Breath of Fire II

Game text and attempted translations from...

...copyright 1993, 1994, 1995 Capcom. The images used are also from the game. Don't go claim them as your own or anything silly like that. This document is not intended for any commercial purpose, real or imaginary. It exists primarily out of curiosity about both the Japanese language and the changes between the Japanese and English versions of the game. If you're interested in the game, go out and buy it if you haven't already... a summary of what happens can't compare to actually playing it. An interesting enough game with a lamentably poor localization... and Nina. Can't forget Nina. ...what? I like wings. And magic.

Recent Updates

2021-07-18 - More story progress, up to beginning town construction and actually getting the ability to use the titular breath of fire.

I've also belatedly noticed that although my English version text dump had English quotation marks at the beginnings of lines and pairs of periods for the frequent two-dot ellipses, presumably because of assumptions I made early on, the game itself (even in the GBA version) actually displays the Japanese left corner bracket (「) and two-dot leader characters (‥) for these. I've updated the text on this site to reflect that.

2018-11-24 - More fairly minor revisions. Probably the biggest thing is finding the spell learning tables.

2017-10-28 - Some minor revisions and corrections here and there.

2016-11-06 - I've recently acquired a copy of the (English) GBA port, so in addition to that helping encourage me to make updates, I'll also be including some notes on any differences I notice. Unfortunately, Capcom doesn't seem to have so much as cleaned up the text, let alone redone the translation.

Either way, enjoy the story text through my two favorite characters joining, plus data on spells, skills, equipment, items, and stats.

2014-03-01 - Added English character profile text (though I'm not sure whether it's used). Corrected the name of the Dragon Tear and added reference number values since some of the colors can be difficult to tell apart. Added the rest of the prologue.

29 Apr 2012 - Fixed a typo and added some comments on whether Aspara is more likely to be male or female.

07 Apr 2009 - A few minor corrections and tweaks, plus a note on where the name バルバロイ comes from.

30 Dec 2007 - I was playing the other day and noticed just how much improvement could be had in the English at the end of the opening, after facing the demon. The English is actually straight from the Japanese version, which also has Japanese subtitles scrolling across the bottom.

Storyline

Prologue - Young Ryu

Non-Story Information and Translations

Character profiles

Statistics and the Dragon Tear

Spells and Skills

Battle Commands

Items and Equipment

The Commune (TownShip)

Various Notes

Most of my technical data comes from Ben Siron's Breath of Fire 2 Handbook, which you can find on GameFAQs. It doesn't cover everything, and there have been some more recent discoveries that aren't in there, but it's pretty much the definitive guide to the mechanics of the game.
There are a lot of references, some of them fairly obscure, particularly in the naming schemes of various sets of NPCs, so I've probably missed at least a few. Feel free to let me know if you notice any.
I'm throwing in colored margins where the Dragon Tear appears to approximate its color (when not variable). The Dragon Tear is an item Ryu carries that allows him to see how favorably other characters feel about him (similar to an "affection level" in relationship-based games). This Mood attribute isn't particularly useful in a gameplay sense, but does add some extra depth. The scale runs from black (extremely low) through purple, red, orange (neutral), amber, yellow, green, and blue before reaching a cycling rainbow (extremely good) on the top end. When a character's Mood changes during a conversation, the gem flashes and is accompanied by a noise... sort of a "shiny" sound for increase, and a "frustrated" sound for decrease. The gem does not always appear, but generally shows up when someone is meaningfully interacting with Ryu or talking about him.
I've kept the layout of the original text as much as possible, with two exceptions:
- All kana in the game text is normally half the width of the kanji. There's simply no way I'm going to all the trouble of making them all halfwidth here, though, especially since my editor doesn't even support those characters properly.
- Places where a new page of text starts within a block are indicated with an indent at the beginning of the line. This started as an artifact of the script dump, and I decided to keep it that way since I like having that bit of extra information there.
Lines that are colored like these are my comments, anything in gold are actions and such that the dialog doesn't explain, and this teal indicates messages from the game (e.g., "You got a potion"). Breath of Fire II also has its own in-game highlighting for special terms.
If I'm not too comfortable with how I translated something, I've put a * after it. A (*) stands for something that I can't figure out even well enough to guess.
I'm attempting to avoid the use of Japanese name suffixes and other untranslatable honorifics to give the translation a more natural feel. Anything of particular note will be remarked upon in the comments.
The section headings indicate the setting, not the scene; the links in the contents are the reverse.
Original (JP version) text, my translation, and the official English (NA version) translation are displayed side-by-side in columns for easier viewing, and to allow comparisons.

E-mail comments, corrections, etc.

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