by Jay "THE FLEA" Wade
Capcom s hit RPG series returns to the PSX in Breath of Fire IV.
In this epic you play as a young hero named Ryu (Isn t this the name of a Street Fighter character?)
He is found by a princess after a accident and is not sure of his past. (heros in RPGs seem to have this problem a lot) In a war torn world that the princess is trying to find her sister. Ryu discovers he s got dragon powers, And can transform into a dragonman. In your quest you encounter many fun and interesting allies and foes.
This is the basic story to Breath of Fire, it s basic classic RPG, it s fun and refreshing to see.
The game play is as close to the old style of RPGs as your going to get now a days.
Battles are turns based but all your characters can do battle. There up to six characters you ll have in your party and three will do battle, then you may switch to any of the other characters any time during the battle. This a most handy.
The world map is track controlled like Legend of Dragoon or Tactics Ogre. And a ? will pop up and you may choose to search the area for monsters and secret items. Personally I prefer the Freedom exploration world map, but this works for this game. At least you don t have to revisit every town you pass like in Legend of Dragoon.
The town mapping has some problems with the control and camera angles. You ll lose your characters behind an object like buildings and such, you can change the angle with a button but your changing angles all the time just to see where your going. And getting the characters to face some directions can be a hassle sometimes, they seem to miss the target a lot. Whether it s talking to another character or turning down a small alleyway.
The graphics are 2-D with a few 3-D elements. The characters, towns, and enemies are great to look at. Fun, colorful and vary well animated. Capcom does great work in 2-D.
Breath of Fire 4 is a big improvement from Breath of Fire 3. In graphics, story, gameplay and characters. The control still needs some find tuning but it s not unplayable.
Overall Breath of Fire 4 in RPG worth your gaming time and dollars. If you where disappointed by BoF3, you might want to give BoF4 a try. You might like what you see.
PUBLISHER: CAPCOM
GRAPHICS: 9 MUSIC & SOUND: 8 CONTROL: 7
SECRETS: 8 ORIGINALITY: 8.5 FUN & REPLAY: 9.5
OVERALL: 9