Breat of Fire IV

Much to the relief of my sihaya (I've been bothering them alot) I've found a new video game to attach myself to. And seeing that I'm playing a game from 9 years ago, this schpeel has already been done and this game has now faded in the minds of everyone who didn't really care about it in the first place. Which is exactly what it was, a forgettable game in a sub-par series.

The problem with the Breath of Fire series was that if you're not a big fan of dragons (which I actually am...to an unhealthy level) there wasn't really much else for you. The first one had the transformation capabilities of Karn (which only gave you three options) and Ryu. The second one had the transformations of the Shamans, Ryu, and the town building aspect. These two didn't do anything amazing for the C-RPG universe and the stories were pretty bland. The only one I felt was somewhat interesting (but the most frustrating of all) was Breath of Fire III. It began to change itself by adding mini-games to the actually plot of the story instead of adding them as side quests. It also added an apprentice/master system, where you could learn new skills from different teachers or you could acquire other skills from enemies. This installment began trying to spice up the genre a bit, I thought. However, it tried a little too hard by adding one too many mini-games that HAD to be completed before moving on to the next part of the game and this in and of itself took all that progress they had made and shat on it. I cannot describe to you the immense amount of rage unleashed when I was forced to walk across a desert by slowly moving forward and trying to figure out how many steps I needed to take to the East before I turned NorthEast. This very scenario caused me to put down the game for over a year (and picking it back up to finish the game also caused great anguish when I realized the ending was not worth all that effort).

Breath of Fire IV is much in this same vein unfortunately. The graphics are better, the storyline has had a very nice overhaul, and the minigames have been much more tolerable (though there are tons more of them). Nevertheless, there's nothing that truly sticks out to me and I've already screamed at the TV roughly around three or four times through 10 hours of gameplay. I think most of this is due to the odd camera angle, which is diagonal based though the controller is not. This makes walking up ladders and into doors extremely trying at times. All in all, this is a great game if you like staring at dragons and just need something to waste time that you're not too committed to (so you can put it down at any moment and never touch it again). For anyone else, just keep it where it was in your mind before I wrote this, in the stuff I forgot category.