Breath of Death VII, along with Cthulu Saves the World, is a nice throwback for JRPG fans and has some nice comedic dialogue and characters that'll entertain you. It's about 6 hours for both games, for a measly 3 dollars. So you should get it, you cutie, you.

This is a must buy for fans of early JRPGs. Lots of jokes about other JRPGs, mainly from the NES and SNES eras. The battle system is fast paced and everytime you level up, you have a decision on what type of upgrade you want for each character. The storyline is about 5 hours long, but the game includes extra modes to try out also.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning (BoDVII) is a classic 2-D turn-based role-playing game (RPG). It has been developed and published by the company Zeboyd Games.

Pros & cons:

+ The 16-bit-style and general layout of the game provides a retro-feeling. Various entertaining allusions and references to RPGs from the ‘90s. Creative characters offer amusing dialogues and slapstick humour.

+ Fast paced battle system with round-based combat mechanics. Employs an interesting combo system with multi-character combination techniques for special attacks.

o Relatively short game that can be finished within a few hours. Party size is limited to a maximum of four characters.

- Next to the protagonist there are only three recruitable characters. No voice acting during the entire game. The musical background lacks variety.

Summary:

Zeboyd Games has created with BoDVII a short and entertaining game experience. It pays tribute to the classic RPG genre and successfully mimics the basic mechanics without overstaying its welcome.

Trivia:

Despite its title, it is the only game of its "series", and the previous "six" do not exist. The title is simply a parody.

Achievements:

The game has no Steam achievements.

My Playtime: 3.3h (finished the game)

Despite its title, Breath of Death VII isn't the seventh title of the series. In fact, it's the first and only title of Breath of Death that you'll find. It's an old-school, turn-based game where you need to explore areas to find your objective. The game focuses on combat with some flexibility for the ones who are not looking for a challenge.

Pros:
- 3+1 difficulties
- Fast-paced combat
- Skill trees to customize your build
- Limited number of encounters in all areas

Cons:
- No respec option
- Some objects in the areas have a similar color to the background, making it hard to traverse
- It's easy to accidentally press the wrong skill tree on level up

Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

Yes.
If you enjoy turn-based games that focus on combat, especially with these visuals, get the game.

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If you have played a lot of turn-based games in NES such as Dragon Quest I, you'll feel at home with its visuals. Buildings are made simple - there are only a couple of bricks and decorations to fill up the place, overworlds are filled with the same object to make things look messy, and dungeons are lengthy and narrow.

The game reuses some assets in some areas, though. While I don't mind if they reuse it in places like caves that should look similar, two areas don't feel right. There is a ruins map that has a lot of cars and asphalt that are in good condition while other towns only have rusty sidewalks.

The story is made brief. Some variations are mixed in the dialogues: there are romance, comedy, fourth breaking wall, and many others. A lot of them are just references to other games, though. You mostly will tag along with other characters, being dragged around wherever they want to go. That being said, I like how the story is concluded nicely while still giving some room for a sequel.

Gameplay
Breath of Death VII is a fast-paced game where you explore areas and fight enemies. As I said, dialogues are brief, so you will mostly focus on exploration and combat. Exploration is made simple with you having to explore dungeons and fight a boss at the end. While finding the boss is easy, it can be hard to navigate through the whole area for chests, especially since some paths connect to the others. This is especially true in the last dungeon, making exploration to be challenging for those who are not good at navigation.

I like how dungeons are designed. It has random encounters, but there is a maximum number of encounters that you can take. Enemies won't respawn after you reach that amount, and if you need to grind, there is an option to forcefully fight an enemy, even if you have reached the maximum encounter.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1925247604

Moreover, the encounter count is locked to an area, and it won't reset even if you switched maps. This gives you the freedom to finish the dungeon however you want. You can trigger the encounters manually as you explore, or trigger all of them right at the entrance so you can explore the dungeon without interruptions. Furthermore, exhausting the number of encounters also ensures that you are not low-leveled before you fight your next boss. It's a win-win system for me.

The game also has a bit of character customization. Although it hardly has any selection for gears, you can choose one out of two skills upon each level up, changing your gameplay based on the option that you take. The skills can be either in the form of passive or active skills, or even a simple stat increase. However, it's easy to choose the wrong skill by accident. Combat can only be progressed by pressing a certain button, and that button will also be used to do the skill selection. Since the game doesn't have a respec option, you might be forced to restart the game if you have issues with your build, especially if you played in the harder difficulty.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92167082

Combat
Combat is fast-paced. There is no battle animation or any delay time waiting for an attack to land - you just need to press a button, and the game will directly tell you what the enemy does and how much damage you took (if any). I liked this approach since I found waiting for an animation to finish to be taking too long. I have to sacrifice my keyboard button for it though since I had to keep on pressing it as a result.

Combat can be challenging, even at the easiest difficulty. Enemies hit hard and you need to figure out a different strategy based on the type and number of enemies that you have to face. Moreover, you only recover a fraction of your MP based on the number of turns it takes for you to beat the enemy, and it won't be enough if you need to spam them at all times. Bosses are also like this. Since enemies will get stronger after each turn, you need to figure out a strategy to beat them as fast as possible, but you also need to check your party's HP before going all out.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1925247860

Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 3.3h, but I think the game was fast-forwarded in mine. I think it has something to do with it not being able to handle 144Hz monitors, running it at a double speed instead. I still enjoyed the gameplay, though. It was easy to navigate the areas because of this, although there are sometimes when I need to be extra careful in narrow areas.

As for the difficulty, the game offers 3 difficulties, with another bonus one that is unlocked after you beat the game once. I played it on easy, and it still gives me some challenges. I had to rethink my strategy for bosses, and some normal encounters even gave me trouble due to their damage. That being said, it's not to the point where I had to examine all features that the game has to offer - I didn't even have to use the union skill, a combination skill for more than 1 party member, at all. The game has a lot of leeways if you played on the easiest difficulty, although I couldn't say if it also applies to the harder difficulties.

Issues
It can be hard to navigate in the town/ruin dungeons. The grasses have a similar color to the ground, making it hard to differentiate.

Breath of Death VII tries to give some sort of nostalgia to the old turn-based games. It seems to have some references to those games, and although I didn't get them all, I still enjoyed it because of its other factors. The combat system is the first one in mind; the feature to have a limited number of encounters works wonders in these kinds of games, and exploration was fun with the map variations. Moreover, I also like the fact that you need to figure out the right strategy to beat the enemies. If you like old turn-based games, especially for their combat, I'm sure you'll like this game.

It's been awhile since I played through this game, but I'd like to write my lasting thoughts on it. The game was incredibly short for the style of game it was; however, for what it was it was an amazing experience. It typically can be purchased for next to nothing during steam sales and for what you pay vs what you get, this game is amazing. Decent story line, fun old style turn based RPG, and let's not forget the humor spread all throughout the game. If you're a fan of the old style RPGs like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy this game will delight you for a few hours.

This one comes bundled with Cthulhu saves the world (another great game). 16-bit retro RPG? With a really interesting setting at that... I mean robots and vampire techies? How cool is that? I tell you... It's very cool ;)

Two great RPG's for the price of one? How can one resist?

Breath of Death VII is a very short and basic, yet enjoyable, RPG. As someone with little experience playing RPGs, I found myself able to enjoy this one a lot. I imagine hardcore fans will find this game boring and lackluster, so don't have very high expectations. This game is enjoyable for a very simple reason; it's fun, the dialogue is funny, the storyline is somewhat intrigueing, the battles are cool and the soundtrack is pretty sweet. There is not much character development or a big world to explore, instead, most of my personal enjoyment came from the dialogue and basic gameplay. The characters are pretty cliché, but still feel a bit unique. They're not that developed, this always left some room for imagination, personally, when I was imagining this game through the dialogue.

A very short, but fun (and cheap) RPG is the best way to describe it in short. If you enjoyed this game, you'll also definitely love Cthulhu Saves The World, which is basically a straight improvement in almost every way.

Breath of Death VII is a classic styled RPG with some interesting improvements to the genre. In many ways, this is a very simple and standard RPG. You have a party that maxed out at four people, basic stats, spells, random encounters, leveling up, gear management... basically, if you've ever played an RPG before, you'll get this game. And even if you haven't, you can have fun with it as an introductory one. However, fans of RPGs will appreciate a few of the innovations here.

One cool twist on the formula is that, upon leveling up, you get to choose one of two upgrades. They might be new spells, enhancements for old spells, better stats, or any combination of these. This give some customization and replayability to the game. Another is the upon winning a battle, you will recover some of your MP and ALL of your HP, plus anyone who died during the fight will be revived. This makes it easier to get from place to place without having to use up MP to heal, carry healing items, or walk back to towns constantly in order to progress. An especially nice feature for those mazier dungeons. By far my favorite addition to this game is how it handles random encounters. Whenever you go to a new area, it will have a set number of random encounters in it. This means that, while walking around, you will randomly encounter enemies that many times. After you have that many battles, you will no longer have any random encounters there. This means that you can clear out an area and focus on exploring without the distractions. However, if you want to grind more in that area, you can simply bring up the menu and select the fight option and BOOM, you're in a battle. It's a beatiful way to work around the annoyance of rancom encounters while keeping the grinding aspect possible.

The whole design seems to be built around being a fast, enjoyable RPG. You can speed up your walk to a run with the tap of a button. In battles, your fight still images of monsters with sparing animations for attacks. Quick displays, combos, and a decent engine all make this game move by swiftly, even when mindlessly grinding. You are also sometimes teleported out of mazey areas when finished so you don't have to backtrack. And the simplicity of gameplay (aside from strategic bossfights or harder difficulties) blends all these things together to deliver a very fast paced RPG experience.

I also liked the retro style of art and play, even though I never really played much for old RPGs. I'd comment on the music but I mostly had the sound off... watching stuff while I was grinding... so sorry I can't say. The simple display and gameplay... that retro feeling is really nice. It's much less intimidating than some other RPGs I've tried. The characters are alright, and some of the dialogue is interesting. There are a few red herrings in there as well, unless I missed something :P It's a cool little game.

However, there are a few issues. While it is built around making the RPG stuff less annoying, it still includes those RPG things. Random encounters are limited... but they're there. Grinding is easy... but it's still tedious. Lack of a map makes the mazey dungeons and even some of the overworld more confusing than they need to be. Some of the display is a bit lacking, not telling you all the information you might want. You can probably use your head a bit to remember what enemy is low on health or poisoned or other such things, but this game doesn't have much of a reason NOT to display such things other than for the retro style.

Still, overall, Breath of Death VII is a really fun game. If you like RPGs, retro games, and the simpley yet effective gameplay style, this game is worth checking out. At the time, I've only been able to find it in a two pack with Cthulhu Saves the World, a game in the same style, for 3 dollars. I would say it's worth it if you're looking for some light and fun RPG action. What do I think of Cthulhu Saves the World? Well go look for my review on that game for yourself and see if the pack is worth it for you. However, I WILL say it's very similar in style, so if you're interested in one, you'll probably like them both. Breath of Death VII gets a 7/10 for being a fun RPG that does its best to lessen the inherent burdens of RPGs while still keeping those iconic characteristics present.

Its sometimes hard for me to get into turn based RPGs like this. Their not really my type of game. I bought this game because it was on sale and when I played the game it was not what I was expecting. This game is a lot of fun. I only played a little bit of it and I enjoyed every secound of it. This game is very funny and very fun. The random encounters don't even bug me as much as they do in pokemon or something because you feel like you get a lot XP, coins and stuff like that after you defeated what attacked you. There is a lot of Humor in this game and its just funny as hell. If you are into turn based RPG games and you haven't played this yet, buy it because you will love it, or if you don't really play games like this then you should still try it out.

I'll say more or less the same I did about Cthulhu Saves the World seeing how imilar they are. Breath of Death VII is a love letter to old 16bit RPGs which... I have zero affinity with, never played one at the time they were popular so I have no nostalgia for them. And that's mainly the only reason I didn't really enjoyed this game and didn't bother to finish it. That however is not a valid reason to give a thumbs down, quite the contrary. You can see just how passionate the devs were with this game and that love and care passes though to the player. I might not like this nich genre, but that doesn't mean this isn't a good game.