Breath of Fire IV
First published in GRIND V, pages 204–207.
ARTWORK BY EMANUELE ARNALDI
RY U
GOG Preservation Program This game is part of the Good Old Games category. GOG preserves and maintains it to offer the best possible experience when it comes to games
GOG
good classics.
His origin and race remain unknown. What truly sets him apart is the Dragon’s Eye, a mysterious artefact that gives him the power to transform into a dragon and summon draconic forces.
U R SU LA
Raised in the strict world of the army, she has little experience of life outside military discipline. She is a formidable fighter, mastering both magic and conventional weapons with remarkable efficiency.
C R AY
He has a strong sense of responsibility and naturally slips into the role of group leader. He stands out thanks to solid offensive and defensive abilities, making him one of the team’s most reliable members.
GOG PRESERVATION PROGRAM is an initiative whose goal is to save the games that marked our childhood, to make them immortal...
How many of us have wanted to relive the experience of a game we button-mashed in childhood or adolescence, only to discover it won’t run on modern systems? Countless games are in that situation, and despite their impact on the industry, they’ve stayed stranded on retro platforms. Plenty of people would love to revisit classics like the first Silent Hill, Tenchu or even Parasite Eve, but that’s practically impossible for technical or legal reasons, which usually boil down to expired licences or plain incompatibility with modern hardware.
That point was even made by the Video Game History Foundation, which stated that 87% of games released before 2010 can’t even be accessed by the average consumer.
Keen to keep these titles alive and make them accessible to future generations, GOG launched the ‘Preservation Program’ – an initiative whose goal is to save the games that marked our childhood. So far they’ve managed to bring 167 creations from various studios back onto the market, all with improvements that let them run on modern systems.
The number itself is impressive, given that the programme launched on 13 November 2024! And to chip in with that effort, they have opened up the ‘Dreamlist’ to the public – a site where fans can propose, tell the story of and even vote for the creations they want to play again, or that have been lost in the mists of time.
Browsing the ‘Dreamlist’, I rediscovered a few games I’d forgotten about and voted for them to be added to the ‘Preservation Program’. I was pleasantly surprised to see titles like Dino Crisis 1 and 2, F.E.A.R. or even Star Wars:
Shadows of the Empire had made it into the programme and can be bought through the GOG Galaxy platform. But what really impressed me was the re-release of the much-loved Breath of Fire IV. This legendary game is one of the JRPGs that marked my childhood, because it was one of only two games of this genre I had on PlayStation 1 (the other being Chrono Cross). Just as some people read books from cover to cover, that’s how I was with this epic Capcom creation, which I got in 2001. I can tell you the effort that went into re-releasing the game was monumental. And the work that went into adapting it for modern platforms is worthy of Hercules himself. As you’ve come to expect, we start with the story!
The premise of Breath of Fire IV is simple: an amnesiac protagonist helps a princess find her missing sister, hoping he’ll get his own memory back along the way. Of course, what I’ve described above is only the beginn- ing, because the situation gets complicated fast and turns into an epic tale of duality, the nature of absolute power and the aftermath of war. For anyone after a mature title with heavy themes, this Capcom creation is the perfect choice. What lifted the game above other JRPGs of the early 2000s is the way the story is presented to us – through two diametrically opposed characters! Alongside Ryu, the dragon knight who serves as protagonist, we spend a good chunk of the game in the shoes of the antagonist Fou-Lu, the mighty god-emperor of the Fou Empire.
At its core, Breath of Fire IV is a role-playing game, with clearly defined classes for each character and a turn-based combat system. The big innovation at the time of its relea- se was being able to open your offensive with any character on the player’s turn, with no order imposed by particular attributes. As with other JRPGs of its era, our everyday GRIND makes life easier, but the title is built for a strategic approach, based on spells and abilities that exploit enemy weaknesses.
You may well be asking yourself why play Breath of Fire IV? Because it’s a classic that is, for the first time, available globally. The game’s original PC release never happened in the United States of America, and the European version was different from the Japanese one. This re-release is based on the version the West got, but with numerous improvements such as: support for various controller types, the option to play windowed rather than full screen, the inclusion of the sound effects that didn’t work in the original PC release, plus various options for sharpening up the experience, such as optimised DirectX rendering, V-Sync and anti-aliasing.
Even though this version is missing certain scenes with Ursula or Nina, and Scias isn’t an alcoholic, it still remains
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GOG PRESERVATION PROGRAM
the best version of Breath of Fire IV.
But I don’t want to lie to you and claim it’s perfect. Although certain effects and sounds that weren’t active in the original version have been restored, the echo of footsteps in abandoned regions seems to have vanished entirely. The pixelated graphics, too, no longer have the charm we found on CRT monitors back in the early 2000s. The programmer behind this adaptation worked flat out all the weekend after launch to fix the problem, and managed to bring back the magic of the original sprites (kudos, Adam!).
The last thing that might annoy die-hard fans of the genre is the lack of a loop effect in the soundtrack: the battle music ends and starts over from the top instead of playing seamlessly.
Don’t take that to mean the ‘Preservation Program’ version is inferior. Quite the opposite: it’s the best version available on modern systems, and a game worth trying at least once in your life. GOG’s effort sends a clear message to distributors and to the industry: players want access to these creations that defined them!
Thanks to GOG for the review code and for the chance to play Breath of Fire IV, so that we could publish this article!
›› TUDOR-CODRIN ENEA
DINO CRISIS 1 & 2
Okay, I know that, technically speaking, they’re two separate games, but you can’t split them. These survival horrors that marked the end of the ’90s did something unheard of: they swapped the usual monsters (zombies, ghosts) for dinosaurs. Basically, it’s Jurassic Park where YOU are the protagonist!
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