Franchise / Breath of Fire

Splendid fellows, all of him.

Breath of Fire was a long-running JRPG series by Capcom, who are better-known for their action and fighting game fare.

Like Final Fantasy, the stories are only tenuously connected but share various species, characters, and gameplay elements, such as:

• A blue-haired hero, at first unnamed but later established to be "Ryu" after the Japanese word for "dragon." He always has the ability to morph into a dragon, though the mechanics differ from game-to-game.
• An angelic blonde named Nina. She's always a skilled mage rather than a fighter.
• Worlds where humans live side to side with anthropomorphic moles/dogs/any other animal, as well as the occasional talking plant. (Bizarrely, they can all interbreed.) The recurring black mage/fanservice character is Deis, a descended goddess with the lower body of a snake.
• Enough psychological drama to make your head spin.
• Laughably-bad translations, at least for the first two games.
• Really weird dungeon design. The first two games had mazes that included the insides of a giant robot reminiscent of the later EarthBound's Dungeon Man, the mind of a sentient (though senile) tree and the stomach of an overweight queen which must be flattened by killing all the demons that have infested it. Fun times.
• Freaky-looking monster designs. Generally speaking, you'll start out against the usual monster fare like slimes, but by the end, you'll be taking on giant pulsating brains with fangs or giant demons with multiple, draconic-headed tentacle-like appendages coming out of every part of their body. The Hopeless Boss Fight at the start of II is another famous example.
• A connected storyline between the first three games, albeit separated by hundreds or even thousands of years at a time. There's some argument over whether the fourth game comes first or last in the chronology. The game's official artbook states that the fifth is not connected with the others.

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The games are as follows:

• Breath of Fire (1993): The original focused on Ryu's quest to save his sister and the world from Emperor Zog, who plots to release Myria, a goddess of temptation and strife. It was localized by Square rather than Capcom, the game's makers, resulting in a translation which wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. However, Square's translators had to truncate a lot of item descriptions to fit the in-game menu and renamed a lot of characters seemingly at random, making some of the connections between I-III vague.
  • Released on: Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Advance, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch
• Breath of Fire II (1994): II introduces Ryu as a young boy who, after nodding off to sleep one morning, finds his family has vanished and no one recognizes him. Flash to adulthood, where Ryu must clear his buddy's name after he is caught breaking inside a vault. Seems like small potatoes, but it gradually unravels a conspiracy involving Myria's offspring, who has some massive evil plans, indeed. The English translation was atrocious even by the standards of the day, but a high-quality fan translation exists.
  • Released on: Super Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, Wii U, New Nintendo 3DS, Switch
• Breath of Fire III (1997): The series' first foray into 3D. Again, we follow Ryu as he ages from a child to an adult (eventually learning he is the savior of his people, the Brood), and the main antagonist is a religious figure.
  • Released on: PlayStation, PlayStation Portable
• Breath of Fire IV (2000): IV has two protagonists: It moves back and forth between Ryu's journey to discover his lost memories and the resurrected God-Emperor Fou-Lu's quest to restore his empire. It is significantly darker than its predecessors, focusing more on the political tension between nations, the relationship between gods and humans, and the process by which a would-be hero can become a villain.
  • Released on: PlayStation, Microsoft Windows
• Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (2002): DQ (the number was dropped in the Western release) is the last console game and a radical departure in terms of gameplay and setting. Ryu seeks to escape a Diesel Punk-inspired underground city with Nina in tow, despite the surface world being declared off-limits. Standing in their way is Bosch, Ryu's ex-partner and bona fide Implacable Man. Interestingly, the story is not meant to be beaten in one playthrough, and more scenes are added each time you die and start over.
  • Released on: PlayStation 2
• Breath Of Fire 6 (2016) It was originally announced in August 2013 and planned for release in 2014. This new game wouldn't be available for any home or handheld consoles, but rather for smartphones, tablets, and Windows PCs. It was later pushed back to the end of 2015, and was further limited to mobile devices and touchscreen Windows platforms. Devastatingly for longtime fans, it turned out be a Japan-only mobile game. It was again pushed back to February 2016 and then finally released, but soon closed down in September 2017.
  • Released on: Microsoft Windows, Android, iOS

A manga adaptation of the fourth game was recently produced by Comic Blade Avarus. The final chapter was published in January 2010, with the final volume compilation printed in May of that year 2010. It has been licensed in French and Chinese.

The series is often joked about by fans as being Capcom's most-hated IP, as it's one of the few ones (and certainly the most prominent) not to appear in the Capcom vs. line (not counting the occasional cameos). ^note Worth noting that according to Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 producer Ryota Niitsuma, there were plans to have Fou Lu and Katt join the roster that ultimately went nowhere for different reasons (he thought that international audiences wouldn't recognize Fou Lu and that staff users like Katt weren't a priority).

Not to be confused with Adron e'Kieron's Breath of Fire Battallion (light cavalry, all of whom are powerful sorcerers) in Five Hundred Years After.

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This series provides examples of:

• Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: The first two games in particular suffered quite heavily from this.
• All in a Row: The standard arrangement of your party members in the series.
• All There in the Manual: In the case of IV and (to a slightly lesser extent) DQ, a fair amount of the world's background info only exists in the Official Works artbooks.
  • The first game has also a timeline detailing most of its backstory, from the origin of the universe to the current in-game war.
• Alternate Universe: Two, possibly three, universes exist as follows:
  • I-III are canonically in the same universe, separated by hundreds if not thousands of years per game.
  • Dragon Quarter is (per Capcom) in an Alternate Universe unrelated to other games.
  • The position of IV is best described as controversial.^note Arguments for Alternate Universe, Alternate Continuity, and two separate arguments for being in the "I-III Verse" (as both Sequel and Prequel) have all been made by the fandom.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The box cover art in I and II. Mind you, the Ryu in I could give Conan a run for his money.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: II and III are the prime offenders; the rest of the series averts this trope.
• Art Shift: All art in the first five games of the series is done by Tatsuya Yoshikawa (who also did character designs for Devil May Cry 4 and 5, plus many games in the Mega Man series), but starting with III the art makes a break from large-eyed, colorful characters draped with jewel-encrusted clothes, to characters with smaller, more natural faces, muted colors, and a greater emphasis on a Used Future look. Breath of Fire 6 takes the art entirely in the other direction, with brightly-colored cartoony characters and even goofier-looking monsters; notably, Tatsuya Yoshikawa is not credited for the sixth game's artwork, nor, apparently, is anyone else.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Tyr/Myria in I and III; thought Killed Off for Real in I, came Back from the Dead in III.
  • Arguably Fou-lu in IV, but more of an explicit subversion of King in the Mountain.
• Beast Man: Interesting in that in I-IV, the people lose their animal characteristics and become more human-like.
  • All the same, though, in the first four games it is actually easier to list what kinds of Beast Men do not appear in the games. If anything, it's more of a transition from flat-out Funny Animal to kemonomimi.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • Rei and Momo in III.
  • The manga adaptation of I turns Ryu and Nina into something like this.
• Big Bad:
  • I: Zog appears to be this at first, but it turns out that Tyr/Myria was the one pulling the strings.
  • II: Deathevan, the spawn of the previous Big Bad, and deity of the religious movement.
  • III: Myria reprises her role, but is painted in a far more sympathetic light this time around.
  • IV: God-Emperor Fou-lu, the Evil Counterpart of protagonist Ryu. Turns out he really isn't that bad at all. Lord Yuna, however, more than qualifies for the role, the bastard.
  • Dragon Quarter: Bosch and Chetyre appear to be equal contenders for the title, but most would probably go with the latter.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: All over. Giant cockroaches, giant ants, giant humanoid bees, giant humanoid flies, giant fire-breathing leeches, etc.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In III, the names of the ghosts in McNeil Manor in Japanese are references to business concepts.
  • Also in III, most characters related to the port city of Raphala are references to fishing terms, fishing lures or actual fish.
  • In IV, names rendered in kanji were renamed to their Korean hanja readings for international versions. The puns still stay intact.
  • Also shows up in DQ in a manner combining names and Russian counting.^note Origin = Math term for 1, Odjn a transliteration for Russian adin "one", Dover a mangling of Russian dva "two", Chetryre being a straight transliteration of Russian chetyre "4", and so on.
  • Most of the Creative Closing Credits in II are so chock-full of Western culture references that it probably went over most Japanese folks' heads. And due to name changes for the English version, most Westerner's heads, too.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation
  • Somewhat in I, which was largely a result of farming out the English translation to Square (who engaged in mass Woolseyism).
  • Much much worse in II, which was the result of Capcom doing it in-house during a period where their non-Japanese localization in general had much to be desired...
    • The translation of the second game, aside from some alcohol references and a certain Puff-Puff massage scene, was actually accurate since it was a direct translation of the Japanese script word by word. The problem was that Japanese is a very vague language often omitting parts of sentences and relying heavily on context, besides having a very different grammatical structure for sentences. Most translations from Japanese fill in those blanks from context. However, Breath of Fire II, and infamously Final Fantasy 7, did not—and the resulting "English" translation is almost unintelligible.
  • Bizarrely, unlike many other ports of RPGs to the system, the GBA ports of these two games did not re-translate anything at all.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The series' recurrent example is the GooKing, ever since II. Other well-known examples are the Archmage and Berserker from III and the Rider from IV. Technically, they're not Bosses, but they should be; they're some of the most powerful enemies in the series!
• Bowdlerized: A Race Lift and a few minor edits in I, mostly subverted in II, a gender-swap with DQ, and more than made up with in IV. Check their respective pages for more detail.
• Breath Weapon: Well, obviously. Ryu's a dragon, after all.
• Broken Bridge: I and III have a few literal examples (I in particular is littered with them). There are also other examples in the other games, like the Imperial Causeway in IV.
• Cain and Abel: Myria and Deis. Becomes explicit in III.
• The Cameo: Every game after the first has cameo appearances from previous game's party members: II has Karn and Bo; III has Mogu, Gary (Gill in Japanese, short for Gilliam/Bo), Worker (Japanese name Builder/Ox), Bow and Jean; and IV has Rei, Teepo and Momo (the latter doubles as a Master). DQ has its cameo in a bit more obscure form—the puppet-girl instructors from IV show up as the game's merchants.
  • And yes, all of these count as Mythology Gags if not blatant Continuity Nods.
  • On top of that, the first game has a cameo from Chun-Li (in the Thieves' Town and, if you know the trick, in the ending), and the third game cameos from Chun-Li and Sakura (in the Arena, watching the fight).
• Can't Drop the Hero
  • Averted in I; once you have at least five party members, it is possible to switch Ryu out of the main fighting party.
  • Similarly averted in IV, with the threshold dropped to four.
• Chain of Deals: Present in the first four games, but especially and painfully so in I.
• Combos: There's a "Super Combo" Skill in III; in IV onwards, its part of the gameplay.
• Character Level
• Comic-Book Adaptation: Quite a number of them, actually—two separate manga adaptations and an official sidestory for I and a manga adaptation for IV that are actually directed by Capcom, and a mess of others:
  • The original Breath of Fire had no less than two manga adaptations, Breath of Fire: The Dragon Warrior and Breath of Fire: Princess Of The Wings. The first is a Shōnen manga which is a fairly straight (if heavily compressed) adaptation, while the second is a Shoujo sequel set after the end of the game.
  • In addition, an officially directed Spin-Off sidestory of I exists (Breath of Fire Part 2: Little Adventurer) involving Ryu and Nina's child and Gilliam's child.
  • The IV manga Utsurowazarumono: Breath Of Fire IV; "Utsurowazarumono" is a term meaning roughly "The Unchanging Ones" and is usually translated in English-language adaptations as "Endless") is a straight Comic-Book Adaptation with additional material from the artbook. It's also an example of the Fleeting Demographic Rule, and the final volume was released in time for the 10th anniversary of IV's release in Japan.
  • Note here that these are only listings of Capcom-directed adaptations (aka stuff Capcom had an active hand in providing material for). There are also multiple Capcom-licensed but not Capcom-directed manga including:
    • An anthology-comic for IV (which has both serious and parody stories).
    • Multiple Yonkoma collections for III (one) and IV (two). Yes, Capcom loves its Breath of Fire-related Yonkoma treatments (considering they also okayed the "Behind The Cover Comic" yonkoma in the Comic Blade Avarus manga).
    • At least one Capcom-directed comedy manga (Capcomic) also has occasionally had BoF-related comics.
  • And yes, for the record, all of these are Japan-only. Fortunately, there are scanlations for some of this material available, mostly of the earlier mangas, the Comic Blade Avarus manga adaptation of IV, and some material from the IV anthology comic.
• Continuing is Painful: of two different flavors:
  • In III and IV, characters who remain KO'ed at the end of the battle are revived at 1 HP, but suffer a 10% cut to their maximum HP that can only be restored by staying at a bona-fide Trauma Inn. Unfortunately, the effect accumulates if it happens repeatedly, up to a 50% cut in max HP.
  • Choosing the "SOL:Restore" option in Dragon Quarter lets you try again from the most recent Save Point ... only without whatever items you were carrying when you actually saved your game there.
• Convenient Questing
• Counter-Attack: In I, it was mostly an ability used by a few characters like Ryu and Karn's Puka form. From 'II'' onwards, Counter attacking becomes universal for both allies and enemies.
• Critical Hit: Under various names ("Crit", "Toasted") before setting on "Critical".
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: II has this in spades and IV has an arguable case with Eastern religions (particularly Taoism, Buddhism and pre-Taoist shamanic practices) rather than Christianity. It can even be argued that the Yorae Dragon itself is portrayed as a Crystal Dragon Matreiya (Buddha of the future) and all the Endless are portrayed as literal Crystal Dragon Taoist Immortals. For that matter, Fou-lu is a literal Crystal Dragon Founding Divine Emperor.
• Cute Monster Girl/Cute Monster Guy: By the time you reach the endgame, your party will probably have a few of both.
• Death of the Old Gods: 'II' has the old animist dragon gods being forgotten in favor of a new I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Catholicism! monotheistic religion which is really a Path of Inspiration serving an Evil God.
• Defend Command
• Demoted to Extra: Bleu/Deis was demoted game by game: An important party member in I, an Optional Party Member in II, a Master in III, a NPC in IV,^note though her soul resides in Ershin and completely absent in Dragon Quarter. Of course, she was always ridiculously powerful whenever she was available... There were plans to originally put Deis in Dragon Quarter per Capcom. As noted above, this even made it to the early concept art stage before the character concept was essentially replaced by Lin.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Most notable in I-III. (In IV, technically both Ryu and Fou-lu are Physical Gods (technically, halves of the same god) and Ryu's initial weaker state is because he's the "younger half" of the Literal Split Personality; in Dragon Quarter, both Ryu and The Rival Bosch end up being possessed by Dragons Of Mass Destruction.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Surprisingly in IV, the Burn spell. Have Ryu learn it, and you can have easy-spamming access to the game's famed Combo magic. It will save your noggin a couple of times.
  • In I, there are a couple: An item obtained after the second boss allows any character equipped with it to deal 30 damage to the entire enemy party; most characters can't do anywhere near that much damage to one enemy, let alone the entire enemy party. Likewise, the flame rapier, but instead of giving a good attack boost, it can be used as an item in battle, to do 90 Damage which is far more than Nina would ever do by stabbing someone with it. Only two other things around that stage of the game even come close—one's a spell that costs a lot of MP for that point, the other is the Hero's Dragon form.
  • In II, the level 2 Dragon spells can be obtained as soon as you first recruit Jean (and right before his story plot, where he becomes unavailable).
  • An expert use of Sol:Restart in Dragon Quarter would allow your party to have a hefty amount of Experience Points at their disposal.
• The Dragon: The first four games have a notable one: Jade in I (atleast before he takes over), Ray in II, Teepo in III and Yohm in IV (explicitly noted as such in the manga adaptation).
• Dub Name Change: Every game in the series has had this happen to a greater or lesser extent with I and IV having the most extensive. (Of note, this seems to be a common curse among all games produced by Capcom and released internationally.)
  • In I, a partial list includes renaming of Deis to Bleu, Gilliam to Bo, Builder to Ox, Danc to Karn, Manillo to Gobi, and that's just for starters. (Most name changes are largely due to both space restrictions and outsourcing of the translation to Square and can be considered legitimate examples of Woolseyism.)
  • In II, Boche to Bow,^note The Japanese name would be shouted-out in DQ with Bosch and the English name is a shoutout to Bo in the first Rinpoo to Katt,^note The Japanese name was also in part shouted-out in DQ with Rin/Lin Tapeta to Jean, Aspara to Spar, plus several other name changes. Unfortunately, Square can't be blamed for this one...
  • In III Pecoros to Peco, Garland to Garr, Babaderu^note Shout-out to an enemy name in II to Bunyan, plus several other characters, enemies, items and dragon forms. The majority of changes were to preserve puns or jokes or to localise them.
  • In IV, a partial list includes Master to Ershin,^note In an attempt at a multilingual spoiler; "Ershin" is Chinese for "two souls" Babaderu to Bunyan, all NPC dragons to the Korean hanja readings for the kanji noting what kind of dragons they were, multiple town names from Japanese kanji readings to Korean hanja readings, other things being changed to Korean readings or even random Korean words, multiple dragon forms having names changed...^note The Japanese versions made use in part of names from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" The list is so extensive, it's better if you just take a look at it here. The extensive Dub Name Change treatment of IV has also led to issues regarding translation of its Comic-Book Adaptation. The English Fan Translation has generally gone with the Dub Name Changes; the licensed French version of the manga may also be going with the Dub Name Change names.
  • In Dragon Quarter, there aren't a whole lot (especially compared to the rest of the series!)—but notable ones include renaming Members to Regents and DB's to Genics (the renamings, for once, seem to be restricted to classes rather than characters).
• Duel Boss: A lot! Usually either for an Establishing Character Moment or because Ryu needs his 11th-Hour Superpower.
• Elite Tweak: Started with Shamans in II, then progressed to the Master/Skill System from III onward.
• Facial Markings: Every game in the series has this going on to an extent, as would be expected with the proliferation of Beast Men in this series.
  • Ryu in the original Breath of Fire has a red tattoo-like image of a dragon on his forehead.
  • All of the Woren/Furen in the series, with the exception of Lin (who is a Cat Girl rather than a tiger) in Dragon Quarter have tiger-like stripes on their face.
  • All of the Half-Human Hybrid "warrior" or "trance" forms of Ryu and his respective draconic antagonists have facial markings.
  • Dragon Quarter in particular is chock full of examples not directly related to Beast Man proper:
    • Nina has a tattoo on her forehead. Capcom has said that this is a brand indicating she has such a low D-ratio that she's legally considered a lab-rat.
    • Bosch develops a particularly frightning version when he forces the lab researchers to graft the remains of Chetyre on him; literally half his face ends up turning black with greenish circuitry-like marks.
    • Elyon also has extensive, "Dragon Hybrid"-esque Facial Markings and horns. These are stigmata from an ultimately failed link with Odjn—in fact, in one conversation he has with Odjn afterwards, half his face is covered in black with red circuit-like marks, and Elyon notes that even the remnant of that link is killing him.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Ultimately subverted as a game mechanic for Dragon Quarter. You can only win by driving your D-Counter up to 100% in the final battle.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: II and IV in particular has a ton of these.
  • The Fou Empire in IV is explicitly a fantastic version of imperial-era China (most likely the Qin Dynasty) or imperial-era Korea.
  • Ludia in IV is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to a northern European country (possibly Victorian England).
  • The traditional Woren culture (and Worent in particular) is a fantastic mish-mash of several Native American cultures, particularly of Southwestern peoples like the Hopi and Dine/Navajo.
  • Wyndia in IV may be meant as a Netherlands Expy.
  • The PabPab are a fantastic equivalent of isolated indigenous peoples, particularly the Aka "Pygmy" people.
  • SimaFort in II takes itself as a counterpart to France, specifically noted by the clan's natural skills (cooking and art) and their Gratuitous French.
  • HighFort in II seems a pseudo-counterpart to Germany, and helps drive the point home with the german-sounding names their habitants have.
• Fantasy World Map: All games but III and DQ have an in-game world map which fills up as the party travels through it.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic: The main character has a spell to do this.
• Fishing Minigame: A series staple starting with II, although fishing also existed as an automated process in I.
  • III in particular is heavily enamoured of this trope, even using it for Theme Naming and extras. The fishing minigame in III's re-release for PSP actually unlocks concept art that has never been published (even in artbooks). Characters were named for fishing lures and one town was even named after a lure manufacturer.
  • IV actually had its fishing minigame released as a Gaiden Game for Japanese cell phones.
  • DQ is exceptional in being the sole game in the series that doesn't have a fishing game of any sort. This was not for want of planning, though.^note Capcom even states a fishing minigame was in the works up until only three weeks before Dragon Quarter was released in Japan and was cancelled due to deadlines
  • This trope eventually was treated to an Affectionate Parody in an official Capcom "comedy manga" featuring all four Ryus (Dragon Quarter was not yet released) engaging in an ice-fishing contest.
• Fission Mailed:
  • II has one in its prologue.
  • III has the Hopeless Boss Fights against Balio and Sunder and Garr respectively.
  • IV has Fou-lu's Hopeless Boss Fights against Yohm, and technically the Bad End of the game qualifies as an unusual variation. You get to control the Infini Dragon who proceeds to destroy your entire party. It's strongly implied that Infini proceeds to go on an Omnicidal Roaring Rampage of Revenge against humanity.
  • Dragon Quarter actually elevates this to an overt game mechanic. You've tried to keep the D-Counter from going to 100% (lest Ryu's Deadly Upgrade devour him from within)...and in the final battle with Chetyre you MUST get your D-Counter over 100% to win, something involving Odjn erupting in chestburster-esque fashion from Ryu's ruined body.
• Five-Token Band: In III, you have Ryu (a dragon with a human appearance), Momo (a Grassrunner with rabbit features^note this was confirmed in her concept art from Breath of Fire III: Memorial Book), Nina (a Wyndian), Garr (a gargoyle-like Guardian), and Rei (a Woren).
• Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Quite a few - notably, everyone in II and I, Rei and to a lesser extent Momo and Nina in III, everyone in IV.
  • Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Garr in III.
• Fusion Dance: Danc/Karn and, ultimately, Agni, in I, the Shamans in II, Balio and Sunder in III.
• Gamebreaker: Needless to say. Check individual work entries for details.
  • The Kaiser transformations are gamebreakers in nearly every entry, particularly in III and IV. Once you get these dragons under your control, WHOAH.
• Game Hunting Mechanic: The ability to hunt is a recurring element, usually by entering randomly spawning patches of grass on the world map, which takes the player to an area with animals they can hunt by attacking with the party leader's weapon (most games have at least one character with a ranged weapon to make this much easier). Slain animals drop meat and similar items which can be used as Health Food or just sold.
• Global Airship/Get on the Boat: I and II have been rather original in these regards: I has Nina turning into a Great Bird and Gobi turning into a giant fish, whereas II makes use of a whale, the Great Bird and a flying city. Dropped off since III.
• God Is Evil: Subverted. Several of the evil "gods" throughout the series are either a) actually demons in disguise (as in Breath of Fire II or b) Well Intentioned Extremists who crossed the Despair Event Horizon ( Breath of Fire IV).
• God Is Good: Ladon, the Dragon God, is shown throughout the series to be very real and very much an awesome guy; usually being a wacky combination of Bunny-Ears Lawyer, Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Eccentric Mentor, and Grumpy Old Man.
• The Goomba: The "Goo"-type enemies have been the series' starting Random Encounters since the beginning; though their appearance and name debuted in II, with the first game having eyeless versions named "Slimes".
• Gotta Catch Them All: in IV, less catching, more like recruiting the Endless. Obtaining them all, in addition to the dragon genes, allows Ryu to actually control the Kaiser dragon properly.
  • The genes in III may also count, although they aren't required storyline-wise.
• Guide Dang It!: Present in most of the games: The requirements to obtain the dragons in I, the requirements for the best ending and certain shamans in II, gene combinations in III, etc.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You're generally able to name the hero whatever you see fit (the default name is always Ryu).
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Every Ryu is a sword-user. The one exception is in I where Ryu also has the option to wield boomerangs, complete with a different attack animation.
  • Many players tend to forget about swords once the first Boomerang is available, and continue using it until the next, and use that one until the last one. Sure, hitting 1 enemy for 150 will do more than the boomerang's 100-120, but if you have 5 enemies, 5x100 is a lot more than 150 on one enemy.
• Heroic Mime: Nina in Dragon Quarter, and Ryu in all of the other games, though avoided in other adaptations like manga and audio cds. Subverted in I, where Ryu will occasionally put in a line or two of dialog, and in IV when Ryu speaks after fusing with Fou-lu.
  • Ryu "speaks" several times in III, but only in his own mind, most often while "talking" to Peco, who is an actual silent character except when Yggdrasil's speaking through him.
  • There are also a couple points in the first two games where Ryu speaks, both of which happen in segments where you don't control in him. The first game is a point where you control Nina and hear Ryu mutter stuff in his sleep, and in the second is in a flashback where you control his mother, and Ryu speaks normally like everyone else.
• Hit Points
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Another well known staple from the series starting in II. Barubary's first fight and most famously Tiga in II; Balio/Sunder's first fight and Garr in III; Ight and Fou-Lu's first time as a Boss Fight in IV.
• Hyperactive Metabolism
• Inescapable Ambush: A few rooms in Dragon Quarter will lock, fill the room with Demonic Spiders, and change the music to a sinister theme. This Is Gonna Suck.
• Inevitable Tournament: II's Colloseum contest and III's Contest of Champions in Genmel.
• In-Universe Game Clock: Day/Night cycles are implemented in I and II, and are used in a few story-related events like entering Nanai in I. It was dropped since the third game.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Every game has one...and it's usually not the weapon the game hints at.
  • In I, there are two: The first, and the most-known, is the Tri-Rang, and has to be the easiest Infinity +1 Sword to obtain in any RPG: Wait until you can fly, and just land in a certain spot^note Namely, the base of the left tower on a northern island and hit the "A" Button. It really is that simple. The other, a hammer, is found in the last dungeon, by checking some random pillar. It isn't the stats that's the greatest thing about this weapon; it is the fact that it casts Comet when used as an item in battle. (You can also get Ryu's strongest sword weapon, the Emperor Sword, by checking a pillar in the room before the final boss. Not nearly as powerful as the Tri-Rang, but still stupidly easy to get.)
  • In II, The game's Infinity +1 Sword is fished out of a certain fishing spot. The catch is that you most likely need the best fishing pole, and you need flight to reach it. Specifically, you need the Great Bird — while the flying city can, well, fly, it's too large to land near that fishing spot. Past a certain point, the Great Bird becomes unavailable for the rest of the game, meaning you can't get the sword.
  • In III, there are two: One is a Randomly Drops from a very hard enemy that almost always runs away unless you know what to do; the other is dropped by an extremely powerful monster. The good news, is that the monster always drops said weapon. The bad news, the monster can easily kill you in a couple hits.
  • In IV, the Infinity +1 Sword is gained through a complex fishing side-quest.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: All over the friggin' place.
• Informed Equipment: Party members might equip different kinds of weapons and armor, but they always look just the same as ever. Just about the only exception is the alternate sprite/animation for Ryu's boomerang in I.
• Item Farming: Starting with II, most of the top-tier equipment could only be found as ludicrously-low-rate drops, usually from the strongest endgame enemies. III even included a spell you could learn that would increase the drop rate for enemy items. In I however, most of the best gear was found in a flea market; you just had to be patient for someone willing to sell their uber-powerful weapon or armor to walk by (and then decide whether it was worth trying to haggle them down on the price or risk them walking away).
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Frequently and often a major plot point in I-IV.
  • Portrayed especially tragically in III regarding Teepo.
  • Ends up as frank Battle in the Center of the Mind in IV when the party frees Deis from her wards inside Ershin. In the manga version of IV (and in a story in the IV anthology comic) the changeover from Bad Ending to Good Ending also occurs via Journey to the Center of the Mind. Infini's mind.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Standing operating procedure is to check every dresser and cabinet of every house you can go into for various free items.
• Knight Templar: Vexacion in Dragon Quarter qualifies in that he believes he is upholding the order of the Crapsack World in destroying Chosen of the D-constructs. He forces his son Bosch to engage in gladiator-style fights against dangerous Genics around the time Bosch would be learning the alphabet.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Ryu in II, Everyone (with unique quotes) in III. Possible in DQ via equipping the Valor skill.
• Last of His Kind: Not even attempted in I, where there are plenty of living dragons left. Played with in II and III, where Ryu appears to be the last living dragon, only to find the rest of his race hidden within a secret village. The dragons in IV and Dragon Quarter are more individual Physical Gods than a "race" per se, so their low number isn't as significant.
• Laughing Mad: Fou-lu in IV after realising that Mami had been used as Hex Cannon ammo and going stark-raving mad as a result; it is even more disturbing in the manga adaptation.
  • A second instance in the Japanese version of IV, again involving Fou-lu in the bowdlerised scene where he decapitates Soniel.
  • In Dragon Quarter, Bosch descends into this as time goes by particularly after he has Chetyre's remains surgically grafted onto him. Bosch was also considerably broken beforehand, though.
  • Rei, of all people, after learning that Ryu was alive and well after all those years they've been apart.
• Legacy Character: There are quite a few, and not just Ryu and Nina.
  • There is often one other remaining dragon whose powers are still active, but Ryu is forced to kill them (Sara in I, Ray in II, Teepo in III).
  • Nina's sister in II and IV undergo transformations that cost them their lives; into a bird in II and into an Eldritch Abomination in IV.
• Legendary in the Sequel: Many of the games will reference previous titles. III has a picture of the heroes from I, complete with halos◊ and characters you don't remember.
• Living MacGuffin: Nina in Dragon Quarter. Ryu's quest to open the path to the sky is because Nina took a lung-filter-full of poison gas and as a result is choking to death in Sheldar's air; the only air left pure enough for her to breathe is on the surface. And this started after Trinity essentially tried to rescue/kidnap/Gundamjack Nina, leading eventually to Ryu's defection from the Rangers in a crisis of conscience. And poor Nina was essentially a Flawed Prototype of what amounted to a human air-scrubber filter—the "production models" being headless clones of her in People Jars.
  • Both Elina and Ryu would count in IV. The game starts out with Nina and Cray trying to find the Wyndian crown princess Elina (who went missing when trying to broker a peace treaty with The Empire). The party stumbles upon Ryu, who eventually becomes a Living MacGuffin once it's revealed he is a Physical God and the Literal Split Personality of Fou-lu.
    • In the manga adaptation of IV Fou-lu of all people ends up being a Living MacGuffin for Ryu. Ryu's characterisation is much'stronger in the manga than in the game.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Exemplified in II. Ryu, the dragon on the mountain behind Gate is your mother, and the old man you saved from (or fried on) the eye machine is your father.
  • And also in the revelation that Deathevans is Myria's spawn.
  • In IV, Ryu gets the "Fou-lu is your other half" speech from Deis earlier in the game, and later on gets an "I am your father Literal Split Personality so let's have a Split-Personality Merge" speech from Fou-lu near the end.
• Luck Stat: Only used in I and II.
• Mad Scientist: Cort from I, Dr. Palet from III and Lord Yuna from IV.
  • Elyon is implied to have a touch of this in Dragon Quarter as well. Nina's "wings" (and the room full of headless Nina-clone People Jars) are a failsafe in case the path to the sky isn't opened; Elyon is dying and the situation re Sheldar's air is becoming increasingly desperate.
• Market-Based Title: In Mandarin and Cantonese territories, Breath of Fire is known as 龙战士 (Dragon Warrior). And yes, they went with this with the Comic-Book Adaptation treatments as well, both in officially licensed and Fan Translation versions, likely because a transliteration of "Breath of Fire" using hanzi would have been nigh unintelligible.
• Meaningful Name: Plenty, and usually in both original and english. Just for starters, we have: Ryu = "dragon" in Japanese, Bo uses Bows, Ox is Exactly What It Says on the Tin while Builder is his his dayjob, Mogu is Mogura = "Mole" in japanese, Sten comes from the japanese rendering of Extend (Ekusutendo), Rand Marks and Aspara Gus are self-explanatory, etc...
  • Fou-Lu's pseudonym in IV, Ryong, seems to be the Japanese pronunciation of "dragon" in Korean.
  • Ershin^note "Two souls" in Chinese in IV is one of the Prophetic Names. In the Japanese version, there's a pun that attaches the name Master to her, which is localized as the translation of Ershin in the Fou Empire's language.
  • Deis ALSO is one of the Prophetic Names—and one which was only revealed as prophetic in III and IV.^note "Deis" is essentially a feminisation of "Deus", meaning "God". Yes, Deis' name literally means "Goddess".
  • In the Japanese version of I, the Big Bad's right-hand is named Judas. He should have reconsidered hiring him.
  • Elyon in Dragon Quarter counts in this, especially if you consider some of the Kaballah imagery.^note "Elyon" is a traditional Jewish name for the Most High, or in other words, God; appropriate, seeing as Capcom said he was originally meant as a Fou-lu Expy.
  • Vexacion in DQ as well at least if you ask his son Bosch about the matter... or the Chosen he killed before Ryu.
  • Won-qu and A-tur (Fou-lu's foo-dogs or guardian lions) in IV arguably are symbolically named.^note In traditional placement of foo-dogs or foo-lions, one (usually the male) represents "Un" and one (usually the female) represents "A". These together represent "Aum" and are an expression of infinity in Buddhism (a rough equivalent of the Christian concept of "the Alpha and the Omega"); the game even follows the Japanese tradition of having a pair of a dog and a lion.
• Meditation Powerup: III and IV feature abilities that increase the power of the user's next strike, generally flavored as some form of meditation.
• Money Spider
• Mushroom Man: One of the fusions in II turns Spar (an androgynous plant man) into a cute mushroom girl.
• Multiple Endings: All installments tend to have a "good" ending and a "bad" ending. II also has a "meh" ending.
• Mythology Gag: Nearly every game in the franchise after the first has this to greater or lesser extent (though to be technically correct, only those occurences in Dragon Quarter and possibly IV count as Mythology Gags). Of note, with a single exception, these tend to be examples based on the Japanese names and tend to be lost in the international localisation renamings Capcom is infamous for.
  • The most notable examples include Bunyan/Babaderu in III and particularly IV^note In the Japanese version, the Mythology Gag started out in III as a Shout-Out to a previous enemy in II, and in IV both the Japanese name and Dub Name Change are references to the character in III and Bosch and Lin's names in Dragon Quarter.^note Shout-outs to Boche/Bow and Rinpoo/Katt in II respectively
  • A blatant Continuity Nod example with Bow's Dub Name Change in II.^note Which is a reference to the previous game Archer's Dub Name Change, Bo.
  • The Dragon Tear from II is the basis of an item Mythology Gag in III and IV (depicted as a magatama Ryu wears in IV).
• Naked on Arrival: Done twice with Ryu from III and done once with Ryu from IV. Also done by Deis (AKA Bleu) in III, who then beats the snot out of Garr without bothering to get dressed first.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Averted in I. You can encounter a girl that looks just like Nina, but with blue clothing, when you first visit Tunlan. Later, there is a mishap involving the TmKey (one of the Goddess Keys that essentially acts like a Time Machine artifact capable of making time dilation/compression fields), and Nina gets sucked into a time vortex, and the rest of the party is thrown to Tunlan. Apparently the girl that looks like Nina is Nina, but with amnesia.
• No Hero Discount
  • Small aversion in the first game: one of the first things you do in the game is rid Camlon of the monster that has taken over their castle after the Dark Dragon attack. If you return later in the game, the inn only costs 1 G. Of course, by then there are places you can go like Arad and rest for free; the real reason to head back to Camlon is to see the statue they have erected of you in the middle of town out of gratitude.
• Nonhuman Sidekick: Bow in II, but there are almost no really "human" characters in the entire series, including Ryu himself, until Dragon Quarter.
  • If you think about it, they're almost all human, as there seems to be a stable social mix of them in almost every society in the series. Bow is essentially human too.
• Non-Standard Game Over
• No Stat Atrophy
• Novelization: III and IV have novelisations. Unfortunately, as with practically all merchandising material for Breath of Fire, these are Japan-only; even worse, there is no known Fan Translation.
  • The III novel (Breath of Fire III - Childhood Chapter) focuses largely on events from the early part of the game.
  • The IV novel (Breath of Fire IV: The Unfading Ones - The Arukai Dragon) is a fairly straight Novelization in roughly the same way the manga of IV is in that both the novel and manga are heavily Ryu-centric in characterisation.
• One-Time Dungeon: Nanai and the dungeon beneath it are destroyed after you leave. Neither Mogu nor Mote's dream dungeons can be re-entered once you complete them. The Goddess' Tower is also destroyed after Jade releases the Goddess.
• One-Winged Angel: With about four exceptions, every single boss from at least I-III. Since quite a few of them were known to throw vicious Player Punches before you finally got to fight them, taking down yet another generic giant monster that happens to have their name on it this time instead of the evil tormenting form you're used to can be somewhat unsatisfying.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Each dragon form you can take has a different appearance, as well as move set and strength. The Myrmidon form is essentially a Half-Human Hybrid, while the Kaiser form is a (golden) Western dragon.
  • The Dark Dragons in I generally play very fast and loose with the definition of "dragon". Most look like dragon/insectile hybrids. You do see plenty of Dark Dragon soldiers transforming into purple, orange-winged European-style dragons, though you never actually fight one of these guys, and Emperor Zog himself transforms into a giant purple dragon when you fight him, but you only see his head.
  • This extends to the NPC dragons in IV, based largely on Eastern dragons. Each dragon is an Endless, a Physical God of an elemental force. These often tend to look decidedly undraconic, with the Sand Dragon resembling a cross between a Dune-esque Sand Worm and a flying fish and P'ung Ryong/Raui resembling a cross between an elephant, a flying whale, and an Eastern dragon. They only get weirder from there.
  • Also played with in a different fashion in Dragon Quarter. In this Alternate Universe, dragons were genetically engineered Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: The Pagoda Island in I, Monster Island in II and, with proper preparation, Mt. Zublo in III.
  • Also, in I, at one point the hero winds up in an area all alone, allowing him to get an entire party's worth of EXP by himself, fighting enemies that aren't all that hard to defeat. This also happens again later on, except Ryu and Nina are together.
  • Going on a similar point as the above, going to a certain floor of the desert dungeon before going into the sea, you have 4 people in the group. Finding 3 gold slimes on that floor gives more EXP than the best EXP fight in the game (except for the monster gold slime which is far too rare), so you could level Ryu, Nina, Bo, and Karn to Level 99 faster than you could level the entire party in the last dungeon.
  • In IV, you can use the same XP splitting exploit, by having Ryu learn Burn and having him go to the dungeon in the plains before he is supposed to. Since entering the plains causes Ryu to be solo, you can split him up from the rest of the party any time at your leisure. Burn costs almost nothing to cast, and the enemies there are weak against it, to boot.
• Plant Person: Spar/Aspara in II, Peco in III.
  • Taken to extremes with Su Ryong/Kenki and Cho Ryong/Taapu in IV who are literal plant dragons (of trees and grass, and by extension, forests and grasslands, respectively).
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Hex Cannon/Carronade in IV uses people who are kidnapped and tortured to the point of insanity as the literal warheads.
  • Portrayed in especially tragic means (both literally and figuratively) in Mami's torture and death, especially in the manga adaptation of this scene. In fact, the author of the English Fan Translation explicitly has commented on the emotional impact of translating this section.
• Power Copying: Learning skills from enemies is a staple since III. Dragon Quarter presents a variation, where some (if not most) of the characters' skills are stolen (as actual items) from enemies.
• Random Encounters
• Really 700 Years Old: Every game in the series has at least one.
  • I-III has Deis. Definitely in the "thousands of years old" range by III, per at least some timelines potentially far older. There's also Tyr/Myria.
  • IV has Fou-lu (canonically 600 years old and also a case of Immortality Begins at Twenty) and everyone who lives in Chek besides the Abbess (everyone living there is implied to at least be an adult, if not truly ancient individuals, but all look around seven years of age).
  • DQ has Elyon (canonically 1000 years old despite looking in his mid-twenties, mildly averted^note as Elyon is dying...hence why IN SOVIET SHELDAR DRAGON RIDES YOU despite being a low-D who normally hasn't a chance to be a Chosen) and Cupid (who looks in hir early teens but is nearly as old as Elyon per Capcom).
    • It is also implied heavily that all of the Regents fall under this trope. Confirmed "far older than they look" Regents or former Regents include Mebeth,^note A former Regent when Elyon was younger Vexacion,^note Who has been apparently killing Chosen ever since Elyon became head Regent and Deamoned.^note Who is actually confirmable as being older than Elyon; he was the former head Regent, but lost one of his eyes to Elyon when the latter was a Chosen of Odjn
• Recurring Element: Quite a few; see the description.
• Redemption Equals Death : Cerl in I, Jade and Sara in The Dragon Warrior manga, Ray in II, Garr and Gaist in III.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Starting in III, healing spells will also deal damage to undead enemies. Case most damningly proven when, in III or IV, you encounter a group of zombies lead by a ZombieDr. Beat up his comrades enough, and he'll cast the game's most powerful group-healing spell to get them back on their feet. Needless to say...doesn't quite work as intended.
• The Rival: Bosch in Dragon Quarter; also a borderline Archenemy.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Giant cockroaches have been in every game on the series sans DQ. In III, there were Giant cockroaches that can jump several hundred feet in the air and crush you flat upon landing.
  • Subverted in I, as they were normal sized, you were the small one; and IV, when Nina is shrunk by some faeries and battles a normal-sized swallow.
  • For NPC examples, DQ allows you to recruit ants as grunts in the fairy colony.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Except in II (where Nina is exiled) and DQ (where she's not a princess), all other Ninas are quite pro-active when it comes to do something.
  • I: Nina takes the initative to obtain the cure for her father's poison.
  • III: Nina is sent to handle the investigation and arrest of McNeil and takes the initiative to deal with the situation at the Chrysm Crop plant.
  • IV: Nina takes the initiative to find her missing sister Elina, who went to broker a peace treaty with the Fou Empire and put an end to their 600-year-plus cycle of running Hot and Cold Wars.
• Sand Is Water: Dragons can swim through it, in fact.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Myria/Tyr in I, and Hell Infinity in II.
• Shout-Out: The ending credits of II gave full names or at least first name and surname initials to every character in the game ever, NPCs included. The great majority of these were references to people and characters from just about anything: Other Capcom games, real people, TV characters, music bands, etc. Bizarrely, many of them were references to western people that were not added by translation. In fact, the game is filled with reverse cases of Bilingual Bonus moments that its original Japanese audience probably never figured it out. To name a few:
  • The name "Tiga" is a bad romanization of "Tiger", but the credits show that there's an extra "g" in his name. Yes, that one. In fact, the entire resistance is named after Disney characters.
  • There is a woman in the first town that has a peculiarly slightly-darker skin tone than the rest of the area's NPCs, her name is Whoopi. According to the credits, her last name starts with a G.^note As in Whoopi Goldberg
  • The monster Algernon, as well as its two allies who fight with it, are shout-outs to the book "Flowers for Algernon" and its writer Daniel Keyes respectively (the latter cases being respectively scrambled and a Sdrawkcab Name in Japanese in the game).
  • One of the weirdest shout outs in III: Balio and Sunder's Fusion Dance, Stallion. He not only resembles a certain Kaiju hero, he attacks and moves like one, too.
  • In probably one of the more obscure examples, the manga adaptation of IV has shout-outs—to an earlier, Capcom-licensed Breath of Fire IV anthology comic published in 2000.^note The final page of chapter 19 as well as portions of chapters 25 and 27 are a straight Shout-Out to the BoF IV Anthology story "Across The Nightmare", and a good portion of the Kaiser Dragon sequence in the manga is a Shout-Out to the Anthology story "Ryu to Yobareshimono" ("One Who Is Called A Dragon").
  • Another manga-related shoutout, this time from the GBA re-release of I; Jiiku/Sieg and Rai's names are shout-outs to the characters Sieg and Raifel from the Princess Of The Wings Comic-Book Adaptation of the (original) Breath of Fire.
  • In IV, the names of the monsters Rasso summons can be lined up to spell "Joy Mecha Fight", an obscure Famicom game released by Nintendo.
  • It's been suggested the name of the Kaiser Dragon is itself a Shout-Out to the Kaiser Dragon classic car.
• Sidekick Ex Machina: Subjected to overt Affectionate Parody in the "Behind-The-Cover Comic" Yonkomas contained UNDER the dust covers) of Volume III of the manga adaptation. Ryu actually calls Rasso out as OKAMA. Ryu tends to be prone to this in the "Behind The Cover" yonkomas. In one of the "Behind The Cover" comics in volume 5, Ryu also ultimately calls Fou-lu out as "Ikemen" (translated as "Cool Guy") in a remarkably similar manner.
• Sole Entertainment Option: At first, there appears to be only the Contest of Champions to take people's minds off of things (and after the Time Skip it ceases to run). But after the Time Skip, Ryu's journey takes him to Syn City, the "illegal" town, which seems to have an active red-light district. The implication is that the citizens of the world have the world's oldest pastime to entertain themselves. (Let us ignore the Squick factor of there being only one hooker and instead extrapolate the existence of others!)
• Spell My Name With An S: The goddess Tyr/Myria, depending on which of the first 3 games you're playing.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: III notably had this. IV too, but the art styles were better matched.

• Status Effects: Common in all games are the classics like "Poison", "Sleep", "Confuse" and "Paralyzed". Then there's others like "Curse" (I, II and IV), Silent (all but I) and "Euphoria" (IV).
• Sweat Drop: Used to comedic effect in II. Hitting certain NPCs and objects in III and IV will cause them to react in this way.
• Summon Magic: The dragon system in II and IV; faeries in IV.
• Theme Naming:
  • Literally the only ones not fitting into this is Vexacion (who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin) and Mebeth (a Japanification of "Macbeth").
  • IV had a lot of fun with this in general for setting up Stealth Punchlines.
    • The first syllable of the names of the children in the Synesta orphanage spell out (in Japanese) a phrase reading roughly "I'm just lining up all these kid's names..."
    • As noted in the Shout-Out entry, Rasso's summons (giant hulking animated suits of armor) spell out (in Japanese) "Joy Mecha Fight".
  • III had many of its faeries named for various types of fly-fishing lures.
  • III also had a not-terribly-obscure-in-its-own-country Shout-Out with the original names of Kukuys (Kukurusu) and Doan. This is a reference to the Mobile Suit Gundam episode "Cucuruz Doan's Island", and was likely renamed in the English version because this episode at is still in Keep Circulating the Tapes mode (reportedly the episode has never been translated to English on Tomino's direct order as he feels "Cucuruz Doan's Island" was substandard and essentially filler).
  • I has one with Bo's Japanese name Gilliam and the son of his tribe's chief, Terry. Put them together and you get Terry Gilliam.
  • Extensively in DQ. Check that entry for details.
• Time Skip: Following the prologue in II and halfway through III.
• Toilet Humour: In II and IV. Made even more impressive in that in both cases, these are essential parts of the plot.
  • Including a dungeon in II entered by jumping in a toilet.
  • In III, there's a scene where Sunder is surprised while he's taking a leak.
  • And in IV...well...let's just say to reforge the King's Sword, there's a fetch quest. Involving meeting up with fairies and obtaining fairy turds as a material component to alloy with the steel in the sword. Scias is horrified.
• Token Human: Ryu is from the Dragon Clan, but looks close enough human to pass as one and believe he's completely human until his dragon clan powers are awakened.
  • In II he's a Half-Human Hybrid, so is technically this trope. In V, the rare furries were NPCs. In I and II, they were mostly nonhumans, but there was Karn/Danc in I. III had a tiger, a Winged Humanoid, a Kitsune-type creature, and an angel who seemed to be equine with avain elements, with an onion as the Team Pet. In IV, it was kitsune, dog, tiger, Winged Humanoid, and Robot Buddy.
• Took a Level in Badass: Happens to Ryu when he gets to transform into a dragon. Peco in III gets the ability to breathe ice and fire! On top of that, he also undoes the Big Bad's erasure of you whole team!
  • Also happens to Ershin in IV. She gets a whole new set of powerful spells mid-way through the game.
  • Arguably in Dragon Quarter, though in his case it's the result of a Deadly Upgrade.

• Turns Red: Every damn boss in I, as well as a few in II. The final boss of I has almost three times as many HP after she Turns Red.
• Two Beings, One Body: In I and II, fusion is a very powerful technique to temporarily create strong characters. In III, the Fusion Gene creates a similar effect, and there's also Balio and Sunder, who use this to transform into the only form you're supposed to beat.

• Unstoppable Rage: Ryu in II when he breaks from Deathevans' crystal cage after he kills the whole party, and then rushes at him ignoring the demon's attacks and slices him up good; Rei in III after losing his "family" Ryu and Teepo; Ryu's first transformation into the Kaiser Dragon in IV.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Plenty of characters and clans have the ability to shapeshift into other forms. The various dragon forms of Ryu are the best example.
• Warp Whistle: The Warp/Shift spell (Hyuuru in japanese) in all games but III and DQ (IV has it as a map skill rather than spell, though). III makes due with teleporters spread all over the world for easy transportation.
• We Buy Anything

• The World Tree: Gandaroof from II and Yggdrasil from III. There are also several "lesser" Yggdrasil spread over the world in both games.

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