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Brandish: The Dark Revenant (PSP) to release (hopefully) next month!
- Thread starter PixyJunket
- Start date
Mauricio_Magus
Banned
A story doesn't need exposition all day to be good, EO1 and EO3 has some of my favorite stories ever.
We don't play it for the story, but saying that they have no story is objectively wrong.
Brandish nails the atomosphere in an amazing way, and probably in a similar way to EO.
I remember this trailer selling me on this game, which in turn made me excited for Brandish PSP! More fan translations need awesome trailers.
ShadowgeistX
Member
Excellent. I can probably just barely squeeze that onto what's left of my 16GB Vita card. Looking forward to the game though, XSeed has been taking a lot of my money this year.
Armoured Priest
Member
That gets me excited, actually.
Also looking forward to Brandish...and thank you for all the Falcom love you've already brought us. I look forward to handing you more money :3
Tizoc
Member
Please do! My 64 GB ain't cutin' it with some of these digital only games.
BASED FALCOM
10 SECONDS IN AND I AM ALREADY HYPE!
GIVE THIS TO ME NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Holy shit, if they ever somehow get the OK to release Bandish 2 on Steam somehow, this better be the announcement trailer.
This only plays in an optional boss fight BTW, so be sure to check every wall and room if you don't want to miss it, lol.
Huh?
Ingueferroque
Banned
Tizoc
Member
Dayum...will be worth it though
Brandish 2 got a PC release on FM Towns and PC800 series based on this, maybe they can get try to localize it for a PC/Steam release.
http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Brandish
EDIT: Oh wait that's for Brandish 1, Brandish 2 never got a PC release >_>;
Ah well if SEGA can put their genesis games up, who knows what the future can hold @_@
Ingueferroque
Banned
I hope one day I get to play Brandish 3 and 4 in english.
...And be ready to hear only the very beginning of that track your first few times, followed immediately by the Game Over theme.
-Tom
Black Soma
Member
Nice. I'm more interested in playing this than Sora no Kiseki 2.
Every single game in the Brandish series was originally a computer game - Brandish 1, 2, 3 and VT were all originally released on the PC-98 (an old Japanese computer - think of it like the MSX). Brandish VT would latter get an enhanced port for Windows in 1998 called "Brandish 4".
Only Brandish 1 was released on both the PC-98 and the FM-Towns.
Pretty much everything Falcom released for the PC-88/98 post-1984 is available on Project EGG, but they'd involve actually hacking the original game for translation, since it's all emulated and I really doubt Falcom still have the source code for *any* of these games.
Anything from Falcom released for Windows (i.e post-1997) is very likely to be eventually localized. Just don't hold your breath for their pre-1996 classics.
There's a fan-translation project going for Brandish 4. Brandish 3 isn't mentioned much by the English-speaking fanbase - it's only on the PC-98, and since that isn't the most popular system to emulate/collect, not many people have played it (I've played about a good 2/3 of it, though). I would be really happy to see a translation project going for Brandish 3, and then using the knowledge gained to translate Brandish 1 and 2 on PC-98 as well, since they are *much* better than the SNES ports.
...And be ready to hear only the very beginning of that track your first few times, followed immediately by the Game Over theme.
Heh, I loved that gimmick in the PSP remake.
Also Tom - couldn't you guys ask Falcom to replace the in-game version of Headless for the non-loop one?
I had to try it!!
Winnie the Pimp
Member
i just checked out a video of the jap. version of the gameplay and...
let's just say it looks super challenging, just how hard IS this game?
Also: is combat real time? It sure seems that way kinda in the vid.
let's just say it looks super challenging, just how hard IS this game?
Also: is combat real time? It sure seems that way kinda in the vid.
Yeah, it's real-time. Gameplay is grid-based, but it's still an action RPG at its core, and timing can play a HUGE part in survival -- not just in combat, but also with some of the traps. If you look at the screenshots attached to that Tumblr post, you can see one that has Ares leaping over a log that shot out from the wall, and another that has Dela dodging boulders as they roll through a large room.
As for how hard it is... well, it's pretty damned hard, but not unfairly so. If you're cautious and thorough, you probably won't die all that much... and anytime you do, you'll always know exactly why, and you'll know how to avoid dying on your next attempt. And since the game allows you to save anywhere, and even allows you to "faux save" on the fly by using an item called "Retry Bread" (which basically sets a checkpoint where you stand), you can always experiment with dangerous situations to determine the best approach.
So it's pretty much the definition of "tough but fair." Extremely challenging, forcing you to really pay attention to your environment and plan your next move... but never frustrating, because you never feel like you're helpless or like the game isn't giving you a sporting chance.
It's tremendously well-balanced.
-Tom
...And be ready to hear only the very beginning of that track your first few times, followed immediately by the Game Over theme.
-Tom
Noted
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
1996 gave us both the last PC-98 Falcom game (Eiyuu Densetsu IV) and the first Windows Falcom game (Lord Monarch Original, which became Lord Monarch Online, a freeware version you can download and read (the manual) in English). But yeah, t'was all Windows going in 1997 onward.
PC-98 games don't get hacked for translation often if ever. I suspect the Farland Story games must have been easy to hack for the project to have finished so early on in the community's history (all the patches released in 2003...eleven years ago!). Doing a proper Brandish 3 hack would help bring attention to this platform and maybe introduce new tools for getting other games to work with our long-ass English sentences. Until then, 1, 2, and now 4 will offer plenty of Brandish awesomeness, and I believe DeltaSoft's Sorcerian patch for the MSX2 is useful.
donutzsick
Member
I have a hard time with challenging games, but save anywhere ameliorates that BIG time. I was gonna buy this regardless because Falcom fanboy, but now I'm looking forward to playing through it and not just listening through the OST nonstop
Oops...almost forgot about that :c. So you say Online is actually a free version of Original (just like Vantage Master Online is Vantage Master V2)? Interesting.
Falcom's last PC-98 game was actually Brandish VT*, not LoH IV ;p. I believe Lord Monarch Original was released shortly after it.
*One could even say this was Falcom's final swan song for their PC-98 era.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
In a way, though I don't know if Online has additional maps, bugfixes, or rebalancing to differentiate it. Lord Monarch Original was accompanied by Lord Monarch Pro, which was the Windows version of Advanced Lord Monarch, so maybe Online comes with those maps also. I'm a bit more interested in Monarch Monarch anyway (ought to be called Monarch Monarch Monarch since it's in 3D).Oops...almost forgot about that :c. So you say Online is actually a free version of Original (just like Vantage Master Online is Vantage Master V2)? Interesting.
Augemitbutter
Member
very nice. need EU date asap.
Like I said, it's tough but fair. Patience and careful planning will get you through it, even if your reflexes aren't quite up to snuff. You'll probably be better at it than you think.
-Tom
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
I didn't really get this game. Made it to the last labyrinth and just quit because it was boring as hell. There is no tension accompanying the dungeon crawling, you can save anywhere, health regenerates on its own, getting through any challenge the game throws at you is really trivial and completely unexciting. I mean, the game appears to be this rogue-like dungeon crawler but the mechanics don't make sense in this context, there is just easy progress without much fear of dying.
Hopefully when it happens, it's from you guys yourselves, because when you do it, you always price your games fairly in and you are part of the few who do that and I love you guys for it.
装甲悪鬼村正;138898888 said:
Wow. Yeah, that's the exact opposite of my experience. Even though I technically wasn't in danger of losing progress (unless I neglected to save or use Retry Bread for a long time), I just felt this constant tension the entire time I was playing. Dying may not have had much of a penalty, but when I died, I felt like I'd "lost" -- I felt genuinely defeated -- and it was just so very easy to die if you didn't progress with the utmost care that I got paranoid... I would progress through dungeons one step at a time, and when I saw monsters, I would get genuinely kind of scared, sometimes backing away or closing the door, my heart racing, as I came up with a plan of attack to survive the encounter.
If you look at it from a pure mechanics standpoint, then yeah, the game's challenge is minimal due to how forgiving it is... but it's not about the mechanics, it's about the IDEA. It's about the atmosphere, and the mood, and the threat itself.
And that's exactly what made the game so engaging, so addicting. It gave a visceral thrill to play it, but was never once frustrating -- there was little punishment for failure, but a tremendous reward (sometimes literally, sometimes just in terms of feeling) for success.
-Tom
cj_iwakura
Member
Can't wait. The last days of a system are the best days.
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
I do not understand. The Retry Bread for example...makes no sense in a game where you can save anywhere. What's the point of this item. There was a floor right at the beginning of the game where your health regeneration does not work and I thought to myself "whoa, things finally get serious", little did I know that this was like, the only goddamn floor that works like that in the game. The mechanics of this game are completely contradictory to what it presents itself as.
This game is nothing like a Souls game, it does not want you to die, lose progress and learn. You just...progress, kill things, save, kill things, wait for your health to regen, save, maybe die but who cares you just saved anyway... until the pointlessness of this game devoid of challenge makes it hard to give a shit.
cj_iwakura
Member
Little known fact: Brandish 2 has the best game soundtrack ever concieved by mankind. Brandish 3 is no slouch either.
装甲悪鬼村正;138903451 said:
Was Retry Bread in the original version? If not, then I would assume it was created in response to the PSP's fairly lengthy save process. It's much easier to open your menu and use an item, after all, then to open the system menu, select Save, wait for it to check the memory stick, pick a slot, select the slot, wait for it to save, select OK, then cancel back out and resume playing. There were definitely times where I wanted to "checkpoint" myself every step of the way during a particularly grueling gauntlet, but didn't want to wait for the save process (or take up a slot on my memory stick) each time, so I used the hell out of Retry Bread instead.
It's not the most useful item in the world, but I like that they gave the option. It's kind of like how there are iron balls you can use to check for pits, but attempting to drop a potion will do the same thing -- if it successfully drops, just pick it back up, safe in the knowledge that there's no pit there. If it says you can't drop it, then look out, dude, 'cause thar be a pit!
That's because you're focusing on it solely as a collection of game mechanics -- you're failing to see the forest through the trees. Brandish is not about its mechanics, it's about the atmosphere and mood they generate. You're not supposed to worry about dying because it'll impede your progress, you're supposed to worry about dying because you're invested in the dungeon-crawling experience, and you're invested in your character, and you just don't WANT to see him die.
It's clear that this game is just not for you, yeah. You're a very pragmatic sort of gamer, from the sounds of it.
Brandish is a game you experience, as opposed to a game you play. If you're not able to get into the feel of it, then you're not going to get much out of it.
For those of us who find typical "challenging" games too frustrating or disheartening, however, this is perfect. For me, the type of game that doles out harsh punishments for death is typically the type of game I never finish, because rather than encouraging me to keep playing, these punishments cause me to stop having fun. And when I'm not having fun anymore, I quit.
Brandish is a game that never stopped being fun for me. Even when I failed, it was a thrill. I was never frustrated, but I couldn't just breeze through it, either. I had to pay attention to my surroundings, move forward slowly and assess the situation, every time... or else I'd wind up dead. And winding up dead wouldn't set me back very far, but it would still require retrying the particular challenge I was attempting until I succeeded at it.
It's kind of like how in the newer Ys games (and Brandish, for that matter), you can retry boss battles as many times as you want until you win. That doesn't make the battles any less fun, though -- you still have to learn how to win through trial and error, and put significant effort into them -- but it does make them more bearable and less frustrating, because you don't have to sit through cutscenes or fight through dungeons again every single time you fail.
And ever since playing those games, I haven't been able to tolerate titles without boss retry. As soon as I die to a boss and am forced to restart the stage or something... I just shut the game off. Because as far as I'm concerned, that's not fun.
-Tom
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
So this arguments raises a couple of questions: was the PC-98/FM Towns original designed around saving anywhere or were there pre-determined areas where the player can save? And if there's health regeneration in that version, how exactly does it passively function? I'm the weirdo here for wanting to play the original game out of historical interest, but what 装甲悪鬼村正 has described sounds less appealing than what I've heard from Ancient Lands of Ys, /vr/, and GAF.
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
I guess I just wasn't as enamoured by the atmosphere or something.
People often seem to think however that this is some sort of hardcore dungeoncrawling experience.
Which it isn't. At all. It's actually the complete opposite, the game is designed to be as pleasant, forgiving and in my opinion unexciting as possible.
People often seem to think however that this is some sort of hardcore dungeoncrawling experience.
Which it isn't. At all. It's actually the complete opposite, the game is designed to be as pleasant, forgiving and in my opinion unexciting as possible.
There really isn't health regeneration in this game -- not like in Ys, anyway, where you can stand still in the overworld and slowly recover HP. To recover HP in Brandish, you have to use items, use magic, or rest by pressing the SELECT button.
I assume what 装甲悪鬼村正 is describing when he says "regeneration" is the rest function, but I quite like the way that works, and they've actually made it much riskier than it was in the original versions of Brandish. In the PSP game, when you're resting, time is sped up and you are 100% vulnerable -- as in, you're susceptible to one-hit kills even from slimes. So before you rest, you have to make sure you're somewhere safe, with all the doors closed and absolutely no monsters anywhere nearby, or else there's a rather large chance a monster will attack you in your sleep and cause an instant Game Over.
If you're not near a safe spot (which you often won't be), and you don't have any potions, and you don't have the Heal spell or have enough MP left to use it, your only hope of recovering health is to rest for a split second at a time -- basically, press SELECT, then *immediately* press it again, and pray nothing makes its way over to you and kills you where you stand during that brief time lapse.
It's quite nerve-wracking!
The game also penalizes you for resting too much during your final evaluation after the end credits (where you receive a score card that ranks how good a Brandish player you are), so if you care about that sort of thing, you're going to want to avoid resting in general.
In the original versions of Brandish, resting didn't seem to carry with it any sort of time lapse danger whatsoever, so if an enemy was far enough away from you that you knew it couldn't reach you within, say, 10 seconds, then you could rest for 10 seconds with no worries at all.
I'm also not certain getting damaged during resting carried with it the guaranteed one-hit kill that it does in the PSP version.
So, yeah... if 装甲悪鬼村正 disliked the PSP version, I'm pretty sure he'd dislike the original even more in that regard.
Yeah... we definitely disagree on that completely. For me, this was as hardcore as it gets this side of La-Mulana. This is one of the rare games that I played while literally sitting on the edge of my seat. I broke a sweat playing it multiple times over, and even got so scared that I JUMPED during one particular scene later in the game that I don't dare spoil here.
For me, this was very much a hardcore and delightfully intense experience. It's simultaneously forgiving and balls hard, kind and mean. It's a game designed to kill you, and make you shiver with fear, but not to intimidate you so much that you never come back.
-Tom
Haiiro Husky
Member
Can't wait for this. Someone posted the Japanese trailer here on gaf and after that I've been eagerly awaiting this game!
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Hmm...maybe Retry Bread was added to the game for users who couldn't save, if somehow they lost the save disk (and does Brandish PC-98/FM Towns come with one of those?).
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
It's cool if you enjoyed the general feel of the game for whatever reason but this is something that just makes zero sense to me, because you're seriously under-selling how ridiculous the rest-function is. Let me call it the infinite-health button because that's exactly what it is, you hold that button down for a split-second and you're pretty much back at full health. If for some reason you are worried about getting hit by an enemy (that basically never happened), just save your game and reload, because you can do that anywhere and anytime!
Now, this is something everyone needs to ask themselves: how appealing does a dungeon-crawler where you can save anywhere, anytime and replenish your health with the press of a button sound? Yeah. I have no idea how you managed to feel tense at any moment in this game. It seriously made me wonder why I'm doing any of this dungeoncrawly stuff, it's so...weirdly pointless without feeling the joy of finding a health potion or a save point or... anything really.
装甲悪鬼村正;138920287 said:
How far did you get? Are you sure you were near the end of the game? Because resting IS almost an instant heal at first, but by the end of the game, your HP is so high that you have to rest for a good 5-10 seconds (at least) in order to heal to full, and time around you is moving at like 50x normal speed while you're doing it, with enemies that can one-hit kill you. You say it "basically never happened," but man, I lost count of how many times it happened to me -- I think you just got lucky. Resting was SCARY! If you rely on resting at that point in the game, you'll never get anywhere, because you'll never SURVIVE long enough to actually heal yourself to any significant extent. Potions, and the Heal spell especially, are absolutely mandatory even by the halfway point, and especially in Dela Mode.
When you say you made it to the game's "last labyrinth," are you talking about the Tower, by any chance? Because yeah... that's not even close to the end. There are still three tiers after the Tower. The main game has 45 floors, with another 13 in Dela Mode.
Either way, yes, this is a dungeon-crawler where you can save anytime, anywhere. There is no disputing that point. And you know what? That sounds amazing to me. Most of the Ys series lets you do this too -- and the Ys games legitimately have health regeneration simply by standing still, to boot! -- and I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about it there.
-Tom
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
Dude, those couple of seconds mean nothing, you should be aware of the fact that as long as you don't rest in the middle of a room where enemies tend to roam/spawn your chances of getting hit during resting are slim to absolute zero. And even that is possible with the split second resting you mentioned yourself. There's a reason why I didn't know what to do with all of the healing potions I kept finding and it's certainly not because I'm an amazing player.
It's a ridiculous mechanic which creates a completely empty playing experience by itself, it gets even worse if you combine it with the save anywhere feature.
edit:
I'm talking about that "fleshy" looking place after you get out of the labyrinth with the darkness gimmick. I remember the narration talking about being close to the end so I assumed this to be the case?
装甲悪鬼村正;138922159 said:
It's funny, as you claim your chances of getting hit during resting are slim to absolute zero, but I swear to you that I must've died dozens of times from resting alone during my first playthrough. I died during split-second resting, I died while resting in an empty room (enemies spawned and attacked in my sleep during the time lapse)... it got to the point where I just considered resting off-limits altogether unless I was absolutely 100% sure I was safe. Which usually involved closing a lot of doors and feeling very nervous until I was at full health.
Guess we'll just need to agree to disagree, on account of having VERY different experiences with this mechanic.
I just find it really baffling that your experience was so much different from mine, and really wish I could get to the bottom of WHY... but ultimately, I don't get it. As, I suppose, you don't in regards to what I'm describing.
I think Brandish just isn't your bag. I appreciate you weighing in, but in the end, I just do not comprehend your viewpoint on what I consider to be one of the most balanced, engaging dungeon-crawlers I've ever played in my life.
And even if you weren't challenged, did you honestly not enjoy the exploration? The puzzles? The atmosphere? The enemy patterns? Nothing?
EDIT: And yes, that is indeed the last area. I am truly baffled as to how you were able to have so much luck with the resting mechanic at that point.
EDIT2: Also, I don't mean to dwell on this, but does it make any difference to know that you're graded after the ending credits on how many times you saved and how many times you rested, among other things? So if you wanted to beat the game with an S ranking, you'd have to be crazy fast, never rest, and do the whole thing in as few sittings as possible. For someone like me, that's completely unimportant -- I think I beat the game with a C ranking, maybe a D, and I didn't care because I was playing for the experience, not for a letter grade. But for someone like you, playing toward a higher ranking might be just the impetus you need to finally glean some enjoyment from the game, since forgiving mechanics seem to be your biggest beef with it.
-Tom
You'll have to wait until the release date is announced -- we'll announce the price alongside it.
Hopefully not too much longer!
-Tom
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
Soundtrack and boss battles were great. Hilariously enough, you can actually do the split-second resting during some of them. I mean, it would have been a well-made game if it actually functioned like a proper dungeon-crawler.
I don't really care about this self-imposed challenge stuff. It's very obvious though that enthusiasts of the genre will have to do these challenge runs to get anything out of this game.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Assuming I run into the same problems as him, going for the S rank early on would redeem the game for me. Was ranking a part of the original too? From what I can interpret, Kiya designed a dungeon-crawler that would:
a. Scroll well on a platform lacking hardware scrolling (explains the spareness and repetition of textures)
b. Be more accessible than Drasle Family yet best Sorcerian in mechanical complexity and pacing
c. Provide a reason to barrel through the game for players already used to the systems and behaviors of maps and enemies
Whether or not I enjoy this game at the level some promise, I can appreciate what principles the developers were aiming for. My question is, did Kiya and crew mean for players to abuse save-states? Or did they design the game in mind for this? This argument makes the feature sound like a difficulty toggle.