Capcom’s Breath of Fire series has been around since the days of the SNES, but has always existed on the RPG periphery while the Final Fantasys and Dragon Quests of the world hog the spotlight. Though relegated to near-obscurity, each new game in the series has been noticeably better than the last, slowly iterating on its basic role-playing formula down through its sequels. With Breath of Fire IV, Capcom finally achieved what it originally set out to accomplish – they had created a solid, if unspectacular, RPG that could hold its own against the genre’s heavy hitters. Just as the series had finally come into its own, however, Capcom dropped the roman numeral for the next installment, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, and with good reason: With Dragon Quarter Capcom transformed the simple RPG franchise into something greater, losing the standard turn-based, random battle-saturated formula of previous Breath of Fire games and rebuilding the series from the ground up as a hardcore dungeon crawler. The end result is a brutally unforgiving, endlessly replayable RPG that does more than simply bring new ideas to a stale series – Dragon Quarter is a hugely innovative title that is like no RPG you’ve played before.

The more things change, of course, the more they stay the same. You once again find yourself in control of Ryu, a rather uninteresting kid with a wild head of blue hair. He is a Ranger, a member of an organization that hunts and destroys the monstrous genics, genetically engineered creatures that terrorize the subterranean population of the world, long since forced to abandon the planet’s surface. Ryu’s D-Ratio, a sort of military ranking that measures future potential, is only 1/8192; he is destined for a life of grunt work. Bosch, his partner, has a D-Ratio of 1/64. He could be a Regent someday, if only the captain would give them an assignment of note.

He gets his wish when they are assigned to protect a transport train carrying nondescript, but important cargo. When Lin, a soldier in the rebel front Trinity, attacks the train, Ryu and Bosch are separated and Ryu comes face-to-face with the train’s mysterious cargo: humanoid genic and series mainstay Nina, a pre-pubescent mute girl with a pair of blood red wings. Nina is dying, however, as she’s unable to survive in the polluted subterranean air. Luckily for her, a very old and very dead dragon has taken an interest in young Ryu, allowing the Ranger to act as a vessel for his tremendous power. Bosch, seeing his future Regentship slipping through his fingers, and more terrified of Ryu’s transformation than even Ryu is, realizes he must stop Ryu and destroy Nina, the Regents’ dirtiest secret. Ryu, Lin, and Nina, however, just want to reach pollutant-free sky above, if such a thing even exists at all.

You begin the game 1000 meters below the planet’s surface, and every transitional screen between areas reminds you just how far underground you are. Your objective is clearly defined early on – reach the planet’s surface, and with it, the sky – and as you progress through the game you see yourself inching (or perhaps metering) closer to the world above. The 1000 meters between underground civilization and the world aboveground forms a single, mostly uninterrupted dungeon comprised of dank industrial tunnels. Sometimes you progress downwards, but mostly you’re headed up. This, of course, stands in stark contrast to most dungeon crawlers, which start above the ground and send you spelunking down labyrinthine corridors. In fact, this simple reversal largely defines Dragon Quarter’s intent – this is a game that turns RPG conventions on their head.

Combat is perhaps the most traditional element of the game, but even it differs wildly from standard RPG offerings. Genics freely roam the game’s underground hallways; there are no random battles here. Attacking a genic, or being attacked by one, triggers combat with all nearby enemies, with initiative given to the attacker. Here, combat takes place in real-time sequences divided into turn-based segments. Each character has a limited supply of action points, which determine how far they can move or how many skills they can use in a given turn. The combat is fast, but allows for a great deal of strategy, as you can string together skills to form combos that deal additional damage, apply harmful status effects, or generate entirely new skills altogether. Squaring off against the game’s genics feels very similar to combat in a more tactical or strategic game, and every action and movement requires careful planning and consideration.

Dragon Quarter is unrelenting in its difficulty. Enemies hit hard and often, and sport plenty of hit points, but the game never really feels unfair. You have limited inventory space and need many healing and curative items in order to stay alive, regularly forcing you to make difficult decisions between useful items and potentially powerful, unidentified gear. You’ll often find yourself hanging to survival by a thread, avoiding enemies with the hope that you can find a safe zone to buy more items and unload your bounty of randomized loot. Because of the extreme difficulty, every challenge you overcome feels like you barely scraped by on luck alone, mainly because usually that’s exactly the case. You’re unable to cheat the system and grind or powerlevel your way to victory either, as genics never respawn, meaning your stuck with a finite experience pool to draw from.

Thankfully, Ryu has the power of a dragon on his side, but it doesn’t come free of charge. Early on, Ryu gains the ability to shapeshift into his dragon form, unlocking a host of powerful new abilities that will quickly make short work of even the toughest foes. Each of these powerful attacks, however, greatly increases your D-Counter, an in-game meter that begins at 0% but slowly raises to 100% simply by moving through the world, and increases with tremendous speed should you unleash Ryu’s dragon abilities. Reach 100% and it’s game over. While you can use Ryu’s powerful dragon abilities to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles, such as any of the game’s frequent boss gauntlets, you’ll quickly find yourself dangerously close to an unavoidable defeat. It’s okay to loose Ryu’s inner dragon occasionally, but rely too heavily on it, and you’re doomed to failure.

Between the D-Counter, the limited inventory, and set enemy count, Dragon Quarter becomes a game of strict resource management. You are tasked with defeating the game’s many challenging enemies and reaching the sky above, but are held back by many constricting limitations. Simultaneously juggling your crowded inventory, killing enough genics to keep your characters from becoming underpowered but avoiding enough combat in order to have enough healing items to keep them alive, and carefully managing Ryu’s devastating dragon powers adds plenty of depth to the experience, even if it seems a bit overwhelming at times. With resources in such sort supply, your effective management of the available tools is crucial for success. If you don’t succeed, however, you’re still left with plenty of options.

Dragon Quarter’s most interesting – and controversial – element is its unnecessarily acronymed SOL mechanic, short for System OverLay. Should you fail, by running the D-Counter to 100%, being defeated in battle, or selecting the “Give Up” option when outclassed by the games challenges, you can restart the from the beginning, keeping your money, weapons, armor, skills, and some of your experience. In fact, chances are you’ll need to use this SOL Restart mechanic at least once in order to complete the game. Recrawling the same dungeon segments is far from boring, thankfully, as your holdovers from previous playthroughs greatly speed up the process. Playing through areas you’ve already visited also unlocks additional cutscenes that flesh out Dragon Quarter’s characters and plot, providing extra incentive to take full advantage of the SOL mechanic.

This SOL system also affects the way you save your game. Though you can save at any time, these temporary saves are erased the instant you load them. In order to create a proper, permanent save, you need to record your progress at a telecorder, which requires a save token. Unfortunately, save tokens are extremely rare, generally only offered as rewards after difficult boss battles, and often times, not even then. This adds yet another layer of resource management and difficulty to the game, forcing you to carefully consider each save, as it might just be your last. When you inevitably die, at the very least you’ll lose your progress and restart from your last save, and at worst you’ll be forced to SOL Restart from the beginning.

Dragon Quarter is therefore a game that doesn’t just encourage replayability, it demands it. The only way to see the entire story and realize your characters’ full potential is by utilizing the SOL Restart mechanic, getting a little further with each attempt than you did before. With this system in place, anybody, regardless of skill level, will be able to reach the ending of the game eventually, but even after the credits roll, Dragon Quarter still has much to offer. After you complete the game, you’re scored based on a variety of factors and issued a new D-Ratio, which in turn opens up new areas to explore, complete with new enemies and skills. Additionally, village building, a Breath of Fire series staple, once again returns in Dragon Quarter, this time allowing you to build and nurture a colony of sentient ants that carries over from game to game. There’s also an optional 50-floor dungeon that exists entirely outside of the normal game, complete with boss fights.

Dragon Quarter has earned a reputation for being confusing and obtuse, and often times it is, but if you can wrap your head around the game’s uniquely innovative mechanics, you’ll find there’s a lot to like. Make no mistake about it, Dragon Quater is a hardcore, demanding game, as this review heavy with explanations of game mechanics no doubt proves. Overcoming its subterranean tunnels is extremely taxing, but besting that next boss and tracking down that next weapon upgrade is wholly rewarding. While it may not be the traditional, formulaic RPG fans of the Breath of Fire series may have hoped for, and in fact expected, it’s an excellent game with a surprisingly effective story and is one of the most interesting RPGs on the Playstation 2. Capcom may have killed the Breath of Fire series so that Dragon Quarter could exist, but rest assured, it was a sacrifice worth making.