The game wastes no time introducing its darker and edgier flavor as compared to the relatively lighthearted first in the series. We're treated to dramatically ominous music and a monstrous vertical eye, and then the thing speaks.

Fortunately, that soon fades, to be replaced with a more customary, though monochrome, scene in a fairly ordinary church.

Though after that opening, maybe we should be suspicious of churches.

Regardless, a girl runs down the stairs and outside, followed by an aging man.

It seems a more likely name with two Ns, at least to me. The doubled consonant also fits the phonetics better, since it can't be read as "gainer".

He calls up the stairs.

The text uses a different variable for Ryu's name during the prologue, perhaps due to referencing a different character slot, but it's the same name.

The scene changes to upstairs, where the player now controls the boy Ryu. Let's head downstairs before Ganner calls again.

At this point, I find that the GBA version has added some convenient features, including the always-welcome ability to dash so it doesn't take as long to get around, and the Quick Save function that has become fairly standard and especially helps when using a device that has to deal with limited battery life but doesn't have much risk of a sudden power outage. The menu and interface seem otherwise unchanged so far beyond necessary button remapping. Character portraits (and the title screen, for that matter) have been redrawn in a style similar to Breath of Fire IV's artwork. And the music quality is distinctly worse than in the SFC original, but you'd expect that from this generation of handheld systems, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much.

Either way, Ryu has to go look for Yua.

The usual RPG looting mindset applies perfectly well here. Search every dresser and set of shelves in every building in every town to find all sorts of things throughout the course of the game. For instance, Ryu has a Wood Rod for fishing stored in his room.

This is a small town, with only a few houses besides the church. A dragon statue, like the ones the first game used as save points, stands in the corner of town, but in addition to standing out in the open instead of being enshrined, the statue seems to be inert. Everyone knows Ryu, and both their words and the typically yellowish color of the Dragon's Tear (though everything else except occassional emphasized text remains greyscale) indicate that they're reasonably fond of him, even the elderly person he can interrupt in a private restroom.

The game seems to have something of an obsession with toilets, perhaps as a reaction to how often games leave them out entirely.

Other villagers have more pertinent information to share.

(The Dragon's Tear turns greener with a positive sound at the end of the "can't stay lonely forever" line.)

Searching the back of the village after hearing about Yua's likely destination reveals an overgrown field past a tuft of grass. The scene suddenly changes to full color as Ryu finds Yua in a clearing at the bottom of a cliff with an unmoving dragon draped over it. Judging by what looks like moss growing on it, the dragon has been here for quite some time, and its head and claws appear to cover openings in the cliff. However, the monster that jumps out and attacks Ryu proves a more urgent concern. He fights bravely, but is ultimately no match for it...

...so it's fortunate that Ganner followed him here and has no difficultly obliterating the monster with magic.

The combat system awards the experience points and money to Ryu. Both values are boosted in the GBA version. It turns out that most enemies in this version give double or even triple experience and Zeny. I'm sure some people won't like it, but with only so much time in the day, I, for one, don't mind less grinding. Unfortunately, drop rates don't seem to be any higher, so rare equipment could still take forever to get...

Yua consistently ends her sentences with an exaggerated のに (no ni), a particle combination that normally indicates constrast between two phrases, similar to "even though" or "despite". However, the way she draws out the sound and wildly overuses it suggests that she's latched onto it in a childish sort of way and simply likes the way it sounds, either not fully understanding the meaning or just not caring. While it does occassionally apply properly for some of her sentences (for instance, in the first line above it could express the opposition between his chiding her for coming here and her wanting to see her mother), more often than not it makes no grammatical sense. Given that, I thought it made sense to translate it as a mindless addition to the sentence (" 'spite ") that carries a hint of meaning but serves no real purpose. Also, remember this particular verbal tic for much later...

The GBA version switches the background to a picture of their mother at this point. She's quite pretty, with long blue hair and what look like angelic wings, but they're probably just an embellishment... or are they?

Ganner turns to Ryu as they leave.

Choose "No", and nothing happens. Choose "Yes", and Ryu sees a glimpse of the foreboding eye shown earlier. Either way, when Ryu returns to the village, things have changed dramatically. Ganner and Yua are nowhere to be found, and as for the other villagers...

Unsurprisingly, going in the occupied bathroom is now met with open hostility.

(The Dragon's Tear turns a shade darker with an unpleasant sound at the end of the above line.)

The rest of the town is much the same. Let's try the church, then.

...well, considering it IS his own home...

Having little choice, Ryu accepts the hospitality, such as it is. Later that night, another child resting there hops out of bed.

He has dog-like features, and proceeds to rummage through everything.

Ryu confronts him.

The kid leaves, but nothing else happens until Ryu approaches the stairs, at which point the other kid reappears.

Like Ryu, Bosch has a different variable for his name during the introduction, presumably for the same reason.

Either way, they leave together. The priest is dozing off downstairs.

No one stops them as they leave the village, but Bosch halts not far outside.

I know it's more an idiom than not, but seeing "looks" like rain after he's clearly scenting the air just doesn't feel right.

Sure enough, it starts pouring soon after.

But he refuses to turn back...

I'm not really satisfied with this line. 今さら (ima sara) is one of those phrases that's difficult to translate cleanly. It does mean "now", but with a sense that things woul have been different before and it's too late to turn back at this point. In this case, I think, the idea isn't that they couldn't physically turn back and take shelter in the village, but that having already stolen a candle, snuck out, and made up their minds to go elsewhere, it doesn't feel like a viable option any more.

...so the uninviting cave up ahead will have to do.

Naturally, leaving is not an option...

...so they continue inside by the faint light of the candle. Something resembling a huge scorpion tail slithers away ahead of them.

And he won't accept any other course of action...

...so really, he has no one but himself to blame when it stops and they come face-to-face with a large monster.

The monster swats Bosch aside with its tail. Ryu rushes forward, looks over in the direction Bosch was flung, then turns to face the beast. It speaks.

"Child for the mission" is also fine, and "child with a calling" or something similar would be, too... Meanwhile, I've decided to just go ahead and call him The Chosen One. In any case, highlighting just "child" and not the entire phrase completely misses the point.

Ryu and the monster バルバロイ enter combat.

Japanese Wikipedia tells me that バルバロイ is a rendition of the Greek word that Latin's "barbarus" and English's "barbarous" come from, so...

Barbarous levels Ryu in a single unfairly overpowered attack before he can even act (dodging is a rare possibility but only delays the inevitable).

...and then we see the textover scenes that I started this page for in the first place...

The official English version of the following lines, though grammatical, has serious problems with getting the meaning right. The Japanese version displays the exact same English text, perhaps for flavor, along with the Japanese text, but accuracy was clearly not a priority, since they weren't writing for a fluent audience. It should never have appeared unedited in an English release, but Capcom bungled the localization rather badly overall, and this is just one of many issues. Honestly, it reads as though they gave a very rough translation to a native English speaker, who then rewrote it to sound good without knowing what it originally meant.

The English is also, in both the Japanese and English versions, displayed in a special all-caps font with a script look. The Japanese text, in the Japanese version, scrolls along the bottom of the screen and doesn't have line breaks as usual, so I've added some for readability.

No, actually, it doesn't remain just a dream. It was just so unreal that it seemed like one. But it all happened, and that's kind of important.

We now see what appears to be a tall tower in a very dark region. Underground?

Cut to title card. And then continue.

The GBA version adds here a brief image of kid Ryu that fades out and is replaced by an image of grown Ryu.