One of the very best indie games on XBL. An old-school RPG, and sometime parody, for $1 its a steal! Play it now! A+
Vigilant fans of old-school RPGs in the vein of FF2 (SNES) should leap for joy at the new release of Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, an indie game available on XBIG (XBL) from RainbowDespair the creators of Molly the Were-Zompire and Epiphany in Spaaace! , two games that utilized story-book choose-your-own-adventure reading. Breath of Death departs from the wall of text, however, to bring us one of the very best indie titles available on the Xbox360.
For 80 MS points ($1) you'll get fantastic old-school RPG gameplay, along with a parody of the entire genre. In fact, Breath of Death VII is such a fantastic game, that it easily belongs in the top 10 indie games on xbox live available to date.
The Game:
You begin in a dungeon with Dem, the skeleton warrior protagonist, who's bombarded with people who (through a tutorial) tell him a bunch of stuff he swears he already knows. Soon you'll get into some fights, which are very old-school (i'll get to that in a moment) and soon enough you'll have other party members jumping on board (or "joining by force" as the game says, since you have no choice, haha) including Sara, a young girly mage, Lita who's a vampire technological/anthropological bookish girl, and eventually Erik who's a Zombie prince, of course. 2/3 of the game is spend venturing around and gaining your side-kicks but after a while you'll hear of some magical crystals (of course) which you must find, and which are critical to the ultimate end of the game (which i sadly won't spoil). Though fairly linear, there are also a few optional dungeons to explore too. It's all very off-the-cuff feeling, but since there's such a sense of irony you'll laugh at it instead of cringe, since it's all clearly on purpose.
Old-School RPG Combat
Remember the days when (oh yeah, JRPGs still do this) your party faced another party (which them all lined up in front of you) and then you'd select actions for everyone and let it play out, round by round? Well welcome back!
Each member of your crew has different equipable weapons and armor (which you can buy from merchants in towns) and in combat, depending on how you're leveled and what you have equipped, you can attack from melee, use special moves (which require magic points), cast spells, use healing potions, and use unity moves which combine two characters in one sizeable maneuver. You'll begin each round by selecting the moves for each of your players, and then watch as that round unfolds. Attacks happen by sequence of greatest agility to least. Each subsequent round the enemies get 10% stronger, so haste is somewhat important, especially with strong enemies. At the end of each battle, you'll regain all your health, and a few magic points, making it important strategically to conserve magic points where you can.
Saving the game at giant mirrors spread occasionally throughout the game, and in town inns, will require you to be rather strategic at times, since it will also refill your health and magic meters. Since each map area has a set amount of enemies, and since you have the ability to summon a fight whenever you want, at times it's wise to fight through your battles while next to a save mirror, especially late in the game (specifically right when you gain Erik) where the battles can be quite difficult.
Leveling
Surely one of the strengths of Breath of Death VII. When you level up a character, that character automatically gains some stat increases along with a level up choice. The choices will depend on the character, but involve choosing between different types of spells, different AoE or focused powers, different stat boosts, etc, which goes a long way towards giving you a decent amount of customizeability to your gameplay. Leveling is always one of the joys of any RPG, but in Breath of Death despite the simplicity, I always found myself enthralled with the decision and excited to see what I could choose next.
Art and Sound
Visually, Breath of Death VII is pure SNES-type glory. The game plays top-down (except for combat sequences) and the pixelated world looks simple and clean. The music is actually not awful either, despite being minimal in the way of the ancient consoles. Again, it's hard not to see the aesthetic design as heavily referencing the RPGs of yore, so you'll likely enjoy it for what it represents in your memory.
The Parody:
As noted, it's hard to describe this game effectively without making constant reference to the parodies you'll find along the way. I don't want to spoil all of them for you, but here's a brief sample:
First, you'll find plenty of self-reference within the game, for instance Dem and Lita have a conversation late in the game about how short the game apparently is (4-5 hours I'd say) and what a rip-off it is for 80 ms points, which is pretty funny. You'll also find a grave stone in reference to the obscure dead creators of Molly the Were-Zompire, which RainbowDespair also created of course. Not to mention the "required by law for all RPGs" sewer level, the fight against your Evil Selves late in the game, and the opening sequence with the line "war - it never changes" (or something close to that) which is straight from Fallout 3 of course, and the amusing "love" sequences where Sara decides that she and Dem are forever. And of course the title alone, Breath of Death VII (despite being the first iteration) references perhaps FF7 or maybe FF2 (released as FF7? in japan).
Also, Taxonomic, a great RPG afficionado, mentioned a couple other things to me including how the opening has Dem and Sara standing on a cliff just like the opening to PS4 (which he uses as his banner), and of course how the names of all the towns combine names from Japanese and American RPGs like Earthbound, Paladin's Quest, and Estopolis.
Botton line: Breath of Death VII: The Beginning is a fantastic and fun RPG parody that provides a number of hours of old-school gameplay as well as some good laughs. If you ever enjoyed the RPG games of yore, you just can't pass this one up for $1. Congratulations to RainbowDespair for producing a clear winner!
Rating 9.5/10