Breath of Fire was outright murdered by horrible sequels.
Careful where you tread there....
Breath of Fire III was and always will be the best, but IV and 1/4 had their points. IV had some memorable characters, an excellent combo system, the best fairy village, the best master system, and looked great for a PS1 game, IMO. 1/4 for its part could be brutally hard, dragon form abuse aside- and it did have an intersting setting, art style and a nice battle system. No where near as good as III, but a far cry from
horrible.
On a slightly related BoF tangent, my heart jumped for a second when I skimmed this Kotaku article:
http://kotaku.com/5903897/what-unexpected-game-is-capcom-teasing-nowThen of course I remembered that Capcom hates BoF, and that the article was joking.