GOG has made another surprise rerelease via their GOG Dreamlist and GOG Preservation Program.
Breath of Fire IV is now available on GOG, over two decades after its original release. While most US gamers will remember playing this game on PlayStation, it also released on Windows. However, that version of the game skipped the US and went to Europe and Japan instead.
Now, it’s a little hard to track this down, but Breath of Fire IV was at one point released on the PlayStation 3 digital store as a PlayStation Classics release. We can’t verify at this time if it’s still available on the platform, but it definitely has not been rereleased on PlayStation Store for PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5.
So as best as we can tell, Breath of Fire IV is being rereleased for the first time in a decade. But we can confirm that this is the first time that the PC version of the game is launching in the US. Of course, because of the nature of digital stores, this is also the PC version’s worldwide launch.
GOG explained on the store listing that they made these improvements to the game:
- Full compatibility with Windows 10 and Windows 11
- Both 2 localizations of the game included (English and Japanese)
- Improved DirectX game renderer
- New rendering options (Windowed Mode, Vertical Synchronization Control, Gamma Correction, Integer Scaling, Anti-Aliasing, and more)
- Improved audio engine (restored missing environmental sounds and audio configuration)
- Improved keyboard and mouse support
- Improved Warehouse and Crane minigames
- Improved F9 exit screen
- Issue-free battle and combo system (all crashes have been fixed)
- Issue-free cutscene scripting
- Issue-free task switching
- Full support for modern controllers (Sony DualSense, Sony DualShock4, Microsoft Xbox Series, Microsoft Xbox One, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, Logitech F series and many more) with optimal button binding, vibration, hotplugging and wireless mode
This follows GOG’s surprise announcement that Dino Crisis 1 & 2 have also been preserved and added to GOG’s Preservation Program. It’s absolutely been great to see that GOG was able to work with Capcom to get these games preserved so far. We hope that GOG can use these as leverage to convince other game companies to work with them to preserve games that come up on the Dreamlist in the future.
And we also can’t get around thinking about how it could be a boon the other way. If the fans do come in to show that they have a real interest in these games, maybe Capcom will consider making revivals of Dino Crisis and Breath of Fire. But at the very least, we have these great modern versions of these classic Japanese games thanks to GOG.
