Epic Battle Fantasy 4

Earlier today I reviewed Epic Battle Fantasy 5 and found that six of its 33 negative reviews argued it was mechanically identical to the earlier games, with several suggesting the third and fourth entries did it better.

So here is the fourth one, and here are both sets of numbers, pulled today:

The sequel is better rated, by nearly two and a half points, with more content and a slightly healthier completion curve. That's a useful corrective to a pattern this library keeps running into: a vocal minority in a sequel's negative reviews claiming the predecessor was superior is not evidence that it was. The people who actually reviewed the predecessor were, on aggregate, less impressed.

What it is

The same shape as its sequel: a turn-based RPG in which every attack carries elemental and status properties, enemies have exploitable resistances, and buffs and debuffs stack in ways that make the higher difficulties genuinely demanding. Around that sits equipment with its own progression, a large optional-content tail, and 110 achievements.

It holds up. Recent reviewers have a 30.3-hour median, and the achievement curve — most common at 76.4%, median at 32% — shows people working through it rather than bouncing.

The complaint, which is the same complaint

Humour appears in 11 of the 79 negative reviews, the top term, exactly as it was for EBF5. The sharpest version, at 67 votes: the game "tries to pass itself off as funny, witty, and clever, but 'meme-based' humor and party members with half of their entire dialogue written in 'l33t-sp3@k' simply is not funny."

That's harsher than I'd put it, but the observation is accurate and it's the single best predictor of whether you'll enjoy either game. This series has a voice, it commits to it completely, and it does not modulate.

The second theme is the interface. A 31-vote reviewer: "The interface is terribly cluttered, difficult to use and unders[tandable]." Fair — it's a 2014 Flash-derived UI and it looks and behaves like one.

Third, and worth stating plainly for the value question: flash appears in 9 of the negatives and free or browser in 7. A 55-vote review reads, in full: "May be worth it if discounted by 75% or more, but really, it's just an OK flash game." The series began as free browser games, and some buyers clearly felt the Steam price sat awkwardly against that history.

The complaint that expired

One thing that looks alarming and isn't. A 62-vote review from April 2014 warns: "The steam version of this game has very choppy framerates. I have a gaming computer and this game runs slow for me. I would say stay away from the steam version."

Dating every performance complaint: five in total, one each in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2022, and none in the hundred most recent English reviews. That warning has been sitting near the top of the negative column for twelve years describing a problem nobody currently reports.

I'd also note the year distribution has a lump — 29 of the 79 negatives are from 2017 — but their median vote count is 7 against 18 for the earlier ones, so it's a modest cluster rather than an event, and I'm not going to build a story on it.

The verdict

Epic Battle Fantasy 4 earns a 7.5, half a point below its sequel and for the same reasons in slightly worse proportion: the combat is genuinely good, the content is generous for the money, and the presentation will decide the matter for most people before they get to either.

It's cheaper than EBF5 and a little rougher — an older interface, less content, and a story that is frankly just scaffolding. If you've played the fifth game and want more, this is more. If you're choosing between them, the ratings, the achievement counts and the content all point the same way, whatever the sequel's negative reviews say.

Buy it second.