Backlog Review: Breath of Death VII

To clear out my Steam backlog, I’m playing games I haven’t played on Steam before.

Breath of Death VII

Time Played: 36 minutes

Done?: NOPE! I’ll come back to this one.

Source: Steam Purchase - 10/19/2011 -
Cthulhu Saves the World & Breath of Death VII Double Pack

Zeboyd Games is a company I became aware of after hearing about Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3. I’m not really sure the order since the Penny Arcade game released a year after I bought these games, but somehow that led me to looking into their other games. Maybe I bought it not knowing what it was. As mentioned, I have a problem. Seeing how Zeboyd streamlined classic Japanese RPG gameplay and mixed it with an irreverent sense of humor intrigued me. I’ve been following their games ever since including kickstarting Cosmic Star Heroine.

Breath of Death VII (there is no 1 through 6) takes place in a world where everyone in the world perished and everyone is in various states of undead. We follow DEM, our protagonist, as he goes on a quest to vanquish evil, collecting companions, skills and loot along the way.

If you’ve played any JRPGs, you know how this goes. Wander the overworld and dungeon locations hitting random battles along the way. Except this one is a little different. One of the NPCs let you know that when you have fought a lot in one area, enemies start avoiding you. But you can initialize a fight at any time in the menu. This streamlines the process of grinding for experience while letting you move unfettered through areas you’ve already been. This alone is a great improvement.

After each battle you gain a bit of MP and allies revive and get full health. This kind of improvement lets me ignore my hording tendency to save that “super potion of whatever it does” for when I really need it. Really this ends up making MP your only finite resource and even that regenerates slowly. The random battles are simple and you can win by mashing the attack option. There’s a level of deepness to the mechanics as you fight larger groups and tougher enemies.

This game is something I’m planning on coming back to. Looking it up it seems like it takes about 5 hours on average to beat. I think I can spare that time.