Breath of Fire IV

"It would appear that Breath of Fire IV is very good... but not as good as it should`ve been."

Capcom`s flagship rpg series says goodbye to the PlayStation with a very good yet slightly disappointing new installment. While this fourth part contains all the necessary elements to satisfy even the biggest Breath of Fire hater, the story is still too straightforward and lighthearted when it could (and should) have been way deeper and intricate.

Story 7/10:
Easily the best, but still the only important drawback in the series, too uncomplicated, similar to the previous installments and with a mute Ryu. What`s worst, with a premise as good, great characters, and an opening sequence that seemed so ambitious what comes next is a big letdown, there should have been lots of anime cut scenes, more complex events and a much better character interaction.

Graphics 10/10:
In the vein of Breath of Fire III only that a lot more colorful and detailed, and I mean a lot!. The battle graphics are just brilliant, the animations are crisp, clear and very stylish, they show us again how superior 2D graphics are always going to be.

What I don`t get are the 3D bosses, I mean, how come?, why?, aside from the fact that they pale when compared to the regular 2D enemies (even the most puny little ones), most of the 3D deigns are really cheap. I just don`t get it. There are also 3D summoning sequences, which look much better but still not nearly as good as they could have been in 2D.

The opening sequence would have been perfect were it not for the terrible character designs I am going to complain now, however, as it`s usual, another thing I don`t get is this: why there is only one anime sequence and where in the world are those places displayed in the sequence?, this is a huge letdown, specially if the sequence looks so cool and interesting.

Something that most people would find sad, specially fans of the second game, are the progressively ugly character portraits. While far the from the childish and simplistic looks of the third part, they are too odd sometimes, and a bit grotesque, specially the human characters. They are still very good, superb sometimes, and they are the best ever when compared to the puke-inducing designs from Dragon Quarter, but, like I said in my Breath of Fire III review, where in the world are the character designers from Breath of Fire II?.

Music 8/10:
Quite hard to rate in my opinion, sometimes excellent, sometimes mediocre and sometimes non-existent.

At the beginning, aside from the absolutely, positively, unbelievably AWESOME opening theme, there is not much to be exited about, fortunately once we reach Synesta the music gets way better, and we get to hear many wonderful themes. The main problem here are the many spots without music, mainly forest, caves, ruins etc, and that is a big flaw.

Gameplay 10/10:
Not much to say here, it looks a bit different but in essence the gameplay is still the same, and for that reason excellent.

The battles have some innovations for example, the first and most important one are the combos, we can make more powerful attacks by combining spells. For example if a character casts fire and the next one wind, the result is a fire storm. Sadly this is not as deep as it seems, the combinations a bit limited.

Something excellent is that we can switch between character in the middle of the battle, we can only fight with three characters at the same time, but if we want we can switch between them whenever we want, kinda like switching characters in Final Fantasy X, or well, exactly like Final Fantasy X.

The nice map from the previous installment has been drastically simplified, instead of the beautiful world maps from the previous installments here we are given the choice of going to certain place by that direction. On the good side, it is fast and intuitive.

Buying items is now a lot more interesting than before, we can trade a lot of different items to obtain new ones, we can even trade the item we are wielding to pay less for the new ones.

The items, weapon and armor systems, magic skill, techniques etc etc etc work in the same way than before, so they are perfect...well, excepting maybe for one small problem, the thing is that we can`t change the dialogue box`s color like in the third part, this is not good because it is extremely hard to see the numbers with those ultra bright colors they have.

As we can rotate the camera most of the time, the scenarios are like more intricate, sometimes there are important places or people hidden behind a wall that we can`t see if we don`t rotate the camera. This is one of the main reasons why I don`t like games where we are forced to change viewpoints, I can`t stand having to rotate the camera all the time. The good thing here is that as I said before we can only rotate our view through four directions, no a big deal.

An important flaw is the difficulty, rpgs are way easier nowadays than they were years ago, and if they aren`t it doesn`t matter because all the non-Japanese versions are way easier than the Japanese original, and Breath of Fire IV is one of the easiest rpgs I have ever played.

Replay Value:
Basically the same as always, finding all the Masters, Fish Spots, the famous Fairy Colony with its special mini games, Sound Test, illustrations, etc. The length is also the same as always. Around forty hours of gameplay.

As a result:
There you have, Breath of Fire IV is the best Breath of Fire yet (excluding Dragon Quarter, which I have yet to play), however, being the fourth in the series as well as one of the last (more or less) rpgs on the PlayStation Breath of Fire IV leaves a bit to be desired, it is a very enjoyable, fun, classic and good looking game, but I was expecting more from such a long running series.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/20/04