Get ready to enter the grindhouse!
Brave Dungeon puts you at the helm of a three member battle team, led by Al, a character from the insideGet ready to enter the grindhouse!
Brave Dungeon puts you at the helm of a three member battle team, led by Al, a character from the inside system’s dark witch, of which Brave dungeon is a spin off. You choose you team from the beginning and begin you dungeon crawling adventure.
Presentation
One of the first things that I noticed is the incredibly cliche look of all of the graphics. Yes this is a JRPG and aesthetically it doesn’t do anything to spice that up. Personally I think it could use a bit more polish, at certain sections looking like a game prototype with the characters being the only fully developed piece. The antagonists of the game did have great variety, with a bit of a pokemon feel, I loved that I could be fighting a hedgehog monster, a buff snowman, and a evil eyed book, all at the same time.
Gameplay
Brave’s combat is turned-based combat at it’s finest. Each character having different strengths, it gives them very different skill sets. My team consisted of a healer, a medium-wide range attacker, and a powerful-single attacker. This made each battle unique, with a strong amount of strategy required. This combined with accessories and magic items, can make the battlefield a very interesting place to be. For example, giving my healer an accessory that made her more likely to have the first turn in battle, allowed me to enter and leave each battle with a fully healed them. Then raising the attack power for my team with my single attacker, leaving my wide range attacker full of health, with extra attack stats to mow down all of the enemies in my path with one move.
While I am a huge jrpg fan, one of the things that I hate the most, is a long grindy RPG without any real challenge, think I AM SETSUNA. Brave Dungeon quickly sets the pace by dropping you into the most difficult dungeon in the first battle, blowing you to smithereens.
The game consists of five different dungeons with each one varying in difficulty, then increasing in difficulty as you descend each of four floors. Each floor has a very difficult boss, that you have to grind to level up in order to defeat. Every ten to fifteen levels you can change the class of your character, which gives them either more attack or defense stats, and a new battle skill depending on your choice. These new skills add a ton of variation and strategy to each encounter, only opening up the fantastic combat to a more deeply rooted leve.
Crafting
During your underground adventure loot is everything. Finding either materials or accessories, you can craft higher powered versions of both, eventually getting very powerful items to help you face those difficult bosses found later in game.
Final thoughts
Brave Dungeon is a solidly addictive and challenging JRPG with one of the best turn-based combat systems I have ever experienced. Even though the story is non existent and the graphics leave a ton to be desired, I still found myself getting pulled in for more time and time again.
Be sure to watch my video review at YouTube channel TheFlannelFox… Expand
