This Week in Defunct Games 25
Every week Cyril Lachel comes down from his giant castle in the hills to provide the final word on all of the classic downloadable games and retro compilations. This is the Retro Round-Up, your official guide to the best (and worst) in classic gaming for the Nintendo Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Join us as we shed some light on what games are worth your five or ten dollars, and what games you should avoid at all costs. For more information about these games (and retro gaming in general) we invite you to check out Defunct Games. This week we have a packed show full of ghouls, ghosts, RPGs, exploding blocks, street fighters, and army men. We have three games for the Virtual Console and two for the Xbox Live Arcade. So instead of listening to me babble on about what we have in store, maybe you should go and see what we think of this week`s retro titles ...

Breath of Fire II (Virtual Console)
What Is It?
Capcom`s follow-up to the modestly successful Breath of Fire is larger and more involved than its predecessor, but unfortunately also much less interesting. While some parts are very clever (you are able to build your home town, populating it with stray homeless folks you run across), it suffers from too little direction, a purely mechanical storyline and the clunkiest dialog since Night Trap. The good news is that this is a by-the-numbers Japanese role-playing game; something the Virtual Console doesn`t have a lot of at the moment. When it comes right down to it most RPGs aren`t going to mind that the dialog is poor and the story is utter rubbish, if anything they`ll write it off as being part of the charm of Breath of Fire II. I would have preferred Capcom release one of the other games in the series (perhaps the first or third installment), but Breath of Fire II will no doubt find a small following of RPG nuts that are excited just to have a game like this on the Wii.

Does It Still Hold Up?
I would like to say that crummy stories and bad dialog in role-playing games is a thing of the past, but that is just not the case. To this day we have to put up with poorly translated Japanese RPGs with the most generic stories you will ever seen. Breath of Fire II almost gets away with it because it`s one of the few RPGs on the Wii, so most people will forgive the game`s shortcomings. The adventure is long and there are plenty of characters available to play, but the game is not without its problems. The gameplay manages to hold up even if the story can`t.

Is It Worth The Money?
This is a tough call, if you`re a casual RPG fan then maybe you should stick with Sega`s offerings, such as Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force and Legend of Thor. But if you`re dying for a brand new RPG from Japan, then Breath of Fire II may hold your attention for awhile. $8 is a bit much for what you end up getting here, so be warned that this is a mediocre substitute for the much better RPGs that have yet to hit the Virtual Console. If anything Breath of Fire II just demonstrates how in need the Virtual Console community is for great role-playing games from Japan.