Breath of Fire IV

I played and beat the PS1 version and love the hell out of this game. I know BoF3 is the fan favorite but I think 4 pushes ahead in many, many ways (they're both great so who cares). Without spoiling the story: characters are fun and interesting and really get a good amount of screen time each. Some are more focused than others but goodness they're all great. BoF4 solves my biggest gripe with earlier BoF titles, you ALWAYS have your full team with you. So it's not like 3 where if you went into a dungeon and 10 minutes in you find a door you can't access because you didn't bring in Rei or Momo? Well that was you leaving the dungeon to go get them. 4? You have ALL of them, so you just gotta swap to them to handle whatever comes up. Not all characters have an ability to do something on the field but those that do, you'll find that it's huge that you got 'em all with ya. (Well unless the story takes them out of your party for a bit which does happen) The port: The port is so far, exceptional with only a few issues. My biggest issue is there's a bilinear filter over all the pixel art that really takes away from the lovely pixel art. I really hate these filters and the GoG port as of this writing? It's not something you can turn off without a mod- which there is one. This GoG port is a lot better in terms of load times, instead of 4-5 seconds to load into each battle and a lot of slow fades to black for a lot of little things? Battles are near instantly loaded. Everything feels FAR snappier because all the masked loading is just gone. It also runs better than the PS1 version which, really pushed the hardware at the time to it's limit. Some towns would slow down real bad when turning the camera or having Nina fly. Not here so far. If GoG could just add an option to disable the bilinear filtering, it'd be the go-to way to play this game. There's a mod so it still is the best way to play it but, you know there's an asterix.

I never post reviews. Breath of Fire IV breaks that trend. One of the "holy grail" JRPGs from the Playstation 1 era (which for me is the greatest JRPG era), an absolute masterclass in pacing, design, and presentation. The visuals are unlike anything from the generation, and still have a cohesiveness that puts a majority of new games to shame. The fact that this is not only back, but part of the GOG Preservation Program, is astounding. I genuinely didn't think it would ever happen, but it did! Now, about releasing Breath of Fire III...... If you are, or have EVER been, a fan of turn-based JRPGs, this one is a no-brainer. A cream of the crop release, something that will last a lifetime. I mean, over 20k fans voted for this on the GoG Wishlist, 4 console generations (and damn near 30 years) after its initial launch, which shows the longevity and impact this one had. Breath of Fire for life!

I had forgotten how beautiful the music in this game is.

now BOF3 and i dont need anything else :D thank you GOG <3 Finally i can play this masterpiece on pc,and i dont mind paying for it!!!

Breath of Fire is my favorite JRPG series (other than Chrono Trigger/Cross, if you call 2 games a series), and BoF 3 is my favorite in the series. Next to that, would be BoF 2 and 4 roughly tied, then last would be 1 and Dragon Quarter, those games are kinda funky, but still good. We don't talk about the 6th one. In BoF tradition, your party consists of nothing but demi-humans and anthros, because if you had even 1 human in your party, that would be weird (for Breath of Fire). In both BoF 3 and 4, there is a unique enemy skill learning system, that almost no other JRPG has done (all I can think of is some FF games with Blue Magic and Enemy Skill materia), where you examine enemies and wait for them to cast a learnable skill, then whichever characters were examining them has a chance to learn it upon the enemy casting it. Only 1 instance of a skill can be learned at a time, but they can be transferred to other characters via use of a Skill Ink. There is also a Master system in BoF3/4, that influences stat growth, as well as teach characters useful abilities. Breath of Fire 3 had the far more interesting dragon system, where you find dragon genes throughout the game, and combine up to 3 of them in battle for many different wacky combinations of dragons, with different stats and abilities. In BoF 4, you just find the dragon lads playing hide n' seek after a certain point in the game, no derg combo system. There is the dragon summons, at least. There's also a Faerie Village system (also present in 3) where it's a town building minigame, where you build up useful item/weapon shops, among other things. BoF 4 also has a cool combo system, where you cast spells in order to unleash a more powerful combo spell, such as Fire + Wind = Simoon, etc. All of your party members are with you at all times in battle, with reserves being in the back row. Kind of like FF10, but better. Amazing JRPG series, wish Capcom would bring it back. Or at least port more games in the future.