Breath of Fire IV (2000)

Beat most of the game. It fixed just about every flaw in BoF3, but I did not really enjoy this game any more so. The story was better paced and more interesting, especially with the final boss being the other half of Ryu and being playable at times. The bad ending where you joined with the final boss and controlled him vs the entire party was very cool; I 2 shot them by using the hit all to 1hp move followed by the big hit all breath attack. Nina seemed like the main character for most of the game; starting off as her, having her narrate, and lead most dialogue. Her ability to fly up and get a better view of the area was my favorite, so I kept her in the lead. The game should have been played from her high up view all the time because the camera angle was atrocious. While it was not a big deal in most combat areas, the towns were a nightmare to navigate. The game still relied too heavily on camera rotating, and had that same awkward diagonal movement. The biggest improvement to the game was streamlined mechanics: saving on the world map without needing to camp, examine merged with guard, handy tool tips and overall user friendliness around the skill system, changing masters in camp, master skills not requiring staying under that master, every master giving a cool passive buff for being apprenticed to them, and more straightforward dragon transformations. I looked up the stat growth charts for the characters and there was no point in swapping masters at certain levels to min max stats. Every character gained more stats each level than would be penalized, except for a couple of levels for Ursula and Ershin. This changed at levels 60+, but I never got close to that high.

Just like in BoF3, Ryu was a Jack of all paladin hero type who needed every stat. He lost white magic but still got some healing spells in dragon form, as well as breaths and black magic. I focused him as a warrior under Una and later Kryrik to get high hp, power and defense while penalizing mana and wisdom. He was the fastest on the front line and overall most effective. I gave him items for + power and agility. Ershin consistently had the highest power for the early to mid game because I cheaped out on buying stuff and her weapons were found rather than bought. By the end she had the highest defense and 2nd highest hp and power (though Ryu shot ahead with the royal sword in post game). Her agility and mana were mediocre. She was the tank and followed the same masters as Ryu. I gave her a few agility and mana items. Cray hit the hardest and had the most hp, but was slow as a rock. I gave him a few mana items to offset his terrible mana. These 3 formed my front line and defeated most enemies using normal attacks. Scias and Ursula were both hybrid Jack of all types. I did not want to ruin either their physical attack power or wisdom/mana, so it was tough to choose an appropriate master. Scias went with Rwolf early on and I used him more as a caster, until I unlocked the faerie master for the best agility bonus and a boost to mana and wisdom with the low cost of less hp. By the time I got Ursula she stuck with the faerie, other than 1 or 2 mix max levels under another master. Both characters had high agility, good magic and decent physical attack. Nina went full spellcaster under Rwolf and then Abbess, and was the fastest. She was both main healer and main black mage, and never went low on mp. I gave her most of the hp up items.

By far the best aspect of this game was the combat system; 10/10 for sure. Every rpg should have something like this. It reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy 10, only better. 3 characters fight in the front while the others chill in the back, though can still be targeted by healing and buffs, as well as tick other effects. Each turn the characters can be swapped on the fly in very user friendly and streamlined fashion. It is as simple as selecting the 3 characters you want to act in the order you want them to go. Faster characters will automatically delay their action when placed behind slower, and equipment can be freely swapped. I loved being able to customize my gear setup for the current situation; an elemental weapon to exploit weakness, protective accessory for specific enemies only, and passive healing item for someone in the back row. Even though it was unrealistic to be able to switch armor during combat, and pass items back and forth, it made for excellent tactical gameplay. Characters in the back also generated temporary mana each turn that could only be used in that combat, making nuking and healing even more viable. I had tremendous fun switching out my heavy warriors for the mages to take down physical resistant enemies or large groups, and using their speed to snipe low hp enemies before they could attack. I was somewhat mixed on the combo system though. On the one hand, I liked being able to combine spells to make more powerful spells; usually Ursula’s fire + Nina’s wind to make gigaflare, or Nina’s wind + Scias’ water to make lighting, or 2 vitalize for massive entire party healing, or both girls using fire. On the other, the more complex and obscure combos were difficult to know without using a guide, and combos did not always activate. I hated how debuffs almost never worked, unless a bunch were comboed together. 0 mp abilities like snap, swordbreaker and blind were useless because they did less damage than a normal attack and the chance of applying the debuff was so low that I gave up using them. But the biggest flaw of the game was that the combat difficulty did not force use of the amazing combat system; the length of dungeons, frequency of encounters, and their difficulty was not enough to offer me much challenge. The first half of the game was so easy that I did not bother to buy equipment. Ryu and Cray were still going around in loincloths by midgame, and still not having trouble defeating enemies. It was not until the shipwreck island that I started to feel slightly challenged, though that was largely because I artificially lengthened the duration of that dungeon by falling off the plank maze so many times. I made efficient use of temporary mana to heal, and never needed to use hp/mp restore items, nor did the characters get anywhere near exhausting their mana reserves (except for Ryu during the final boss and Rider).

I bought some new equipment in the islands, and the western continent was slightly more challenging. Even the final dungeon was not very hard, as the 3 warriors barely took any damage and were hitting for well over 2000 damage each, owning the strongest monsters in a single turn. I missed the blue charm and thus the ultimate dragon equipment until after beating the final boss, who was a pretty good challenge because I insisted on prolonging the fight to steal his items. I used a basic guide for most of the game to make sure I did not miss anything and make my own strategies for bosses. The first form seen me keeping track of his elemental changes to swap in the appropriate elemental gear every turn, while Ryu and Ursula focused on stealing. Cray made good use of fire strike, Erishin had earth and wind strike, and Nina could exploit each weakness. The final form was less tedious, being more about keeping up with healing. I put the wounded 3 in the back and waited until all 6 characters were low on hp before doing a huge vitalize combo. Once I stole his sword, I went full out offense and wrecked him. In the clear game I went back and did the bad ending, then fooled around with the optional super enemy Rider. I did get a rusted sword and spent a little while killing weak enemies (maybe 200/1000) before getting sick of it and buying a scramsax for Ryu. I had encountered the Rider earlier without knowing how overpowered it was, and managed to swipe a king’s armor in a couple turns before fleeing. I then went back and the front row wiped in 1 turn. In the post game I made several attempts to defeat Rider before settling on a strategy that worked for me (which was not the same as the guide). Now, my winning attempt took longer than ideal because Ryu died and then it seemed like celerity overwrote his level 3 focus, so I had to focus from 0 again. For this I changed the warriors’ master to Bunyan for accuracy, and the other 3 to Khan for self revive. The basic plan was for Ryu to turn into Kaiser, Erishin use stand out, and Cray use war shout. Then Ryu used celerity (I made the mistake of using focus first), Ershin switched to +agility gear to go ahead of Rider and use resist, while Cray used the king’s armor for focus. Celerity gave Ryu max attack even with the weak scramsax, then Cray buffed might on himself and Ershin, and used a wisdom fruit on Ryu. Finally after Ryu was at level 3 focus I used shadowwalk, which hit twice for a grand total of about 33,000 damage. Then Ershin, still in agility gear, comboed with super combo, getting around 7 hits for about 800 to 900 damage each, which was just enough to kill Rider. Damn, killed in 2 attacks after surviving like 12 turns of combat. Cray with his level 3 focus had a triple blow lined up to go, so it was way overkill. At this point I stopped playing.

I wish the game skipped the stupid mini games in favour of actual long grueling dungeons that pushed the combat system to its limit. The only mini games that were passable were the ship sailing and faerie village. Everything else can go straight to hell, though at least most were not as annoying as the ones from BoF3. I did the stupid pig herding game 3 times to get my points up to 20k to unlock the second dragon upgrade for Weyr, since my first was wasted on mammoth due to the confusing method of upgrading. How was I supposed to know the first form I used after reaching a certain point of arbitrary game points would be the upgrade? I tried to get points in the sandflier but could not figure out how to get them. Then there was the god awful fishing that was so bad it made me want to hack the game to bypass it. I hate fishing in general, but at least in BoF3 it was a relaxing if boring experience. Here though it was hair pullingly frustrating because the rare fish could only be caught by performing fancy techniques with the lure, and these required obscenely precise button inputs. Tech 4 was a simple 3 button press, pause, 2 button press, pause, 1 button, but I could only pull it off like 10% of the time. Such a simple pattern, yet so much time wasted trying to make it work. Whoever programmed it needed to make the input registration WAY more forgiving. So I finally got the 3000 fishing points needed to get the fish master, and never touched fishing again. His sweet ring of ice upgrade? All the high end gear and stat boosting items in the manillo shops that could only be traded for fish? Fuck that. I did happen to have enough fish to progress the story with the merchant who wanted something rare though, so I did that.

Final game stats:

Ryu: Level 42, 2668 hp, 175 mp, 343 power, 292 defense, 115 agility, 103 wisdom, royal sword (also cursed sword, dragon blade, flame sword, and scramsax), royal armor. Accessory was usually something protective or titan boots. Skills: Pilfer, shadowwalk, tiger fist, celerity, last resort, focus, benediction, palliate.

Ershin: Level 41, 2708 hp, 55 mp, 332 power, 312 defense, 78 agility, 107 wisdom, power glove, chopam plate. Accessory was usually something protective or titan boots. Skills: Super combo, searing sand, wind strike, snap, swordbreaker, resist, counter, rest.

Cray: Level 41, 3059 hp, 37 mp, 387 power, 296 defense, 43 agility, 46 wisdom, cudgel, mist armor. Accessory was usually something protective or titan boots. Skills: Triple blow, holy strike, flame strike, cleave, timed blow, reversal, war shout, monopolize.

Nina: Level 42, 1596 hp, 323 mp, 153 power, 181 defense, 195 agility, 355 wisdom, rune staff, angel’s vest, wisdom ring (or protective as necessary). Skills: Flame pillar, magic ball, icicle, plateau, oracle, command, faerie attack, concentrate.

Scias: Level 41, 1676 hp, 161 mp, 259 power, 250 defense, 192 agility, 156 wisdom, cleaver, king’s armor. Accessory was wisdom ring, speed boots, or protection as needed. Skills: Charm, transfer, clip, douse, megaphone, coward’s way, supplication, snooze.

Ursula: Level 41, 1580 hp, 185 mp, 246 power, 200 defense, 177 agility, 189 wisdom, mortar, phantom dress (which made her immune to healing magic, so I had to take it off sometimes). Accessory was artemis cap for attacking, wisdom ring for nuking, protection as needed. Skills: Steal, double blow, egghead, spiritblast, faerie charge, curse, faerie breath, final hope.

Most of their skills I never needed to use. I probably should have gotten ebonfire for Ursula. I also hardly ever used the dragon summons.

8.0/10

Pros: -Beautiful graphics -The Fou Lu / Ryu duality is interesting -You can switch characters in-battle

Cons: -Pointless minigames -Luck-based combos -Limited fast travel (Shift)

My experience with Breath of Fire IV was kind of a mixed bag. The basics like story and presentation are fine, but as you dig a bit deeper you begin to see the nasty bits of problems and little annoyances this game has.

For example the combo system is pretty cool: you can combine skills according to their elements and unleash powerful attacks. You then eventually realize that this is a random system and sometimes the combos don't work even if you do everything correctly. I don't know how the heck someone thought this was a good idea.

Then you get a fast travel ability, so you can easily go back to previous towns to buy things or talk to certain NPCs. Ok, excellent! But then the game expects you to visit every place again (by foot) only so you can warp, because you can only use this in towns visited after getting the skill. What???

Slowly but surely the bad stuff starts to add up: unnecesary minigames one after the other, pointless little obstacles like the snake in the swamp area or pushing the levers to move the dam. The last dungeon is a huge confusing mess and dont get me started on the freaking Golden Plains, by far the worst part of the game.

All in all, BoF 4 is still a traditional JRPG, just a tiny bit above average and honestly not that much better than the previous 3 games.

Just passed the part where you have to play hide and seek with the kids. I hated it :)

The spin-the-wheel minigame was so unnecessary... I dont know why the Breath of Fire games insist on including this little timewasters.

I liked the fact that you can properly use the 4th member of your party during combat and actually switch to them in the middle of the fight. Also, the combo system is kind of neat.

“Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

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With this review of Breath of Fire IV, I have now encircled the entire run of the Breath of Fire series, as far as this writer is concerned. Beyond this point there be monsters.

Yes, there are indeed more Breath of Fire games after IV but Capcom’s answer to Square’s successful Final Fantasy franchise performed the video game equivalent of jumping the shark. Before moving to mobile (often the veritable death of a franchise at least in terms of priority that its creators give to it) the Breath of Fire games were fine representatives of the standards and traditions of JRPGs. While none of the previous games stood out as shining fantasy stars against Final Fantasy, they were at least cohesive and you knew what you were getting when you played a Breath of Fire game. Changes in tone and gameplay which took place in the series from the first game to the third were not drastic.

As I’ve mentioned in my critiques of the previous three games in the series, Breath of Fire was steadfast and stalwart about RPG traditions. Whereas Final Fantasy was frequently about innovation, Breath of Fire never moved too far beyond static turn-based combat, experience grinding, linear storytelling, and random encounters. Oh there are similarities between the two franchises, such as their dedication to recurring names like Cid, Bahamut, and Ultima or Ryu, Nina, and Wyndia.

Each Final Fantasy reinterprets itself and takes us into a new world, the previous game being truly a “last” fantasy adventure in that universe with those characters (though direct sequels have in recent history changed this). With Breath of Fire, the games (at least one through three) have a clear and direct relationship with each other, and this can even be explored to some extent through to this fourth title. It would seem that telling a long, continuous saga spread out across millennia is much more difficult than being allowed the creative freedom to tell new kinds of stories with new characters and new mechanics. Final Fantasy lent itself to being reinterpreted whereas Breath of Fire did not, until Capcom forced it into a new interpretation too far from its roots. Thus Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter seems to have alienated and lost the series’ core fanbase and Capcom’s dragons have never been the same since. Heck, Breath of Fire 6 was never released outside of Japan, anyway.

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2017/12/04/breath-of-fire-iv/