Breath of Fire I

The original game in the long-running Breath of Fire series, released on the Super NES in April 1993 in Japan and August 1994 for North America. It was later ported out to the Game Boy Advance in July 2001 in Japan and December 2001 in Europe and North America, with updated Character Portraits, a dash button, graphical upgrades on the menu screen and a trade option between games (complete with a few new items as bonus).

Being the first game on the series, its story is not as ambitious as following sequels: many years ago, the goddess Tyr (Myria) appeared on the world and staged a terrible war among the Dragon Clan for her own amusement, splitting it into two sides: the Light Dragons and the Dark Dragons. This carried on until a a warrior of the Light Dragons, together with 7 allies, sealed up the goddess using the six Goddess Keys.

Cut to many, many years after: the Dark Dragon Empire has grown in power, and under the leadership of their Emperor Zog, they are waging war against the world while searching the keys to release Tyr. The Light Dragons are the first on Zog's hit-list, but they are saved from decimation by the sacrifice of their priest Sara. Missing ever since, Sara's brother Ryu embarks on a quest to find her, while gathering allies who are all opposing the Dark Dragons' ambition.

One aspect who's well known about this game is the story behind its localization: at the time Capcom apparently didn't felt like translating such a heavy text-based game, so they handed localization and distribution duties to Square Soft, with Ted Woolsey involved in the translation. This ensured a somewhat decent translation, albeit with random name changes that obscured connections with its sequels and some details regarding its story lost in the transition. It's also the likely reason why the first Breath of Fire isn't on the Virtual Console when the sequel is.

There exists a character sheet for the series. Place any character-related tropes there.

Tropes used in Breath of Fire I include:
  • Abusive Precursors: The feuding Dragon Clans who brought about the Goddess War.
  • Always Night: When it comes to Goddess keys, Bleak definitely got the short end of the stick.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: The American release replaced the anime inspired box art with something vaguely resembling Conan.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Nina is introduced with her going on a quest of her own, accompanied by two guards; later on, Gobi splits off from the group to retrieve a Plot Coupon.
  • Asteroids Monster: The SlimeX boss.
    • Actually, this is an inverted version of that. It starts out as three slime monsters; when you defeat all three, they merge into one large one.
  • Bag of Sharing: Whenever the party splits up, you always retain access to the entire inventory. Even while controlling an entirely new character.
  • Beneath the Earth: The molemen city of Gramor.
  • Biological Mashup: The special ability of Karn is to merge himself with other party members. Ryu's last dragon form also works like this.
  • Bowdlerise: Minor details, mostly concerning the Side Quests on Auria: one bar patron's hangover is changed to a 'case of the hiccups', while a Dirty Old Man's request for a massage is rendered more or less nonsuggestively.
  • Broken Bridge: Everywhere! Literal cases includes the bridge following Tantar/Tuntar, the bridge on Guts and the small bridge before Scande. Other examples include a frozen waterfall and an underwater chasm.
    • The worst would have to be arriving at the Big Bad's lair, Scande... only to find that the one working elevator is broken. Mind you, the Dark Dragons can simply fly up to Zog's tower if they wish, but it's still conspicuous how they don't just fix it themselves.
  • Build Like an Egyptian: The desert tomb of Krypt.
  • But Thou Must!: Repeatedly!
  • The Cameo: One can spot Chun-Li in one thief's act in Bleak. There are also Arthur pictures hanging inside houses.
  • Canon Foreigner: Both manga adaptations add a good number of characters, most notably Bo's entire family in The Dragon Warrior and the Ice Dragon Clan in Princess of the Wings.
    • Canon Immigrant: The two nameless guards on the game were given names in the GBA port, taken from two characters from Princess of the Wings, Sieg and Raifel.
  • Cave Behind the Falls: The waterfall in Spring Town.
  • Chain of Deals: Several instances through the game, particularly the Auria arc: you need a ship, and a rich man offers to let you use his if you can get his daughter out of a safe. The master thief who could open the lock is in the Impassable Desert, and someone who has the item needed to enter it wants a Gold Bar in exchange. After grinding and running conveniently placed sidequests for enough money to buy one, you cross the desert and find that the thief in question is in a dungeon surrounded by quicksand that can only be crossed with a magic flute, which the locals agree to give you after you resolve their problem with a monster. That resolves half of the chain...
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Two instances: the robed guy who keeps popping up to help the party is revealed to be Jade, helping you overthrow Zog, while in Tunlan, the Nina look-alike ends up being Nina after time travel shenanigans.
  • Chekhov's Skill: The Wyndians' flying ability, which becomes the Global Airship.
  • Comic Book Adaptation: Two, under the subtitles The Dragon Warrior and Princess of The Wing. There's also an Spin-Off pseudo-sequel Breath of Fire Part 2: Little Adventurers which stars the children of Ryu/Nina and Bo.
  • Compressed Adaptation: The Dragon Warrior manga adaptation, which crams most of the game's main plot into 6 chapters, leaving out several events while meshing together others. Most notably, the existence of the Four Devas (Jade's Quirky Miniboss Squad) is mentioned, but only one out of the 4 (Mote/Sigmund) makes an actual appearance.
  • Creepy Child: Tyr's initial form. The concept art takes it to ridiculous extremes...
  • Degraded Boss: Usually the less important ones (Gremlin, PincherX, the three dragon tests, SlimeX...).
  • Desperation Attack: When low on health, the characters will speed up their attacks.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: ..did the party save Ox from near death by kicking the crap outta death itself!?
  • Disc One Nuke: The Earth Key can be used to deal 30 damage to all enemies once per turn. While insignificant later on, it out-damages your warriors when you first get it and can end most fights in one round.
  • Doomed Hometown: Drogen (Dragnier), right in the prologue.
  • Door to Before: Most early dungeons have these, only unlockable using a party member's skill, most of the time Karn's.
  • Dub Name Change: Mostly due to space restrictions and Square's handling of the translation. Only among main characters, we have Bo/Gilliam, Ox/Builder, Karn/Danc, Bleu/Deis, Manillo/Gobi, Zog/Zorgon, Jade/Judas and Tyr/Myria. Most of the towns and enemies are also affected.
  • Dummied Out: Two notable examples include the Nanai Bar (who's off-limits during normal gameplay due to guards blocking off the entrance) and the DrWarp (a development item that allows transportation to any location on the game, including within cutscenes and unfinished areas).
  • Easy Amnesia: Being a ancient and powerful wizard, this serves as the excuse for Bleu's low-level: she's forgotten most of her spells during her millenia-long Convenient Coma. This also plays a part late in the story with Nina.
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: Zog's throne room at Scande. Also, the Goddess Tower.
  • Far Side Island: Upon blowing up the Dark Dragon ship and jumping overboard, the whole party is marooned on this. And the only way out is to pay Gobi 1000000 GP.
  • Fiction 500: The town of Auria is literally paved with gold, due to its proximity to the Light Key.
  • Five-Bad Band:
  • Five-Man Band:
  • Flying Seafood Special: At first, they appear underwater, so it's not so rare... but when they start coming out on dry land, well...
  • The Goomba: Nine times out of ten, your first random battle from leaving Drogon at the beginning of the game will be up against a blue Slime with an HP of 12, and Ryu at Level 1 can defeat each Slime with one attack. Later on, the party may encounter a gold version of the Slime with ten times the HP. Although the P.Bugs have 8 HP, they are more annoying as they may poison a party member.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: The Goddess Keys. Nabbing one will result in a triumphant Item Get.
  • Great Offscreen War
  • Green Aesop: A group of faeries has a young boy locked in their forest for cutting down trees. Helping him works as an Optional Sidequest to rack up some money.
  • The Grim Reaper: Three Mini Bosses: Morte, Mortea and Morteo, the latter of which is named Shinigami in the original.
  • Guest Star Party Member: The two guards (later named Sieg and Rai) who escort Nina during her solo time, and the third one (Enon) who guides Ryu afterwards.
  • Guide Dang It: To get Ryu's dragon forms, there are certain items which are required. The game makes no effort in telling you which ones, let alone where they are.
  • Healing Spring: Drinking off these restores everything.
  • I Have Your Wife: The Dark Dragons kidnapped all women on Ox's hometown to force the men into building them a weapon.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The battle with Sara, now Brainwashed and Crazy.
  • Immortality Immorality: Tunlan's queen was charmed by Zog into giving the Goddess key in her possession with the prospect of eternal youth.
    • It is also the ambition of the Wizard from Karma Tower.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: Cort shrinks your entire party to the size of mice. Luckily, there are real mice in the area who are pleased to help Ryu.
  • Inn Security: Played with in Bleak's Inn. Being a town of thieves, it's rather suspicious that it's totally free. If you decide to stay, you'll wake up with your savings stolen. Buying an special item on Auria will catch the Inn owner on the act, who will pay you to avoid any further problems.
  • Invincible Hero: Agni makes any battle, up to and including the final boss, practically impossible to lose. The best strategy for the final boss is to cast the Agni transformation and then use Auto-Battle.
  • Irrelevant Importance: You can't really dispose of any "key" item, even if those are totally useless afterwards.
    • You can deposit some of them in the bank, however, if you need to free some inventory space.
  • Journey to the Center of the Mind: Mote's stitch is to capture his targets into a dreamworld of his creation. He does this twice (once to Mogu, later to the whole party), and it eventually leads to a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
  • Late Character Syndrome: Mogu comes out quite late on the story, and since he has very little redeeming qualities, he tends to be stuck on the back.
  • MacGuffin Delivery Service: Sara, now under Jade's mind control, tricks you into forking over all of the Goddess Keys.
  • Merchant City: Prima, Underwater City home of the Proud Merchant Race.
  • Mistaken for Spies
  • Mock Guffin: The anticlimatic 'Book of Thieves' hidden in Krypt's basement. The logic being: if he's made it that far, Karn is already the world's greatest thief, and therefore doesn't need a handbook.
  • Multiple Endings: Starts out the trend. Two endings, depending on if you get the last dragon form and use it on the last boss.
  • Mysterious Informant: The nameless, cloaked man who periodically shows up whenever your party hits a Broken Bridge. It's Jade in disguise.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: Mote's Japanese name, in reference to Sigmund Freud.
    • Another one counts also as a Prophetic Name and Bilingual Bonus in Japan: Jade's original name Judas, in that he'll betray Zog.
    • If you live in a town called Romero, don't be surprised if zombies come out at night, just sayin'.
  • Noob Cave: Camlon Castle.
  • Ominous Floating Castle/The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Obelisk.
  • Our Founder: Camlon is the very first Adventure Town Ryu visits. When he returns in the game's second half, the populace have erected a statue of Ryu in the square.
  • Palette Swap: Like the Slime mentioned above, enemies from the random battles encountered early in the game may re-appear later-on in different colours, and more tougher than their cousins.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling: The island where Pagoda is found.
  • Planet of Hats: Most of the tribes are overspecialized in one job: Gobi's clan is a Proud Merchant Race, Ox's clan is a tribe of blacksmiths, Bo's clan is a hunting clan, etc...
  • Playing Both Sides: Jade.
  • Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Nina.
  • Plot Coupon That Does Something: Out of the six Goddess Keys, only 3 can be used in-game: the Light and Dark Key switches daytime/nightime, and the Earth Key mimics an earthquake attack.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Poor Cerl.
    • In The Dragon Warrior manga, Jade gets one as well, paired with a Together in Death with his lover Sara.
  • Sequence Breaking: After you get Karn, you can open any locked door. Warp back to Romero and head to Agua, and you can go higher up than you've ever gone before. Search the statues for a powerful dagger and suit of armor. You won't see other gear on this level until the endgame.
  • Ship Level: The Dark Dragons' galleon.
  • Shout-Out: The leader of the golden city Auria is named Rosewater in the original, from the main character of Kurt Vonnegut's story God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
    • Sieg and Rai on the GBA port can be seen as one too.
    • Arguably, but the sprite for the various town chiefs is suspiciously similar to Dr. Wily.
  • Shout-Out Theme Naming: Bo's Japanese name is Gilliam, while the son of his tribe's chief is Terry... together they form Terry Gilliam.
  • Stable Time Loop: Ryu meets Nina's future self in Tunlan, not realizing it's her. After Nina gets thrown backward through time, the older Nina promptly rejoins.
  • Take Over the World: Zog's a rather typical Evil Overlord.
  • The Three Trials: There are three shrines where Ryu is put to a test before having his dragon forms unsealed. The fourth and final dragon form, interestingly, requires no such trial and is granted instantly.
  • Time Stands Still: Cerl places this curse over the town of Carmen.
  • Tragic Monster: Sara is later found under Jade's brainwash, and you're forced to kill her.
  • Trapped in Another World: The fate of those who piss Mote off.
  • Turns Red: Every freaking boss has a secondary, invisible lifebar once the first one is depleted, often twice as large as the original.
  • Video Game Geography: Type 1 "toroid".
  • Voluntary Shapeshifter: Ryu and his dragon morphs, Karn and his Fusion Dance magic, plus Gobi and Nina get special forms as well.
  • War Was Beginning: The prologue establishes that the Dark Dragons are bad news.
  • Weather Control Machine: The Sky Key and, by extension, the Spyre where it is located.
  • We Can Rule Together: Juda offers this at one point to the party. Even if you accept, you can't do nothing but stand still, as moving will prompt Jade to ask again, and not moving will prompt him to sic some monsters on you to appease his boredom.
  • Wretched Hive: Bleak. Even the Inn isn't safe.
  • Yoko Shimomura: Composed part of the music.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: Jade is going to insert the Keys into the Goddess Tower and release Tyr, like it or not.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle: As if anyone thought Zog would be the end...
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