Brigandine Reviews

Brigandine is a strategy rpg that was brought over here by Atlus, the company behind rpgs such as Persona and Ogre Battle series. At a glance Brigandine is somewhat like Sega's Dragon Force but it's not. It's somewhat inferior to Dragon Force. There are story strategy rpgs such as Vandal Hearts where the storyline is the main driving force for the game while there are strategy rpgs where gameplay is the main driving force for the game. Brigandine falls in the latter category. Is it a bad game?? Let's find out.

Brigandine starts off on the continent known as Forsena. Here, a general from the country known as Almekia, name Zemeckis, killed his King and declared himself the new King. Zemeckis then established Almekia as the Esgares Empire. The son of the now deceased King, Prince Lance, fled to the west side of Forsena and established the New Almekia. Zemeckis then declared war on all 5 neighboring countries of Forsena, New Almekia, Norgard, Leonia, Caerleon, and Iscalio. Thus the game begins with you selecting and controling one of those 5 rulers. The game doesn't possess alot of story or story sequences at all. It mainly rely heavily on gameplay. You do get a few small story sequence here and there but that's about it. This is purely a strategy driven rpg game. If you're looking for an in-depth storyline with great character developement then you be better off looking elsewhere.

Like with all strategy rpgs, Brigandine contains many characters from knights to generals to rulers. The different variety of characters is astonishing. Unfortunately there's no real character developement for each characters. Most of them end up as nameless faces during the game.

Brigandine uses both polygon and sprites in a 2-D world. The battle map is plain with no real stunning artwork. The sprites are plain as well. The polygon during the attack sequence are big blocky characters with no real definition. Graphically wise, it's average. It's not going to blow you away but you won't be disgusted by it too.

One of the best thing about Brigandine is their music selections. Brigandine feature many different variety of midis for your taste. Each rulers has his or her own midis. There are also many different battle midis as well. While not of the midis are memorable ones they are very good.

Gameplay is very similar to that of Dragon Force. You have a world map with all the different countries involve with their respective castles. Your objective is to start a war campaign, sending out your fighting units to the castle that you want to conquer as well as making sure to leave some units behind to defend your castle. This will require patience. The difficulty on the game depends on what ruler you are playing. Some can be hard while others can be easy.
Each fighting unit consists of a general or leader that command a group of monsters. How many monsters a general can have in his party depends on his Mana Level. Each monster has a certain number of Mana that will be included in the Mana space that general has available. All generals and monsters can be upgraded to a higher class once they achieve a certain amount of levels. It's a good idea to try and keep your good monsters alive.
Like with Dragon Force, inorder to find and recruit new generals or fighters, you have to send a general out on a scouting mission. When they return they will report what they have found. Sometimes they will report that they have manage to recruit someone or that they have found a new and rare weapon/item for you to use.

Battle System: the battle system is pretty simple one. A turn base strategy rpg. Once a battle starts, all units including the enemies are place in a battlefield map. Your objective is to move your units in a turn base system and wipe out the other units or defeat their generals. Once a victory occurs then you will be given whatever monsters that you have capture during the battle from the enemies. Depending on whether you were defending your castle or atttacking another castle, you will get a message saying you have either successfully depended the enemies attack or successfully taken this castle. Simple enough.

There aren't really any hidden secrets in this game. None that is worth mentioning anyways. The majority of replaying this game comes from playing the other different rulers. Depending on whether you have time or whether you enjoy the game or not, you might want to try and play a new ruler on your second game.

Overrall Brigandine is a good strategy rpg game for those that just love a driven strategy game with little story involve. It's not as good as Dragon Force though. But the game can be quite addictive though. If you're looking more for a traditional strategy rpg like Vandal Hearts then you'll probably want to pass this one up.

Brigandine: The Seeds of War

Brigandine:
The Seeds of War