visiting the game’s first undead-inhabited town. Being a Silent Hero (lacking a tongue, lungs, or any other means of making sound), Dem finds Sara’s mind-reading abilities essential for communicating with NPCs.
As Dem and Sara travel the modern undead-infested wasteland, they come across a variety of towns, each named after an old-school RPG franchise, but with half the name based on the English title and the other half based on the Japanese title, resulting in locations such as Motherbound and Langsong.
While “BoD” deserves plenty of credit for its original premise and unique spin on tired character tropes, the narrative structure is overall very sloppy and feels rushed. There is no clear overarching goal for any of the characters for the vast majority of the game. Each of the characters is also a bit one-dimensional, content to stand as cardboard cutouts of ideas without fleshing out any background information such as how they died or how they came to dwell in their current circumstances. A lot of the story’s rushed feeling comes from the fact that “BoD” is only 6 hours long, completely linear, and almost entirely devoid of the additional secret areas/scenes that made older RPGs so enjoyable.
Gameplay
“BoD” uses the prototype of the combat system that stands as Zeboyd’s signature. The 100% turn-based battles fly by at a ridiculously fast pace (due to the lack of superfluous animation, as mentioned earlier), with enemies becoming 10% stronger with each passing turn, thus encouraging players to kill everything as quickly as possible.
“BoD” also has all of the other refined gameplay features that found their way into “Cthulhu Saves the World.” The only consumable items in the game are Potions, which provide perfect healing. Each area has a set number of random battles before enemies stop attacking the player’s party (though it’s possible to pick a fight with a random encounter at any time via the main menu). Characters recover all of their HP and a portion of their MP after each battle. It’s possible to save anywhere, but Save Points appear in dungeons that also restore all of the party’s MP.
When characters level-up, the player can choose between an A-path and B-path for their progression. While in “Cthulhu Saves the World,” the A and B paths were largely differentiated by A being more physical and B being more magical, in “BoD” the choices are less obvious. However, the choices can still lead to characters that are wholly different between any two players’ games. “BoD” doesn’t have a hard level cap (at least, not that I’m aware of, aside from 99), but character progression paths all stop providing unique bonuses after level 30, instead providing a generic +10 to most character stats.
As a result of bolting these modern streamlining ideas onto the well-worn chassis of old-school turn-based RPGs, “BoD” is a game that cuts out all the tedious aspects of the genre that new-school players complain about while keeping the core that old-school players love. Battles are fast, yet strategic. Random battles never devolve into slogs. It’s possible (and recommended!) to take care of the complete battle count at the start of a dungeon (preferably while near a Save Point) so as to be able to explore the rest of the dungeon unmolested by random encounters every 3 steps. Bosses are intimidating and defeating them requires strategic uses of all of the party’s abilities.
Overall
Proving itself the exception rather than the rule for Xbox Live Indie Games, “Breath of Death 7: The Beginning” is a fun, if short and a bit rough around the edges, turn-based RPG released in a time when sub-genre was perilously close to extinction. “BoD” proved that there is still a market for games like this, motivating a slew of other Indie developers (with “RPG Maker VX Ace” firmly in-hand) to take up the slack where the big developers have pulled up stakes and left. While it is clearly lacking the polish of its successor, “Cthulhu Saves the World,” “BoD” is still a solid experience.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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