Breath of Fire IV

Capcom - 2000

Breath of Fire. If you have never touched this genre and want a plot, play 4 first. If you like that, play the others. If you want a mindless game, go get 1. It's on the Advance. My order goes as follows: 4,3,1,2. The plots, while could possibly be connected, don't have enough in common to want you to play them in any order. Just remember, while Ryu and Nina are in all of them, they are different Ryus and Ninas, so you don't get more powerful characters, a la Suikoden or Arc the Lad. Now on to the review.

Breath of Fire 4. This has the most plot, and is actually good, so I won't ruin it. You get to control both Ryu and FuSuLu throughout the game, it auto switches so don't worry. The plot is well written, and while side quests are still a major part of this game, it isn't as much as the past games, if you are able to understand that. Yeah there are a lot, and if you just played this game, you would think it was overdone, but it has the least amount of any of the BoFs.

Original Stuff: Everything original in BoF3 was redone to be better. That's about it. The learning techniques from enemies is fixed and modified to be really fun to do. Instead of studying enemies, you just defend, which is handier, cause you take half damage this way. Also, the enemies are crazy, cause they only use spells under certain circumstances that you have to fulfill. Still sprites on polygon backgrounds, but more animations and better looking sprites and backgrounds. Lots of Dragon Summons, like from Final Fantasy, and you can skip them after the first time. Also, Ryu's dragon spells are cool, but there is no dragon gene system from 3. That is the only thing I missed. The fairy village is back and a lot better than 3. Lots of extra stuff. I suggest buying the strategy guide for this one cause it is way confusing to do all the extra stuff. All the characters are cool in this one as well, which is original. In battles, you can use all 6 characters. The front 3 fight, and the 3 in the back can sometimes heal and help fight. They restore magic points (Ability Points if you want it right) and can be switched out with the front row whenever you want. Very handy! The plot is really well done as well. You get to play with the bad guy as well every now and then. It's extremely cool watching his bad-arseness being cool. Even if he does look a bit like Sepheroth. The map is different as well, but you still can choose when you fight on the map, and can camp out. But you don't fight in the dungeons themselves, but cut to a normal fight screen, which I think is better. The fishing game is cleaned up even more than BoF3, and is still a bit fun, if a bit harder.

What liked: The characters look cool, but Ryu, while still cool, isn't as cool as he was in 3 as an adult. Nina is also my second favorite, with 3's adult as 1st favorite. The other characters are also very cool. I liked all that original stuff as well.

What disliked: There are a lot of mini games. This is mostly fine, but sometimes gets annoying for you play a bunch in a row, especially at the beginning of the game. The dragon gene system is gone, and the master system is still there, but not as important. I can't really think of anything I really disliked. It's a great game.

What to expect: Same as BoF3, more plot and better translations than the last three games! A great looking game, that plays sort of well. Better than most RPG's, with exception of Vagrant Story and the like. A lot like BoF3, but cleaned up and better feeling and looking. With a very new plot, and eastern feel.

What not to expect: Graphics like FF8. True, I actually prefer sprites to polygons, except in new PS2 games where the polygons can look stylized and cartoony enough to look like sprites, like Kingdom Hearts for example. Don't expect cut scenes galore like in Final Fantasy as well.

Ratings on:

Control: 8 - Still walk at angles, but with analog controls, it is better. I think that the controls are as good as can be for a game like this, except when you enter houses, and leave you appear right outside of the door. If you turn around, you auto enter the house again, and since the maps are diagonal setup, you do this frequently.

Graphics: 10 - Best sprites/polygons I have ever seen. And that is my favorite mix for RPGs.

Sound: 8 - I remember this soundtrack, and I liked it. Especially the frog-singing lady.

Style: 4 - Brought back most everything that BoF3 invented, but cleaned it up to work better.

1st hour: 8 - Wow, the story is told from Nina's pov. Sweet.

2nd hour: 9 - This is better than 3!

1st week: 10 - Heck ya! I'm never stopping!

2nd week: 8 - Ok, got a bit hard, and I can see a few flaws, but still really cool!

5th week: 9 - Man, I wish other people played this game, so I could discuss how great of a game it is with them... sigh.

#1 reason why I hate this game: Where's Rei? And why does Cray have a mullet? That's annoying.

Here's some facts about all 4 games. While not completely about 4, it has some about it, and stuff.

The thing about the BoF's is that while the plots are all similar, they take place either: A) In completely different worlds like Final Fantasy games. or B) Thousands of years after each other. It was shown in BoF3 that BoF1 happened before 3, but the other 2 games are not placed in any particular order. I prefer to think that they all happen a long period of time after each other. I also have 2 different orders I think the games may fall under, and reasons for each.

1) 4,1,3,2 - Since the dragon's emergence in the world is explained in 4, and shown how Dragons went from superpowerful creatures to the Fusulu/Ryu creature, the beginning of dragons is supposed to be shown. And since Deis is a dragon, and partly made by some guy in Breath of Fire 4, the Western mad scientist who also at the end of the game lives and states that he will make a god to compete with the dragons, aka Myria, the beginning of both the light dragons, Ryu's clan, and dark dragons, FuSuLu's who started together but broke apart, then in BoF1, the darks joined with Myria and tried to defeat the light dragons, but were beaten by another Ryu, who inprisoned Myria. Then Myria is freed after a long time, and in 3, she tries to kill all the Dragons. Ryu and Teepo are the only ones who survive, and Ryu kills Teepo and thus finishes the light and dark dragons together, and Myria dies too. Since Ryu is the only one who lives, he somehow repopulates the dragons, and Evans, a monster inprisoned by Myria, escapes. Another Ryu, a relative of the other Ryu's stops Evans.

2) 1,2,3,4 - This makes sense cause it is simple. We know for a fact that 3 follows 1, but we don't know if anything was in between. Since you fight Myria in both 3 and 1, is it argued that at the end of 1, you inprison Myria, and so Evans can escape his inprisonment and torture the world in 2. Then in 3, Myria is freed again and is finally killed. Since Myria states that the world will be flooded with desert, and in 4 the land is covered with desert and mud, a mix of sand and water, from the great sea and great desert in BoF3, it can be argued that 4 follows 3.

The Ryu in BoF2 was my least favorite. So the order, for all you math geniouses out there, is BoF3adult, BoF4, BoF1, BoF2, BoF3child. Now for my favorite Ninas. 3adult,4,2,1,3child. The Nina's switch in each game, starting with the kiddy-hyper one, to the mellow one, to the kiddyy-hyper one, to the trying to be mellow one. The kiddy-hyper ones wear pink as well, and the mellow ones wear blue, if that helps.

All the maps of BoF contain basically the same geographical landmarks and look sort of similar, an upsidedown U. Except BoF3, which never really gives you a map.

battle, falling and fight

By Hawke