Odd music choices, boring social sim elements riddled with fetch quests and monotony, reused content between routes and poor balancing among many other things make this the second weakest Fire Emblem game in my eyes. But its also still Fire Emblem so its still perfectly enjoyable. These are just my personal extreme nitpicks, and chances are if you can look past them, or if this is your first Fire Emblem, you'll like this.

It doesn't even feel like a Fire Emblem game until part II, and even then, that's where the writing falls off. Dimitri and Edelgard are hypocrites, Rhea and the church are full of shit, and Claude wants to end racism I guess?? I mean his route is honestly written far better than the others probably because his inclusion feels like a last ditch effort to add a "Neutral" route of sorts, where you don't side with any extreme party. None of your choices matter aside from the house you choose, because instead of the route split taking place at the midway point, y'know, the part of the game where the content for each route actually starts being different (at least story wise. Most of the maps are re-used between routes, lol.), its at the very beginning, and you're locked into that for the whole game, unless you chose Black Eagles because they gave that route a route split of its own and not the others for some reason.

Cursor and map movement feels sluggish compared to pretty much every game prior, meaning making satisfying, quick decisions through menuing is basically gone, though the switch's d-pad being as bad as it is doesn't help matters. Map design is definitely better than Fates' Birthright and Revelation offerings, but that isn't a high bar, and Conquest still trounces Three Houses in this area. Its clear that this game absolutely LOVES ambush spawns, especially mid-turn ones. Normally I'd praise the turnwheel for allowing players to undo strategic mistakes instead of just soft resetting to circumvent permadeath, but a lot of maps seem to use it as a crutch for bad, unfair map design (especially in maddening) instead of being a proper qol feature.

There's a notably low production value compared to not only the 3ds games, but almost everything that came before it. The cutscenes aren't as well animated and in many cases a fade to black or still image pop-up is shown instead of what's assumedly happening. Every character conversation uses the same, still, warped pngs instead of having characters actually appear in 3d areas like in awakening and fates, or beautifully illustrated stills like in echoes. The fact that supports are encouraged far more here than any other game, given the social sim monestary sections, and them basically being required to recruit characters aside from reaching the bloated stat thresholds makes this ever more apparent.

Byleth is probably one of, if not the worst silent protagonists I've ever had the displeasure of controlling. Not only does everyone consistently suck on his inflated growth rates, stats, and long, extendable prf weapon, but he has absolutely no personality, and almost all of the multiple dialogue choices are things I wouldn't say if I were in his place. At least in the cases of Kris, Robin and Corrin, they have pre-established personalities, motives and character relationships. As "perfect" as Kris was, and as much of a mary sue as Corrin was, I'd take them over Byleth any day of the week.

Actually aquiring more units sucks. They're all locked behind the social sim stuff, or high stat thresholds, which means if you want to recruit everyone you just spam tea-time, eating together and gifts. This gets boring fast, and made up a huge chunk of my playtime, since the game punishes you for not doing this. The average FE game takes 15-30 hours, but this one took 50. Don't acknowledge any of that stuff about building supports if you're Caspar or Ferdinand, by the way, because for some reason, they are the only characters in the entire game who have their B supports locked behind timeskip, meaning you need to get their desired proficiencies up...both of which being things I wouldn't normally want to invest into Byleth. Gauntlets are at least a good weapon class, but considering Byleth's prf weapon is a sword, and mounted classes are unable to use them, there's very little incentive to invest into them. In Ferdinand's case, you need to level up Armour proficiency, because the idea of making the best unit in the game a slow armour knight with truncated movement, slow speed to compliment Hard mode enemies' unreasonably higher scaled speed stats and lack of Swordfaire sure sounds like the optimal build choice. Needless to say, I only found out about this in the last month of part 1, which also gives you fewer opportunities to do faculty training, when there are only two faculty members (with one being completely abscent for several chapters) who even increase armour rank. I was able to recruit Caspar, but Ferdinand being relegated to the only unrecruited character on the route I chose really rubbed me the wrong way.

What's worse is that, during the war phase, you can't convince them to join you, like you'd normally be able to in any other Fire Emblem game. You're forced to kill them, because the clear conditions for the maps that they show up in are "Defeat all commanders", and any playable unit in part 1 is dictated to be a commander by the map designers. Oh, but there's actually a single, arbitrary recruitable character per route for some reason. Yes, some characters that you recruit in part 1 become recruitable enemies in part 2, but you just have to beat them with Byleth and you get them back. There's no unique recruitment conversation between the enemy and an army member of yours that they have a connection to, they just say "Okay! You beat me professor, since you decided to spare me I'll join you!", and become playable again going forward or in the case of unrecruitable characters in part 2 - even if their best friend, or cousin, or sibling, or whatever tries to fight them, its always a "fight to the death". Why does, for example, in Black Eagles, only Lysithea get to join you and proceed to murder her former classmates, but even though Claude can be spared on the very same map, Hilda can't? Even when confronted by Balthus, or Marianne?

One thing that I personally hate, (though this is more of a personal nitpick than a genuine criticism towards the game), is the lack of unit identity. In any other FE game, characters join with a specific class, stats, growths, but in this game, any character can be anything. Yes, Awakening, Fates and Echoes all had sandbox-y elements when it came to building characters, but they still had established roles, professions and boons. This mostly doesn't matter since unrecruited characters have specific class paths that they take as the game progresses, which they keep when joining you, and characters that you start with come with pre-existing boons and banes or have story related classes or promotions. This is still very different from the fixed classes and roles of previous entries, and it changes my choice of units from "who would be best to deploy to handle this map's enemies" to "I'll just level the girls with big boobs (and Lindhart) into mostly fliers, horse riders and support bots". My biggest complaint regarding this rears its head when it comes to the Dancer class. I hate how, instead of the game allocating a dancer for me, I have to sacrifice one of my combat units to become a support bot. I chose Marianne, since I consulted forums on who the best option was, yet she finished the game having a higher magic stat than some of my other offensive mages. I still tried giving her levels in reason and faith, but it didn't matter because she was dancing half the time anyway, especially in the late-game maps that I 1-2 turned because my patience with the game was reaching its limit. She became a valuable part of my army, yes, but she was relegated to dancing out of enemy range so that my other characters could get all the work done, instead of doing more. You can't allocate more than one student as a dancer either, so she's locked into the class, and not using it would be a waste.

I don't have much to say for the soundtrack besides it being this weird orchestral-dubstep mishmash. It doesn't sound like fire emblem until the map themes in part 2, and even then the soundtrack is very derivative of itself, with a lot of tracks using the same recycled motif. It doesn't have the same feeling as the triumphant military marches of Archanaea or Jugdral, the boisterous, striking, orchestral themes of Tellius, Ylisse and Valentia, or even the culturally relevant European and Japanese tracks of Fates. To this game's credit though, God Shattering Star is fantastic, but it also only heard at the very end of the game.

Needless to say, I didn't like this much, even as a longtime FE fan. I may get branded as an elitist, but I actually started with Awakening and still like it a lot today. I don't think three houses is actually a bad video game, but its certainly a bad Fire Emblem game.

The best thing I can really say about it is that I wish Hu Tao was in a better game.

There's potential for something genuinely good here. The open world has a lot to do, look at and get immersed in. Playable characters are animated extremely well and are often very nice to see in motion. Multiplayer is generally well implemented aside from the occasional puzzle just... disappearing when entering co-op mode - getting carried by higher levelled players illeviates a lot of the slowness of the game and I implore you to play with a higher levelled friend if you ever consider playing this in its entirety. If this was a 50 pound/dollar game with no microtransactions or gacha, I'd probably bump it up to 3 and a half stars, but christ I don't think I've ever played a video game that respects the player's time so little.

I've 100%ed the Monstadt, Liyue and Inazuma regions, and am getting started on Sumeru after several months' hiatus after presumed burnout. At the time, the game's issues were made clear to me, but I rubbed them off as having played too much. Needless to say my thoughts have not changed, and I have a lot to say about the game as a whole.

The combat, while looking flashy and complex on the surface, is monotonous and doesn't change at all in 100+ hours of gameplay, save for exclusive event or dungeon items, gimmicks or mechanics. Its really just: mash left mouse, occasionally hit e, q, or shift coupled with wasd to move, rinse repeat for the whole game. Couple this with basically mandatory, artificial grinding thanks to the world level scaling if you want to progress with the story and power up characters, and you have a slow, boring gameplay loop where, after you've explored everything excluding roadblocks, enemies are still spongy, and you do constant busywork to get dripfed primogems, level up, and ascencion materials to get new, stronger characters and power them up.

The gacha rates are pitifully low, far lower than other gacha centric games, and outside of events and doing everything you can, the currency required to make pulls is scarce. Doing daily commissions nets you 120 primogems, and you need 160 to take a single shot at the slots. That's not enough though, since characters can only be 4 or 5 star rarity, in a pool rife with 3 star weapons. Just getting a character is more reliable when relying on the gacha's "pity" system, where you're guaranteed something of four star rarity for every 10 pulls. Keyword, "something", because there's a good chance you'll just be getting a four star weapon that'll serves merely as upgrade fodder instead. Four star weapons are common enough if you're exploring and collecting materials, too, so its almost always a waste to only get a weapon out of your guaranteed 4 star drop, on top of the 9~ other 3 star weapons you got. 5 star drops are exceedingly rarer,with approx 70 pulls being deemed as reaching pity. Thankfully (at least in event banners, which you should only ever pull on anyway) these are reserved for characters. You have a 50/50 chance to get the 5 star character showcased on the banner or any 5 star character from the perma pool, being guaranteed the banner character for youd next 5 star pull if you get the latter result, which even carries over between banners - a rare example of respect for the player in this game. Naturally, you're incentivised to spend money to get these stronger, rarer, fanservicey banner characters whenever they become available, since their availability is on a timer before they're made unavailable for months again, and there's a good chance you aren't getting a lucky 5 star pull or going from 0 to 70 pity in a month.

The story is, for the most part, pretty by the numbers. There's your lost sibling, an ancient war, gods ruling the land, evil factions that are out to do evil things for the sake of being evil, etc. The inazuma story arc at least stood out, but I was disinterested for most of it, as there's an unreasonable amount of unskippable text, exposition and filler dialogue. That's right; the story is entirely unskippable, and parts of the world in this "open world exploration game" are locked behind it - you can't even mash through dialogue either, since there's a delay to it. I genuinely can't believe this game has been out for two years and it hasn't occurred to the devs that they should add a "skip dialogue" button, but that's the tip of the iceburg regarding poor game design on display here.

I think the worst offender, besides the monotony, grind, tedium, story gating and gacha, is the devs' assumed approach to enemy design, because it feels that whenever they made a new enemy or enemy type, they're made to be as obnoxious to the player as possible. From the Fatui and Abyss mages' obscene shield bars, or just stunlocking, a lot of enemies in this game absolutely suck to fight, and killing a single one often drags out for longer than it has any right to - long enough to the point where I often unintentionally drag enemies far enough from their spawn location for the game to decide "nope! this enemy is too far away! teleport him back with full health instead of continuing to fight the player!". Getting unfrozen or out of a bubble is miserable too - you're left for enemies to pile on you since you got stunlocked by near undodgeable attacks while you mash space bar and not left click, for some reason. Its such an uncomfortable button to mash too, and you can't rebind anything in this game.

To end on a somewhat positive note; the music is fantastic. And suits the mood and locales of the world wonderfully. Its a shame that some genuine talent and passion was wasted on what is essentially a glorified slot machine.

This game is better than Jesus. I finished this ages ago but I want to leave a positive review on this site for once. The narrative pacing, themes, boisterous music (Shoji Meguro at his best easily though smt3 is still great, I just cant believe he made such a grandiose, good sounding orchestral soundtrack on the goddamn DS especially after the ps2 could barely handle nocturne's guitar riffs that had to be compressed), dungeon design (Eridanus is one of the best dungeons in the series, don't listen to the memes), eerie atmosphere...God, this game is so fucking good, its the ultimate reward for understanding megaten especially after playing smt1-3. Atlus peaked here, 100%, and I say this having loved smt4. My one and only gripe with this game is how extreme law and chaos are, though that actually sits perfectly with Strange Journey's narrative and themes, and this game has my absolute favourite neutral route in the series, fully embodying the indominable human will to keep going, to strive for a better world, and to change for the better. To take the shield, and to raise the spear.

A must-play if you like anything relating to squaresoft, or 90s rpgs. You are obligated to help giving this gem of a game the recognition it deserves.

This game kicks ass, its a sidescroller shooter mech rpg with lots of different possible playstyles, high end graphics for the snes, a great albeit somewhat repetitive soundtrack, a colourful cast of characters, and most importantly, its just really fun. Your Wanzer (in universe name for mechs) has this weight and feel unlike most platformers that just feels so satisfying, and since its an rpg, you'll get stronger, more mobile and more capable. It takes a bit to get the wheels rolling, but still emerges as one of squaresoft's best 90s releases, yet unfortunately remains one of their most obscure and underappreciated games as well.

This game sucks so bad, holy shit. Absolutely horrible multiplayer experience that incentivises continuous play through addiction under the pretense that "it gets good when you win" or that "it gets good once you understand it". Obnoxious, souless, uninspired characters that either reek of corporate pandering or made with the intention of pissing the player off as much as possible, a monotonous gameplay loop, abysmal balancing, this game has it all. Regardless of what happens, you will be flamed by teammates, Riot will do nothing about it, and you'll probably feel more demoralised than you ever have in your entire life. I'm convinced the content creators and esports athletes for this game aren't real people.

Do not trust anyone who says this game is fun.

It's okay to feel guilt, regret, or to yearn for something long since lost. It's normal for traumatic experiences to affect you as a person, or to feel that your actions mean that something is entirely your responsibility.

But you don't have to bear the burden alone. There'll always be someone who cares, or wants to help, and things will eventually get better.

In these turbulent times, the Persona 2 duology provide some powerful, meaningful messages that are more important to abide by now than they possibly ever have been. So, let's be positive, everyone.

Man, what an insane step up from Breath of Fire 1 and 2. I was able to appreciate 2 immensely thanks to the fan retranslation which included some qol updates, but thinking back to my playthrough of 1, and how much of a slog it was compared to this game, it's night and day. One thing that helps is that the translation is actually pretty good - there was the occasional odd reading line of dialogue, and full stops are never used to punctuate sentences, for some reason, but for me, one of the most important, defining things that Breath of Fire 3 does is that it takes the unique quirks that worked in its predecessors, and really goes in on them, to the point that there's just such an overwhelming amount of charm that it easily stands out compared to its contemporary jrpgs of the ps1. From the expressiveness of the character sprites, to the groovy soundtrack, the many poignant story beats, even the minigames. It doesn't have the most complex, philosophical jrpg narrative or fleshed out characters, nor does it have the most mechanically engrossing gameplay, but almost every moment of this game was just really fun.

If I had to compare this to anything, it'd be Dragon Quest V. If you love that game as much as I do, you'll love this too, the similarities are evident from the get-go, but this game does a lot to still give itself its own identity.

This game also has Momo so it's literally impossible for it to be bad.

This review contains segmented spoilers. You should be able to read the bulk of my thoughts and opinions on the game without being spoiled. I just want people to see what I think without immediately turning them away because of a spoiler warning. Spoilers will be forecasted and clearly marked, you have been warned. This review is also looooong, primarily because of the spoilery part, if you want the tldr, then all I can say it's really good. It's beautiful, and makes strides over BoFIII in some areas while fumbling ever so slightly in others. Play it right now.

Breath of Fire IV is an odd game. An emotionally resonant one, at least for me. A game that I love despite its oddities - despite its admittedly abrupt endings, and how for every stride it makes over BoFIII, it takes one step back. It has an undeniable string of small issues, maybe because it was rushed towards the end, or the devs had the desire for a slightly different take on a Breath of Fire game, possibly even both, and I see it often ranked lower than III as a result. I, however, adore Breath of Fire IV both for what it accomplishes and its unfulfilled potential. It's a game about opposing ideologies, Yin and Yang, Light and Dark, both from a narrative and general game sense, with the result feeling like a natural progression from its predecessors, but also as if it's an alternate universe successor to Breath of Fire II. Despite this, Breath of Fire IV emerges as an all-time great JRPG, and, in my opinion, the best in the series.

Getting the good (and in some cases obvious) out of the way, the visuals are gorgeous, possibly some of the best sprite art and animation I've ever seen in a video game. It's all so fluid, vibrant, detailed, and expressive, moreso than the Breath of Fire norm. The music alternates between being ethereal and surreal, and traditional, classical Chinese folk music (I don't know if there's a proper name or genre for this) accentuated by its flutes, erhus, and various other wind, brass, and string instruments. Both styles compliment the game's main theme and world excellently. Sound design is extra satisfying, too. From the menu blips, item and minigame jingles, the sound of dust kicking up behind characters' feet as they run through the sand. It helps that the user interface has this really comfy, rustic feel to it - the whole game feels so inviting thanks to all of this.

The world and story are more grounded, more grim, more engrossing - forgoing the traditional, Breath of Fire happy-go-lucky yet at times grim story about saving the world and instead telling a tale of a millennium old empire, its deified first emperor, its decline in current times, the poverty and death sown by its fruitless, persistent pursuits in conquest... It's a world that feels less lived in or interconnected than III's, yes, but that's the whole point - villages, cities and colonies are far apart, seperated by God-knows how much inhabitable desert. Many of which are war torn, in ruins, or totally rural. It's rare for an "evil empire" in a jrpg to have such a large influence on its world, being so omnipresent, yet never blatant about it - Breath of Fire IV really nails the post-war, hostile, blemished world vibe.

A much-needed improvement over III is how party members' usability and character building are handled. Every party member has their own uses and are all interchangeable in battle, with every character capable of fulfilling several roles. Nina's probably the only exception, excelling as a mage, but she's leaps and bounds more useful than her BoFIII counterpart. You can make Ershin an aggro-tank, a mage-tank or an all-arounder, for example. Scias and Ursula are equally capable of becoming either fast, hard-hitting mages or physical damage dealers as well, and the list goes on. In III, you'd generally just use Ryu, Momo, Peco and Rei interchangeably for their better base growths and the fact that non-active party members don't gain experience, but in IV I found myself constantly alternating between characters mid-battle to either set up combo chains and use abilities I'd given to them individually. The game's pretty easy a result, but I'll be damned if it isn't an excellent battle system. You can change what masters your characters can apprentice under from camp now too, though you still need to talk to them in person to get new abilities - the latter being a non-issue as you have a dedicated fast travel option now, thank God.

These aren't without small setbacks, however. Buffs are far less useful now, especially in the late game, where bosses love to spam party-wide status negativing abilities. They take longer to set up, and unfortunately don't synergise well with combos as only a fraction of the buff's effectiveness is applied. A lot of attacks feel far less useful than they should be too - abilities that "bypass enemy defence" or claim to scale off defence or agility always did less damage than regular attacks. The large array of abilities at least encouraged experimentation and mixing and matching, much like Breath of Fire III did, and the abundance of aurum incentivise this far more than the admittedly scarce skill ink of old, but abilities in III were far more useful, thus necessitating this. Dragon gene splicing is gone, as are unique dragon forms that Ryu can undertake. Experimenting and finding your preferred transformations was really cool, as well as seeing the unique appearances that encompassed them, but now it's a single menu option and you're done. It streamlines the process, but ultimately removes a fantastic feature from its predecessor.

Another minor downgrade is movement. Moving diagonally seems to cut your movement speed - and while being easy to get used to, the decision to cut the speed to begin with is odd (again, one of this game's many oddities). Maybe I'm just imagining that, but what I'm certain of is that movement is back to being grid-based, and I found myself sometimes fumbling around ladders and interactable objects, triggering otherwise avoidable random encounters. Oh yeah, encounters aren't seamless transitions on the overworld anymore, instead taking place on a separate plane dedicated to them much like many other JRPGs of the era. For a JRPG, this seems inconsequential, but Breath of Fire III proved that removing the separate screen for battles is a massive boon for the genre, cutting out so many loading transitions and wasted time.

Again, these are small problems, but enough for some to prefer III - though the positives definitely outweigh the negatives for me. The one thing that Breath of Fire IV absolutely nails, however, is its narrative and the way it's conveyed to the player. I didn't want to mark this review as having spoilers, because I want people to see what I love about this game and hopefully incentivise them to try it out, but there's a distinct segment around the late-midgame that's absolutely masterful and a defining moment of not only this game, but my entire life having played jrpgs. It sounds like hyperbole, and...it kind of is, but also kind of isn't. Regardless, this sequence of events is incredible, and I want to gush about it. Actually, no whole game is incredible. It takes a bit to get the ball rolling, but once it does, it's every bit as poignant as Breath of Fire III was and then some. Play it and come back to read below once you have. Spoilers for the mid to lategame and the endings are ahead.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Spoilers<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

All of this is a lengthy explanation of events that I don't think I'd otherwise be able to remotely do any justice in text, in addition to my thoughts on them. It's a lot of rambling, so it's probably best to consider it separate from the main review above. It's such an incredibly pieced together sequence of events that perfectly embody Breath of Fire IV's themes and will likely remain one of, if not my favourite sequences in a video game. I just really want to talk about how good this is, and hope that people who've played the game can relate with how it may have touched them as well, so bear with me. The endings will also be touched upon.

Up to this point, the game's been pretty standard Breath of Fire fare - a colourful cast of characters, cute minigames, Ryu's a dragon (Ryu literally means "dragon" in Japanese, very on the nose, capcom), stuff you'd be used to by now had you played 2 and 3 prior, with some things from 3 being changed and streamlined. There've been perspective changes between Ryu's party and Fou-Lu a couple times, a really cool change of pace that shows you what Ryu's other half is up to, but still nothing too out of the ordinary. All you know so far is that you're looking for Nina's sister, Elina, and that it's been a bit of a wild goose chase. It's around the halfway point of the game where the true purpose of Ryu's journey is made apparent.

While swapping between Ryu and Fou-Lu's perspectives, it's made very apparent that the latter has had an awful streak of luck; constantly being on the run, severely wounded twice, and in both instances: found and unconditionally nursed back to health by complete strangers out of sheer compassion for another's life. Initially, he appears to be a malevolent, misanthropic, godlike entity, only focused on meeting up with his other half, and becoming whole again, but is later shown to be not totally lacking in emotion or compassion. You know that, if he and Ryu ever meet up and become one, the world has the potential to end or prosper, and it seems clear that if he has his way, the former will come to pass, but this conception is challenged when, without realising it, Fou-Lu begins
helping Mami - the second of Fou-Lu's carers - and her fellow villagers on several occasions, thus humanising a previously emotionally distant and indifferent deity. Things quickly take a turn for the worse, however, as Mami's relative is repeatedly sceptical of the Fou-Lu's presence, ultimately leading imperial soldiers to raid the village in search of the emperor. Mami sacrifices herself to be executed to save Fou-Lu, and the emotionally confused god lingers in the village, feeling great attachment to her. Something he never lets go of, even during the ending confrontation.

Amidst all this, on the other side of the world, Ryu's witnessed the aftermath of a slaughter conducted by the empire to learn of Ryu's whereabouts, and goes berserk. He assumes his kaiser form, utterly obliterating Rasso - the one responsible for the massacre and stands to be the only human life Ryu ever takes throughout the game. Despite being a silent protagonist, Ryu's given two dialogue boxes here, technically his only two in the whole game, and the latter is accompanied by a raw, emotional scream. Voice samples during dialogue are rare in this game, and in this case elevate an already powerful scene. Silent protagonists are supposed to be a blank slate for the player to give their own identity to - maybe their own, or that of a friend's, so interpretations of this are going to vary - but Ryu responded exactly how I would during this moment where he is supposed to be disconnected from the player. There've been many times in my life that I've absolutely wanted to uncontrollably lash out at someone who's done something to offend, upset or hurt me, without any regard for the consequences. It's vindictive, and you're probably saying "wow. You want to do bad things out of anger. Never heard that before", but I've never handled anger, or rather, emotions in general, well. I have mild anger issues. I never act unprovoked, but I loathe to admit I'm no stranger to raging or getting melodramatic over a slightest inconvenience. I often feel mentally weak as a result. I've never seen someone get killed in cold blood before my very eyes, and I've never wanted to kill someone either, let alone even harm someone as I simply don't have the guts to, but seeing Ryu - a character I had begun to identify with, as is typical of a silent protagonist, lash out and enact their punishment - resonated with me. An act atypical of the average lead character, who, in their better judgement, would likely allow a character like Rasso to live.

And then, came guilt. Ursula stands before Ryu, trembling with fear, her gun aimed straight at him - a detail I didn't even notice when first playing. Rasso is nowhere to be seen, likely reduced to dust in the death he was given moments prior. It isn't until Nina, his most emotionally attached partner in his journey to save her sister, clutching Ryu on her knees, begs him to stop that his rage subsides. I felt guilt not for a life taken, but for Nina's monologue that followed:

"Watching what happened, I knew something was not right in the world. That something...was out of balance."

"And for the first time, when looking at a dragon...."

"I felt afraid."

That last, solitary line is what got me. One of my greatest fears is letting people down, disappointing them. Throughout the whole game, Nina insists that Ryu isn't someone who would do great harm to anyone. She finds comfort in him. And for a brief moment that ripples throughout the whole narrative, Ryu had let her down. I had let her down.

Things only get more depressing.

Back to Fou-Lu. He's stayed in the village a little while longer - likely in hopes of seeing Mami or saving her - but is instructed by a villager to head to a shrine to the south. Fou-Lu bears witness yet again to an act of compassion towards him, this time from a monster he had quelled for the sake of the village some time prior. The monster kills itself to let Fou-Lu proceed into the shrine, with the god questioning why it would help him, and lamenting that his presence constantly affects innocents. He presses onward regardless, until he is given a sudden vision of Mami's execution, beholding the death of the one human he had come to truly care for since his re-awakening. To add insult to injury, Mami's execution is used to fuel a bioweapon that gets used on Fou-Lu himself, who yet again survives, but emerges broken, and driven now by spite, revenge, and an immense hatred for humans. And... I don't think anyone can blame him? Time and time again, he's been hounded by those who are supposed to be welcoming his return, had what little solace he's been given quickly taken from him, and most crucially, lost a bond with a being that, in any other timeline, would've likely never come to pass.

All of this ties back to what I said earlier about wanting to act upon things that have upset or angered me. Breath of Fire IV never gives a right answer as to whether truly doing something about it is right or wrong. In Ryu's case, it's shown to be wrong - how it distances you from those who care and believe in you, even if someone gets what they deserve. In Fou-Lu's, it's shown to be right - if you don't do anything, things are just going to continue getting worse. In the Ryu's ending, Yuna receives no punishment for the atrocities he's committed, the family he's separated, the countless human lives needlessly lost for the sake of "creating a God" to fuel his bioweapon. A foolish, callous, self-pleasing endeavour that only serves to satisfy their sick urges and wreak destruction. But life goes on - and with the oppression of the empire gone, people are given a chance to start their lives anew, look towards the future, and simply cling to the hope that things will turn out alright. In Fou-Lu's ending, it's up to interpretation, but it's likely that humanity is either wiped out or forced under extreme oppression as an act of retribution. I've seen many believe that this is the better ending, given the atrocities committed within Breath of Fire IV's narrative and world are undeniable, and I'm honestly not sure. I think the whole point is that there isn't supposed a "good" or "better" ending, save for personal opinions. I want to believe in people, that we can change for the better, but I'm incessantly reminded of the prejudice we've enacted over the ages, the ever going petty conflicts over territory and power. Our folly is immeasurable - we're doomed to continue making these mistakes - but a world with the ones we care for in it is also a world also worth believing in and fighting for. I often just don't know what to think about our world, of our people, and Breath of Fire IV captures these conflicting thoughts of philanthropy and misanthropy wonderfully.