GuestLog in

This romhack was quite good. I enjoyed what it brought to this game. If you want to play BoF 1 again, definitely give this hack a shot.

A better detailed ReadMe would have been great. It's been a long while since I've played, and I don't remember all the names from the future installments. This made learning which spells did what rather challenging in battle.

I love that ultimate weapons are no longer missable. The Flea Market was an exercise in patience and tedium though. I was save stating so...so much, trying to get those weapons to show up. Finally, I just used a Game Genie code to get Ryu's sword because I was tired of trying. Overall a good change, as I don't know if the odds of the flea market can be fiddled with at all.

Agni/Puka - increasing the AP cost just meant more grinding. Ryu was in the low 50's before I had enough AP to cast it, and Karn was high 40s I think. By the time I'm strong enough to use it, I felt like I was strong enough to not need it. I don't feel like I needed all these levels to beat the game (I really didn't), so all the grinding to get it just felt like a time sink.

I could not figure out the leveling curve. Nina blitzed her 30s and 40s. Some fights one character would gain multiple levels, and not because they just joined. They had been around for a while, then suddenly gain two levels. Also, why was Mogu such a high level with low HP? He would just get smacked around until I could get him into end game gear.

I enjoyed the updated dialogue. It made the story be much more coherent (as can be in this game). A lot of the humor didn't land with me. I kept expecting a laugh track to play. Gobi's lines were fun.

In a couple dialogue boxes, some graphical glitches occurred. Text would appear outside the text box and stay on the screen until I transitioned to another.

The AP costs for Ryu's transformations were not updated in the Party Menu.

I made a video review for this recently which you can check out here: https://youtu.be/2enXOUfcsBs

The long and short of it: There's some pros, middling points, cons. But overall, this is the definitive edition (thus far) for Breath of Fire, despite any minor issues.

Pros

• The characters have more personality.
• The explanations for why you're going to the places that you're going are a bit more coherent.
• Was a (mostly) grind-free experience, despite the difficulty increase.
• Dash Button.
• A (mostly) uncensored version of the game.
• Using the later game's translations for names helps for if you're marathoning the games.
• Infinity's critical hits now guarantee that it can potentially do more damage than a separated party during the final fight.
• Ultimate equipment is no longer missable due to Flea Market phases.

Cons

• The Thief Arm and Coach seem redundant, since item drops tend to not play a big part in gameplay, and there's already a dash button.
• Slightly scuffed translation. Notable examples include the leader of Arad referring to his town as Prima, and Karn being referred to as Danq once or twice, but then being called Karn for the rest of the game.
• Like most romhacks that change/remove damage caps, it's possible to softlock the game by killing the final boss during the phase that's meant to prematurely end when she's low on health (although if you just immediately use Infinity, there's nothing to worry about).
• Raising the AP cost for Puka didn't really encourage me to use Doof more, so much as it encouraged me to stop and grind for a bit.

Overall, this is a very solid hack that has both smooth gameplay, and more fleshed-out plot and characters, and probably the closest that English-speaking players are currently likely to get to the original Japanese experience.

The changes made by Ben & crew to this old SNES title take it from being a rather blah experience to something that is actually interesting and fun. Not one for spoilers so will just say that if you remember BOF1 and liked the concept of it, but not so much the execution, you will enjoy the changed made.

Download and Enjoy!