Breath of Death VII: The Beginning - Reanimated Review (Arrowspark)
I played the original Breath of Death VII back in 2017, and was charmed by it. So when I found out that there was a remake, I bought it immediately. Breath of Death VII: The Beginning: Reanimated is a short JRPG that stars Dem, a skeleton hero who, along with the ghost historian Sara, the vampire techie Lita, and the zombie prince Erik, explore what's left of human ruins to find out the truth. The truth of what? It doesn't go that deep, so don't worry too much about the story.
The characters are simple, but thanks to story beats and the Chat function in the main menu, you can form some sort of connection with them. When they level up, all characters have two options to choose from, which can be new skills, stat upgrades, or upgrades to existing skills. As such, I believe that it's likely that your team will end up quite different from mine.
The combat is passable and simple, with limited random encounters that will stop triggering after you do a set amount of them. You can also force combat from the menu, which helps with what little grinding you need. After combat, you restore all your HP, including for those who are KO'd, with a little bit of MP recovery. Full MP recovery requires specific save points or inns, which both cost nothing.
All characters have access to techniques and magic, but also special options in combat such as Protect (Defense Up + Taunt), and Dodge (Evasion Up + Aggro Reduction). In addition, after specific story beats, you get access to unique Unite skills that take up the turns of the units selected. These are powerful skills that are useful, but come at the cost of action economy.
When you fight enemies, your combo multiplier increases, which exponentially increases the damage of specific skills. The longer you take in battle, though, the stronger enemies become, easily being able to oneshot your group eventually. This means that you need to balance building your multiplier and kill the enemies as fast as possible.
The graphics are a massive upgrade with the remake: from the NES-like look of the original to a 16-bit design that includes facial animations for your party members. In addition, all the enemies look great and have their own little animations, including death animations. It's clear that Shadow Layer Games did an excellent job crafting this remake.
There are also new additions to the game modes themselves, including a Score Attack mode and something called Dragonduck Mode. You unlock Dragonduck Mode by finding at least seven hidden dragonduck dolls that are all across the game. I say "at least", because it took me quite an effort to find just seven of them. Dragonduck Mode seems to be a Zelda-esque experience where you switch items to explore a short collection of zones, but it didn't really appeal to me enough to play more of it.
There are some things that I wasn't a fan of, though. While I thought the original music that was made for the remake was good, I wish that certain tracks survived the passage from the original. In particular, I don't believe the boss theme for the remake can hold a candle to the banger that was in the original. In addition, there are a few minor bugs involving triggers, such as enemies not leaving the screen on death, the continuation of battle music after battle, and the Chat conversations not properly switching.
Overall, I believe that Reanimated did a good job as a remake to one of my favorite JRPGs. And since it's only $5, you can easily buy it and the original without even passing the $10 mark. I thoroughly recommend it for a day of dumb fun.