ESMER'S PROFILE

Thanks to nostalgia I'll always remember 3 and 4 extremely fondly, and when Dragon Quarter was released I hated it like a lot of other fans because it was such a drastic departure, but as I've gotten older it's grown on me. A lot. It might even be my favorite now, or at least tied with 4. It's just such a unique breath of fresh air, and the atmosphere and art direction is really well done. I understand if a lot of people don't like the game for being too different or because it doesn't match their personal taste, but the world-building is top notch for what it is and the game's take on the dragon transformation is really interestingly integrated into the story and gameplay, if a bit frustrating for fans of the more traditional games who just wanna turn into a dragon and tear stuff up yeah!!

Breath of Fire 4 definitely has the strongest story of the earlier installments, in my opinion, but it's disguised by the horrible, awful, terrible pacing. I won't go into spoilers because so few people seem to have gotten very far (thanks to the aforementioned bad pacing) but it has my favorite cast of characters, and probably the best villains of that era of RPGs. It's super pretty too, but I hated the way it mixed beautiful pixel art and clunky 3d models for the dragons and some bosses. It was pretty jarring and ugly in an otherwise great-looking game.

Breath of Fire 3... was also paced badly and with sort of a barebones story too, but I have to love it for the weird but fun jazzy soundtrack, amazing pixel art, and the gene system. The gene system was so much fun!! It had some really memorable bosses too.

I've played the first and second ones too, but I found them kind of unpleasant and tedious to the point where I don't even really have anything to say about them.

I'm Esmer, a pretty boring person from New Orleans (currently relocated for school) who is bad at introductions! This is technically my second account here, I guess, but I've long since forgotten my old username and never posted much except in the art thread anyway. Might as well correct that and try to participate in the community more.

My main interests/hobbies are photography - and talking aimlessly about cameras and cinematography to anyone who'll listen - and fashion, but I'm pretty passionate about animation and storytelling too. I like to paint, and I'm currently trying to adjust to digital art after years of pens, pencils, watercolors, and paper. For better or worse I love video games from AAA to indie, and quite a few of them have probably had a major influence on me artistically (I think even now my favorite game is probably still Killer7) so the idea of making a little game of my own is really cool.

I've messed around with Game Maker, but I'm more interested in a game with rpg elements so I'm going to take a crack at RPG Maker for the first time since teenage me decided she was going to make The Most Epic 100-Hour Masterpiece RPG Ever with rm2k3. My expectations today are much more realistic and specific, even if I'm... still pretty scatterbrained and unfocused in general. The organization and dedication required to really complete a project is a bit daunting, but that's probably an uphill battle a lot of us deal with!

Anyway, nice to meet you all, looking forward to participating and maybe writing up a few articles, making games, etc., etc.