Boring and largely uninteresting but gives the same satisfaction as popping bubble wrap. The minute it asked me to do anything more than be on autopilot I was out.
I enjoyed the atmosphere and the unique ideas this game brings to the table. The game definitely feels a bit awkward in a lot of places. In particular the game seems extremely generous with potions and retry bread, the latter of which I rarely used. This feels like band-aid solution to deal with the somewhat tedious level design.
Getting 100% map completion is also a pain as it requires use of the warp magic in a lot of places. Sometimes I had to intentionally jump into pits to map out bits of the ground. The game seems to have a fetish for pitfall traps, especially in a certain area of the game where you cant see the floor.
The postgame Dela Mode might be my favorite part of the game since it feels more carefully designed than the base game while also being challenging in ways the base game isn't.
Getting 100% map completion is also a pain as it requires use of the warp magic in a lot of places. Sometimes I had to intentionally jump into pits to map out bits of the ground. The game seems to have a fetish for pitfall traps, especially in a certain area of the game where you cant see the floor.
The postgame Dela Mode might be my favorite part of the game since it feels more carefully designed than the base game while also being challenging in ways the base game isn't.
this happened to me irl
I really wish I'd gotten to this sooner - it's basically a real time DRPG, complete with all the fun gimmicks like warps, spinner tiles and falling between floors.
Even in remake form it still feels a little rough - the battle balance is a little weird, the speed could do with a bit of tweaking and it could do with some more shortcut features - but the main part of the game's solid and it kept me going til the end with varied, interesting dungeon layouts. The music's decent too, but I really wish there was more of it: you end up going through ten floors with each short-ish loop which isn't great.
Even in remake form it still feels a little rough - the battle balance is a little weird, the speed could do with a bit of tweaking and it could do with some more shortcut features - but the main part of the game's solid and it kept me going til the end with varied, interesting dungeon layouts. The music's decent too, but I really wish there was more of it: you end up going through ten floors with each short-ish loop which isn't great.
Falcom, please bring brandish back.
Fantastic dungeon crawler, not too difficult, but not too easy either. Maps are handcrafted, loot placed manually, exploration is great. Dela mode is more difficult than the main game, but also much shorter. Focus shifted to puzzles and exploration of more sophisticated maps.
What I liked
- Hand crafted maps, loot placement
- Exploration
- Infinite use weapons
- Teleport spell
- Limited set of actions at your disposal, which encourages creativity
- Dela mode
- NPC's portraits
- Ares/Dela encounters gags
- Music
What I didn't like
- Dela mode puzzles with spinners, timers and opening pitfalls can be annoying
- Dela mode maps are pretty convoluted near the end of the game
- Shops sell weapons/armor/spells that you can also find in chests
What I liked
- Hand crafted maps, loot placement
- Exploration
- Infinite use weapons
- Teleport spell
- Limited set of actions at your disposal, which encourages creativity
- Dela mode
- NPC's portraits
- Ares/Dela encounters gags
- Music
What I didn't like
- Dela mode puzzles with spinners, timers and opening pitfalls can be annoying
- Dela mode maps are pretty convoluted near the end of the game
- Shops sell weapons/armor/spells that you can also find in chests
Creo que es lo más 3 estrellas que he jugado en mi vida, meh total.
Brandish: The Dark Revenent comes closer than any dungeoncrawler I've played before to convincing me about this classique style of sprawling cubic labyrinths. I've always had trouble feeling anything for the framework because of how impersonal they come across - usually hamstrung by hardware or budget to the point that they are messy spaghetti bowls of long winding corridors of repeating tilesets as seen through grid paper. Activates something in my brain where it quite literally feels like I'm at the office plugging away at a spreadsheet and doing data entry. Jingle landmarks and unique assets in front of me like keys, I have one foot in the emergency exit.
Part of what Brandish: tDR does to help me out is that the combat takes place in real-time on the map itself, rather than an estranged-feeling turn based random battle (like Mary Skelter or Labyrinth of Refrain). The level of exploration and puzzle-solving here is generally okay, but doesn't do enough with its mechanics to entice me to go beyond what a guide indicates is about the 80% point. These floors genuinely just got too tedious for me. You generally get by with wall-hugging and switch flicking, with only the rarest "ah-ha!" moment where you're expected to think outside of the box with your limited toolset. It's fairly satisfying to have a basic map drawing mechanic for the player to jot down landmarks or mechanics the auto-fill purposefully omits, but with the PSP's lack of touchscreen functionality, it can only dream of doing what Etrian Odyssey did.
Surprisingly late for a PSP release too by the way, landing in 2015 as a downloadable title for Western regions. Seems like a fairly polite remake of the original, with the option to switch the OG soundtrack, and a few extra modes n stuff.
Part of what Brandish: tDR does to help me out is that the combat takes place in real-time on the map itself, rather than an estranged-feeling turn based random battle (like Mary Skelter or Labyrinth of Refrain). The level of exploration and puzzle-solving here is generally okay, but doesn't do enough with its mechanics to entice me to go beyond what a guide indicates is about the 80% point. These floors genuinely just got too tedious for me. You generally get by with wall-hugging and switch flicking, with only the rarest "ah-ha!" moment where you're expected to think outside of the box with your limited toolset. It's fairly satisfying to have a basic map drawing mechanic for the player to jot down landmarks or mechanics the auto-fill purposefully omits, but with the PSP's lack of touchscreen functionality, it can only dream of doing what Etrian Odyssey did.
Surprisingly late for a PSP release too by the way, landing in 2015 as a downloadable title for Western regions. Seems like a fairly polite remake of the original, with the option to switch the OG soundtrack, and a few extra modes n stuff.