Breath of Fire 1's Second Wind

You know what was a pretty neat idea?  Breath of Fire 1’s Second Wind feature.  Like some RPGs before it and a lot of RPGs that came after, BoF1 utilized health bars to let the player know, broadly, how much HP an enemy still had during combat.  Health bars are a favorite tool of developers and gamers alike for managing their expectations for enemy longevity, and Breath of Fire 1’s health bars were particularly good ones for its time--the BoF1 health bar was big and diminished in real time with your attacks, giving you a very helpful and accurate understanding of what sort of chunks you could expect your characters to continue removing from the bar on subsequent attacks.  While BoF1 certainly didn’t invent the concept, it just as certainly did have a hand in positively directing the health bar’s evolution.

And the Second Wind system is a neat feature that was tacked onto the still-emerging art of the health bar.  The way the Second Wind worked was that when a boss health bar was fully depleted, they wouldn’t die like the rank-and-file random encounter enemies would.  Instead, the boss could get a Second Wind, in which a message would be given about the fight not being over, like “Evil Wizard grins fearlessly!” or “Diabolical General grits his teeth!” or “Annoying Politician demands recount!”  At that point, you would continue to fight on with no indication of how much HP the boss had left, turning your carefully planned assault into a slug-fest of attrition in which you just try to endure and match the strength of an enemy in the hopes that your own determination can outlast his.

Which is a pretty cool idea, right?  I mean, RPGs and their anime foundations are filled to the damn brim and then some with heroes who’re too damned determined to win to let a little thing like the disintegration of their spinal cord keep them down, after all, so why not let a villain do the same thing every now and then?  I mean, hell, Star Ocean 3’s finale involves the actual entire universe being wholly destroyed, and Fayt gets his Second Wind after being hit by that, so surely it’s not so unfair for 1 or 2 particularly important antagonists to be able to take a hit and keep on truckin’?

A well-placed Second Wind on a really important, powerful adversary could be a great way to really emphasize just what a dangerous villain it is that you face, and force an unexpected and even unnerving change to the player’s tactics.  The tension rises as you realize you’re up against a force that will not yield; blindly you struggle on, taxing your resources past what you had rationed them for, hoping that you can persist long enough to strike the final blow yet never knowing which it will be...it’s a good way to up the stakes of an already major battle, to make it clear that THIS is truly a fight around which the destiny of this world revolves!  I mean, okay, you’d need to have some discretion about the feature, because obviously it’s the sort of thing that should be reserved for only the most climactic of struggles, but I think as long as you didn’t go crazy and give a Second Wind to every damn boss in the game, you’d be good.

So hey guess what Capcom did with it

Yup.  Yup.  Rather than have the Second Wind be a special signature of the story’s more momentous battles and villains, pretty much all of Breath of Fire 1’s bosses have the ability.  Like, from the first boss on.  With a bare few exceptions, every single time you go up against any enemy of any note whatsoever in this game, you’re trained to expect them to outlive their health bar.  Hell, after a while, it starts to seem like they have MORE health in their last gasp!

Obviously this cheapens a tool which could have otherwise been applied tactically to raise the stakes of the narratively significant battles in the game, as a few RPGs have done with the concept in the many years since BoF1.  And honestly, it makes me wonder, what’s even the point of having a health bar for the bosses in this game, anyway?  I mean, if you go into every single boss fight knowing that the battle is going to extend past what said bar indicates, without the slightest knowledge of just how much extra health the bad guy will have, then what function does the health bar have?  If you want players to be in the dark about how much HP a villain has, then just don’t put a health bar on them to begin with.  Let the mystery BE a mystery if that’s what you want; having the Second Wind be a reflex rather than a special event just makes the presence of a health bar at all feel like an irritating bait-and-switch.

They also didn’t get the Second Wind thing off to a great start.  The message that plays when the first boss of the game gets his Second Wind informs you that he started crying, so, y’know, it doesn’t exactly present itself initially as a situation where a boss is too badass to succumb to death.  Doesn’t matter how many monsters and maniacs later in the game laugh in the face of mortality and redouble their efforts; your first impression with the Second Wind is always gonna have been a giant frog monster ugly-crying fat, wobbly amphibian tears down his green jowls.*

I dunno what it is with Breath of Fire pioneering interesting game mechanics, or at least adopting them while they’re still in their infancy, and just not having the slightest idea how to effectively make use of them (or establishing how to do so early on and then completely botching their own successful formula later).  I’ve obviously spoken on this trend in the series before, and I can already think of a couple more examples in BoF1 and 2 of good ideas implemented ineffectually that’ll probably get their own rants at some point, too.












* It also makes that battle feel really awkward.  It’s like, dude, you’re the one who led a violent invasion of a small, defenseless village at the behest of an evil emperor; stop crying like you’re the one getting bullied.  I resent being made to feel sorry for you.