Japanese RPGs have had it rough in the past ten years, give or take. Following a boom period in the 90s, with classic after classic touching down on the PlayStation from the likes of Square Enix, Capcom, and Konami, the HD generation led to the downfall of the console JRPG. Very few series saw new entries on the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, with few sequels to the biggest names and several failed attempts to establish new IP.
Capcom has announced the release of Breath of Fire IV on Steam.
There’s only one fate worse than death for a video game franchise. Pivoting to mobile…and then death. But that’s exactly what happened to these poor games.
Still amazes me that they never had the idea to spin-off the familiar catching aspect into its own game. They had over 200 familiars, golden variants, and even a pokemon-esque tournament for end game against other familiar catchers. Huge missed opportunity. Also they had the Ghibli art but didn't bother to work with em closer, they had something special and blew it.
Update: It's official. Breath of Fire IV is available now on GOG.
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GOG just uploaded a cryptic post with the silhouette of a character sprite and it looks a lot like Ryu from Breath of Fire IV.
Because GOG personally put the effort in to make the PC version playable on modern PCs, Capcom had little to no part in this remaster. If there's enough demand, we might get a BOF collection later. Just like Eiyuden got us the Suikoden 1/2, Armed Fantasia got us Wild Arms 1 and 2 on PS4/PS5, and I guess Ratatan got us the Patapon collection (although 1 and 2 were already available as PS classics).
I found plenty of RPGs to enjoy on 7th gen consoles
Well really Breath Of Fire was killed off by Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter that game was a disaster. And 6 was another disaster for the series as it was an online game that just shut down last year after only like a year out.
There are still quiet a few JRPGs out there and being made. Unless you have some very limiting definition for a JRPGs, it just a lot of the older JRPGs are no longer being used by their respective IP owners.
I am pretty sure Star Ocean isn't dead, there will be at least one more game. I wouldn't count wild arms out yet either, because who knows what could happen with it in the future.
You're right about Breath of Fire, but wrong about when it died. Breath of Fire died on PS2 with Dragon Quarter. The game was just not even remotely close to being as good as all previous entries.
My JRPG backlog is going strong.