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Breath of Fire IV

Release date: late summer 2000. The fourth game of the series appears to be just as great as its predecessors. Being only its second time on the Playstation, the first installments were featured on the SNES. Sticking to its traditional roles dragons are featured as the main focal point of the story. Dragons can be called to battle or you can morph into a dragon (Very cool!). Reading the IGN Preview, Breath of Fire 4 will have a six-man battle system. Three men can be placed in the front, while three will be set up in the back. Characters in the front can attack with weapons and physical hits, and characters in the back are restricted to magic spells and special skills. The number of available special skills can be equipped for a total of 8 on each character. Skills can be passed along and traded amongst characters. The game also contains an idea used in FF7, which is the "enemy skill" ability. In Breath of Fire 4, magic spells and skills can be copied from enemies.

A new combo system also is going to be used in Bof4, which features moves comparable to the Street Fighter series. It sounds like no one is clear on exactly how the combos are going to work, but it looks like it's going to be definitely part of the game. A 24-hit combo was shown in one of the screenshots doing a whopping 8,587 points of damage. If the combos got any bigger, like say a 100 hits, how much damage would that do? (quesation posted by IGN).

Concerning the graphics, the game uses 3D backgrounds with 2D sprites for the characters. The backgrounds have been setup to look like drawings or paintings, making the contrast between the backgrounds and sprites very little. As a result the 2D flows very well with 3D backgrounds. On top of that each character has over 3,000 animation patterns, making for suberb details and intricate movements.

Either way it looks to be an interesting RPG, but I doubt it can take the crown from the most-anticipated RPG this year, Legend of Dragoon.


Characters
Plot and Setting