Breath of Fire IV

Breath of Fire IV brought the series to its peak on PlayStation, offering one of the most elaborate stories Capcom ever created in the JRPG genre while retaining the proven elements of previous entries. The game follows two parallel storylines – the hero Ryu, once again a bearer of dragon blood, and the mysterious general Fou-lu, whose fate gradually intertwines with Ryu's and whose motivations remain ambiguous for a long time. This dual narrative gives the story a depth and moral ambiguity that JRPGs of the era rarely offered, forcing the player to keep reconsidering who the real enemy is and what it actually means to be a hero.

In terms of gameplay, the game builds on turn-based combat enriched with a so-called combo system, letting the player join in on a companion's attack to multiply the damage dealt, which encouraged the player to think carefully about action order and party composition. Visually, the game combined finely drawn backgrounds with 3D character models, and thanks to this it retained a distinctive visual style typical of the whole series, complemented by cinematic story cutscenes and fluid character animations in key scenes. The musical score once again underscored a wide range of moods, from calm village melodies to dramatic pieces accompanying boss battles and key plot twists, and just as in the previous entries, it helped build a sense of a vast, believable world.

Breath of Fire IV was received by critics as a mature RPG, ambitious both visually and narratively, but it came out late in the PlayStation's life, so it partly escaped the attention of the larger audience that was already moving on to PlayStation 2. Today the game is prized precisely for its bold storytelling and elaborate world, and it ranks among the best Capcom ever created in the JRPG genre, thanks in part to how sensitively it handles the themes of power, responsibility, and personal identity.

Why play: For the bold storytelling and elaborate world that sensitively handles the theme of power and responsibility – one of the pinnacles of Capcom's JRPGs.