Breath of Fire IV
Wow. Capcom needs to bring this damn series back. Breath of Fire IV is hands down one of the best PS1 JRPGs I have played. It is peak Breath of Fire. They took everything they learned from their previous titles and made a true gem here.
We’ll start with the graphics. This game holds up insanely well. The watercolor/hand-drawn aesthetic still looks amazing today. I played on my OLED Vita and it looked like a modern game. Maybe blown up on a big screen it would show some roughness around the edges but handheld is perfect.
The story here is interesting. Instead of Ryu being the main character, you see the story of Ryu from the eyes of Nina. She’s the real main character here. It was an interesting shift in narrative. The game starts with Nina and Cray (a member of the Woren clan, like Katt from Breath of Fire II) traveling the desert in a sandflier, that gets accidentally wrecked by the sand dragon. From there we meet a naked Ryu, and the rest is, as you could say, history. Lots of twists and turns here. The character development is fantastic, and I loved Cray. He was probably my favorite character in this one, the comic relief.
The battle system is where this game really shines. You have your entire group at your disposal. The three front line attackers are who you issue orders to. The three back line members will slowly regain temporary AP to use if you sub them back in. You can also revive or heal the back line members from the front line. Magic takes a much bigger role in this game than some previous games. Magic can be combo’d together to create stronger attack or healing spells. It can really turn the tide on a harder battle, and believe me, there are some hard battles here. Randoms and bosses.
The music in this game is top notch. There wasn’t a tune out of place, and everything fit the atmosphere. There were a lot of different locations that each had their own track. There were also a lot of emotional moments where every track fit perfectly.
I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about this. If I had to dig for one it would be the camera was a little hard to work around sometimes. Oh and there was a hide and seek game that took a little longer than I wanted it to.
If you’re a fan of the classics, don’t skip this one! You can either emulate it, buy it for the PS1, or download the PC version free from the link below!
