Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12904 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Capcom
• Released on: 2001-08-03
• Platform: PlayStation

Amazon.co.uk Review
. Although the fourth instalment in the Breath of Fire series is a fine role-playing game, it doesn't quite hold a flame to the best of the alternatives.

Breath of Fire IV is a single-player game that continues the story with these "dragon people" who gave their lives to eradicate the evil goddess and restore peace in their world. This time around, battle has broken out between two powerful continents, and the fair Princess Elena has disappeared during a tour of the war-torn region. The princess's sister, Nina, who reigns o'er the Windia Kingdom, vows to retrieve her missing sibling. She meets Ryu along the way, who joins the epic quest.

Breath of Fire IV's gameplay is refreshingly simple, with only a few minor additions to its predecessor's battle system. Most noticeably, a new combo system lets spells dish out more damage than when cast alone, by working in conjunction with other spells. As before, Ryu can transform into a dragon or hybrid half-human, half-dragon creature to gain special attack powers. The party will pick up other drifters throughout the game, some of whom have the power to transform.

Each town opens up a new set of subquests and minigames (yup--there's another fishing game here, folks), both of which add longevity and replayability to Breath of Fire IV, although not everyone will appreciate the mandatory nature of these diversions.

Like many Japanese-bred RPGs, the musical score and crisp sound effects are excellent, but there is very little voice talent in the game. In all, Breath of Fire IV is a solid, although not fantastic, RPG. --Todd Mowatt

Manufacturer's Description
Breath of Fire IV continues the epic tale of the dragon people who gave their lives to destroy the evil goddess of the land and bring peace back to their world. In this incarnation, a war has taken place between two continents separated by a nearly impenetrable swampland

The fair Princess Elena travels to comfort the battle-worn people of the land, but after stopping in a small town she goes missing. Nina, Elena's sister, and herself princess of Windia Kingdom, sets out in search of Elena and on her journey finds Ryu, who joins up in her quest.

Breath of Fire IV is a one-player role-playing game that combines two-dimensional Japanese anime-style characters with a fully three-dimensional, interactive environment. Players can explore immense 3-D surroundings and, with a touch of a button, change the camera view to reveal secret passageways, hidden treasures, power-ups or even monsters lying in wait.

Customer Reviews

A lovely world to explore
BoF IV delivers greater graphics than BoF III but starts slower - earning it some peoples disregard, wanting an experience as lively as BoF III. But if you stick through the beginning you'll be instantly whirled up in a story, epic in scope rivalling some of the Final Fantasy legends. The characters are effervescent and the baddies dispicable (some you sympathise for - an ecellent feat in an RPG story). Gameplay is a 5/5 - the battles easy to deal with.
Graphics 4.5/5 - you'll love the dragon sequences!
Sound 4/5 - some very atmospheric music and nice SFX.
Lastability 5/5 - you find secret things well after you've completed it.
BoF IV hasn't had much exposure but it's well up there in the best of playstation RPGs.

Breath of Fire? Sigh of Relief for a decent RPG!
Decent RPGs are few and far between – every gamer knows this and Capcom’s release of this game was very welcome, especially in Europe, where the Final Fantasy’s (as welcome as they are) just aren’t enough for some people’s appetites.

This one won’t be for everyone – the story is quite vast and sets itself up relatively quickly which requires the player to keep track of what is going on.

The story goes that a Princess Elena has disappeared thus requiring here sister, Nina, to go and find her. On this journey, she meets Ryu (which means dragon in Japanese), the protagonist, and they set off on their adventure (Ryu tags along because he has lost his memory). While this is happening the other main character, Fou-Lu, has awoken from a deep sleep to discover all is not what it should be…

The two stories are independent to start, which works well (you are curious to know what the other is doing) but is frustrating as the story jumps quite a lot. However, the changes in story are handled well, no doubt helped by the graphics that make everything much easier to understand.

For a PlayStation game, the graphic don’t test the hardware, but at least Capcom have not been lazy: some beautiful effects are coupled with nicely drawn backgrounds that add a lot of depth to the gameplay.

My only gripe with the game here is that the camera only has eight viewpoints from above (isometric 3D). Sometimes in the towns, this just is not enough – one can’t see where the characters are which makes it difficult to navigate. However, it’s not like you are being attacked in the towns, so this is less of a worry.

The battle system works well allowing all the different characters (and you do gain some friends pretty quickly) to come into each battle. You originally have 3 players up front but it is easy to swap to the others to use their attacks or magic. The battles are fun and for the most part play out quickly – the animation when Ryu turns into a dragon is particularly pleasing but it becomes tedious because it takes so long.

The last thing to mention about this game is the mini-games: they come in many different guises (some of them you won’t even realise are mini-games until afterwards) and are a lot of fun. They generally involve button pushing or the usual but the circumstances in which they appear make them very enjoyable – my personal favourite was having to force-feed a man for information (don’t worry, it makes more sense in the game)!

Overall, this is a solid RPG from a company not so renowned for this genre. It will take you a good couple of weeks to get through properly, if you play regularly and with little else on the horizon until the summer and Final Fantasy X then you could do a lot worse than to start checking out the back catalogue of the PlayStation.

An improvement on the last!
This is a vast imporvement on Breath of Fire 3. Though the story of the game sticks to the usual "dragon-boy seeks the history of his people" storyline, it handles it much better than before. The difficulty curve is less steep, (i don't i died more than twice in the whole game) and the monsters seem less numerous than in the previous games, although the game does remain a challenge. There are also sub-games to play along the way and of course the good old fishing spots (fishing is now also easier).
Capcom have moved away from the overly cartoony graphics of previous efforts and the world is now comprised of softer pastel shades with more realistic enemies.
Story-wise the game is split in two. The main character and his allies who are struggling to reach the Empire and the Dangerous Fou-Lu, the ancient Dragon/God/Emperor who is a lethal opponent! You control both at various stages of the game.
This is an excellent RPG!