Brigandine The Legend of Runersia

amazon Brigandine The Legend of Runersia reviews

If you are a late 8x or early 9x gamer who witnessed the “survival” of the legendary PlayStation from Sony, you will certainly never forget the “compete” between two giants from Japan in the competition for games to “fill” their game collection.

Almost on the Nintendo 64 system at that time that owned any attractive game series, Sony also had to follow in the same footsteps with similar games, but with more impressive quality thanks to its powerful 3D graphics processor, sound The sound bar inherited from the famous firm, and most importantly, the comfortable game capacity on the CD-ROM optical disc was up to 650MB, 10 times more than the tape stored on the system opponent.

In that fierce competition, we can see a Final Fantasy VII “unloaded” through the new system and still “consumes” up to 3 CDs of space, Resident Evil kicks off the horror action game series or even Even the long-standing game series Castlevania also, in turn, found a new landing on the “home” system of Sony.

But Fire Emblem, one of the long-standing game series that still “stands” with Nintendo, becoming the “goal” for the tactical RPG genre, refuses to leave Nintendo’s home turf like many names.

This pushed Sony to come up with completely new names, and Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena was born, creating a significant impact on the market not only in Asia but also in the Western world, which is not too “favorite” of this game genre.

However, after only one expansion version, this game suddenly disappeared from the market, leaving many regrets for fans.

Until recently, a sequel to the series was announced with the name Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, but this time it is not only exclusive to PlayStation like the previous version but appears on all gaming consoles, including PCs, which are unfamiliar to Japanese game makers.

So is the comeback after more than 24 years of the “Crusade” really successful?

As mentioned in the review of the game King Arthur: Knight’s Tale not long ago, the late 90s saw a lot of studios looking to break, and refresh classic game genres through Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena has become one of the most successful examples in the genre.

The developers from Hearty Robin have been extremely skillful when combining elements of the Grand Strategy game genre into the Strategy RPG genre, providing a “hearty meal” for players when it has to constantly think on both the “macro” level of relations between nations, and the “micro” in battles between two specific armies with diverse terrain and military settings, create endless attraction for each battle in the game instead of following the show-chasing style with pre-designed battles like traditional Tactical Role-playing games.

Although this is not so strange in the modern game world as the versions of the Total War strategy game series, or the “criminal” game Empire of Sin, in the context of 25 years ago what this game can do is extremely impressive.

As a sequel released 25 years after the first part, of course, Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia focuses on maintaining the “quintessence” of its predecessor while adding new elements to it.

The main gameplay of the game remains the same as that of the previous version when divided into two parts including strategy play and a role-playing game – a turn-based strategy with a single context throughout. Entire level with six brand new factions participating in the “competition” on the continent of Runersia.

It must be said that one of the factors that made the difference between the Brigandine series of games with most games at that time was that both parts were developed in a balanced way around built-in storyline details for each group of characters.

This makes the game unified and coherent, enticing players to follow the character’s journey in the war for continental hegemony, rather than disjointed and gradually “drowning” in the stages after parts of the game become separate and no longer connected to the main game.

This is also a strong point that Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia is “inherited” from its predecessor, although the game launched 25 years later has a completely new development team and context.

In general, with the strategy game, you have to “recruit forever”, train generals, and send people to do side quests to earn rewards for experience points or valuable items…

Meanwhile, with the tactical part, your army will be distributed on the map, fighting the enemy with the classic turn-based method.

You must make good use of the terrain, skills, spells, and units to be able to completely defeat the opponent’s army in a way with the least loss of troops.

It sounds simple, but the two parts of the game will have a very close influence on each other as each battle will have an impact on the strategic chessboard, and conversely, strategic advantage can be easy transformed into a tactical advantage through the force of “strong generals” with “genuine” equipment.

What is surprising is that the plot system of Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia is even more elaborate than the first version with many different branches, activating new situations that bring many surprises for the player.

Even experienced producer Kazuhiro Igarashi has “installed” a lot of unique elements in the plot of each faction, thereby leading to side quests, even … brand new factions not available from At the beginning of the campaign, creating a plot twist, making gamers who love the role-playing strategy game genre constantly caught up in the evolution of the Runersia world after intense battles.

Not only that, unlike the first version, the system of characters and units in the game is expanded with unprecedented diversity in both features and skills.

This factor has the opposite effect on tactical elements, not simply a simple scissor-hammer-bag contrast to traditional role-playing strategy games.

The skill-magic system in the game is designed to be extremely complex with a depth equivalent to the tactical role-playing games in the narrow sense like Disgaea, which means that the characters possess a separate skill tree with different strengths and abilities. The ability to interact with the terrain is unique, not simply a few simple “slash” skills.

Usually in this situation, players tend to tinker during the early stages of the game to find themselves a set of “cabinet cards” with coordinated attacks that deal massive damage and so on. until the final battle, but with the complex and in-depth army design in Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, the element of understanding with the skill of the units and the ability of the player to calculate is the decisive factor to bring victory to battles with nearly equal strength.

That is why the “tactical” element of the game becomes bold and unique in a very different mystical style, reminiscent of the “golden” Heroes of Might and Magic game series that was once but rarely seen. Any game released in recent times can be compared.

Not only stopping at preserving and promoting the essence of the previous version, Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia also owns many bright upgrades in terms of both visuals and sound, bringing excitement to gamers. Brand new to this troublesome game series.

In the grand strategy game, you’ll come across a massive hand-drawn collection of characters and settings in the somewhat… flamboyant style of the Mangaka CLAMP group with meticulous attention to detail and impressive animation brings an extremely clear and colorful story about the characters in the game, making players feel like they are immersed in the somewhat confusing storyline with too many character lines and backgrounds.

However, when entering the tactical game, the military units are meticulously designed with a “half-Cel-shade” graphic style and extremely beautiful moves, skills, or magic, even when The battlefield has too many units, these effects are a bit confusing from the perspective of the game.

Thanks to that, players, even those who love graphics-intensive games, can still easily watch and enjoy these fierce battles.

where can you get a Brigandine The Legend of Runersia online

Brigandine: The Legend Of Runersia (Nintendo Switch): Buy it now

Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia (PS4): Buy it now

Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia – Nintendo Switch (US Release): Buy it now

The sound part is “unforgivable” in another aspect when most of the dialogues are voiced with talented Seiyuu (Japanese animation voice actors) capable of doing even the… Wibu must be melting.

The battle magic effects are meticulously designed with clear separation, not to mention the background music, although not too much, but enough to bring the atmosphere to the player during game time.

With well-rounded gameplay that completely inherits the quintessence of the previous version, a plot is edited extremely tightly with many factors enough to cause brain twists for players, and the picture – sound fully satisfies the market. Gamers’ sense of hearing puts a round of dots on the remarkable success of Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, although this second part was completed by a completely different team from the first version released 25 years ago.

It must be said that although it has satisfied players in both gameplay, plot, images, and sound, Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia still discourages many gamers with a few unnecessary “weak”.

First of all, the gameplay is quite slow with a deep script that makes the game beat too much… slow, and quite difficult for fans of modern games to accept.

Indeed, the character’s conversations become “obsessed” when you see them everywhere.

From character conversations in all the factions at the beginning of each turn to conversations between characters and a certain NPC when doing side quests can last minutes with the sole goal of letting the player know what’s going on.

At first, following these conversations is still a bit interesting, but later on, players just want to… fast forward them to focus on the gameplay.

When combined with the battle system in the game, each turn takes a very long time, even up to an hour if you have several battles in one turn and encounter an event that makes the characters object to “chatting” with each other.

Another slight minus comes from the game’s interface.

For most of Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia’s time, you’ll have to scroll through a lot of browser frames filled with all kinds of tables and parameters.

This causes a lot of trouble for new players when learning the game, while the tutorial does not focus on deep, explaining these issues.

Ultimately, it’s a game first developed for the Nintendo Switch, and therefore, more controller-friendly than a mouse and keyboard.

Users need to reset the button for easier control.