Written by Patrick Orquia

Title: Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia
Developer: Matrix Software
Publisher: Happinet
Genre: tactical RPG
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 25 June 2020
Price: $49.99

Even though they are quite few compared to the hundreds of platformers and metroidvanias on the eShop, there have been some awesome tactical role-playing games that have made their mark on the Nintendo Switch, such as the indie gem Wargroove and Nintendo's own and considered as one of the best games on the Switch, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I have played a few of such games, mostly on the 3DS, and most of them have Fire Emblem on their name. I enjoyed them all, and now that I mostly focus on gaming on my Nintendo Switch, it is time to play more tactical games on it.

Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia belongs to this genre and is very similar to the gameplay of the Fire Emblem games. I think that it is a very fair comparison, as this game is set during a medieval-like era, with knights and archers and magic-wielding healers and bishops and other common tropes found on most Fire Emblem games. This may be the case, but this game has a few additions to its gameplay mechanics that makes it different enough from the Fire Emblem games that makes it a worth-while game to play. This game is a sequel to Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena released in 1998 on PlayStation. Of course, I have not played that game since I never owned a PS1, but I don't think that matters, since this game is a standalone one with a whole new story and cast of characters. But even though that is the case, and I have experience playing Fire Emblem games, it still took me some time to get accustomed to the game mechanics because this game has a lot of them. The game does have comprehensive tutorials that you can review at any time, so that is a very good thing. I just had to test the knowledge that I learned from the tutorials on the battlefield.

In this game, you play one of six nations in continent of Runersia, a legendary land of great rulers and warriors that are bestowed with the power of mana that make them able to control monsters and have them join in their battles. The main story is about a war between six nations: Norzaleo Kingdom, Republic of Guimoule, Shinobi Tribe, Mana Saleesia Theocracy, United Islands of Mirelva, and the Holy Gustava Empire. Five of these nations have in their possession a piece of armor with a Mana Stone embedded on it. These armor pieces are the titular Brigandines, and these Brigandines are worn by the rulers of those nations. One of the goals of the game is to acquire all of the Mana Stones by battling for the unification of Runersia. Playing any of the six nations will make you witness the story unfold in their point of view. I chose the Norzaleo Kingdom, and in their part of the story, their conflict with the other nations started when their king got assassinated, leaving a young heir to the throne, Prince Rubino, to assume command of his nation's army to find the culprit. His army begins to conquer castles one after another. The other nations do it as well, and it becomes a race towards which nation that can conquer the most castles and control the biggest army. Between battles, cutscenes of story elements get shown, either telling about some past story, character information, or updates regarding the war, like things that have been happening with other nations, army movements, etc. By the middle of your playthrough, you will have already learned all of the things that you need about your chosen nation and your enemies. With this knowledge, you will have to shape your army troops according to the scenarios you are in and enemy movements.

The game has a world map where you see all of the castles, who currently occupies them, the troops that are in there, and total combat points or CP (the higher the CP, the harder to beat them) for those castles that are adjacent to those occupied by another nation. During the Attack Phase, other nations can also attack one another. If two nations try to invade another occupied castle, the nation with the higher CP gets to be the invader. If the castle is unoccupied, the invader occupies it outright. While you occupy a castle, you get to summon monsters and go through quests available for it. You have to maintain your CP high, so that other nations will not attack you. When a nation decides to invade your castle or you decide to be the invader yourself, a battle will commence.

Like other tactical RPGs, battles in this game are presented on a grid, and for this particular game, a grid consisting of interconnected hexagons, where units can be placed on pre-determined spaces depending on their current stats with the aim of getting the most advantage in terms of attacking and defending. A red-colored space signifies that the unit placed there can perform an attack against an enemy placed on an adjacent space to it or an enemy from a distance from that point, if that unit has such an attack available. Normal attack will be retaliated with a counter attack, while special ones (those that consume mana) will not. Aside from attacking, units can also perform skills, like spells or other special moves, or just go on standby and do nothing. Moving units around on this grid and trying to out-maneuver the opponent is quite good, and the exchanges between your team and your opponent can be quite engaging and suspenseful. When an attack happens, it gets presented with an animation right on the field. They look tiny but you can zoom the camera in and even turn it around 365 degrees to get you nearer to the action.

The game sort of has a time limit, where in you are given a set amount of years to conquer the entire continent, depending on the difficulty you choose at the start of the game. The Easy mode has no limit, the Medium difficulty has 5 years, and the Hard mode has 2.5 years. Each year consists of 12 seasons, and each season consists of an Organization Phase and an Attack Phase. During the Organization Phase, you get to prepare your troops for either attacking other castles or for defense, in preparation of possible attacks. You get to move units between your castles, summoning monsters, upgrading and customizing units, and sending them to quests to acquire new weapons, gears, and even possibly recruiting new units. Once you choose to end this phase, you can no longer do further adjustments until the next Organization Phase happens. During the Attack Phase, you get to choose to attack adjacent castles to yours and defend your own castles from attacks. After the Attack Phase, a season will pass, and another Organization Phase takes place, followed by another Attack Phase, and so on.

As you progress into the game, you get to accumulate mana points, which you can use to summon monsters and upgrade units to new classes. Your nation will consist of different human units aka Rune Knights, and each of them leads a troop that compose of themselves and their monster allies. Each troop can have at maximum of 6 monsters, but you will usually only have less than that, since there is a limit of 100 monsters per nation.

Speaking of monsters, this is probably the game's x-factor, as it makes its Fire Emblem inspiration go head to head with that from Pokémon, to a certain degree. There are different types of monsters that can be summoned in the game. The summoned monsters join your troops, given that they can still fit since each troop leader only has a limited magic pool (each monster has a designated magic cost, which can increase as they level up). They can individually level up independent from their troop leader. When they level up enough, they also get to change classes, making them more powerful and gain more abilities. But unlike their human counterparts who can simply retreat from battle when they get defeated, they die when their HP goes to zero. Many monsters may not survive battles, but those that get lucky to live to die another day, they become more and more valuable, so it kind of stings when a high-level monster gets ganged up by the opposing team's units and get killed in battle, but that is part of the tactical elements that you have to consider in battle.

As cool as monsters can be, of course, the main party movers are the Rune Knights. Rune Knights compose of different types: Fighter, Barbarian, Thief, Monk, Mage, and Priest types for males; Lancer, Hunter, Bard, Dancer, Enchantress, and Cleric types for females. Each type level up to multiple different classes, each with certain stat requirements. If a unit has maxed out their class, or you just decide so, you can change their type to another one. This is useful late in the campaign when you have already acquired many Rune Knights and you have to diversify. Mastered skills can be carried over to the new type.

One of these Rune Knights is the ruler of the nation. They are the most important unit during battles because if they get defeated, their entire party has to retreat, whereas other Rune Knights can pull back to another castle if they get defeated along with their monster units that are still alive and the rest of the surviving party can still battle on. If you lose a battle, you lose the castle you are on, if you are defending it, or you get repelled if you instigated the attack. Units who retreat or get defeated during battles will be shown as wounded during the next Organization Phase and will be inactive: they will not be allowed to move to another castle or be sent to do quests, and will not be allowed to attack during the next Attack Phase. The more you win battles, the more castles you invade, the more mana points and enemy units you accumulate. When a nation gets defeated, 2 or more of the surviving human units will join the nation that defeated them. Unfortunately, not the nation's ruler, as they will have to get exiled of the continent and their nation gets branded as erased from the history of Runersia. Yeah, losing in this game really sucks, so as much as possible, you have to win battles, since not only you get to invade more and more castles, your units level up more and will make them more powerful for the more battles ahead.

Aside from the main campaign, you also have the Challenge mode, where you can have a customized team consisting of 9 Rune Knights from among those that you have recruited from the Campaign Mode, regardless of the nation they belong to. Campaigns in the Challenge Mode will require you to meet certain victory conditions for you to win, and you will be rewarded a Strategy Score based on your performance. This is ideal for those who want more challenge and test their proficiency in the game. Unfortunately, there is no online multiplayer mode for this game, so you just have to test your skills with the game AI.

Overall, Brigandine: the Legend of Runersia is one enjoyable game, and one of the best games that I have played this year so far. It looks and sounds good, and the story elements that get shown between battles maintain my interest from start to finish. By the way, most of these story elements have superb voice acting which more than covers the lack of animation of characters during these cutscenes, though the hand-drawn illustrations look really good themselves. This game is presented and packaged very well and you get a good bang for your buck as the main campaign can take more than 30 hours to complete, multiplied by six, if you choose to play as all of the nations. So, if you have what it takes to conquer a continent while sitting on your couch or while lying in your bed, give this game a go and prepare for a great adventure.

REPLAY VALUE: high

PROS

Excellent visuals, especially during cutscenes and for character animations during battles
Grandiose musical score
Top-notch hand-drawn character illustrations
Superb voice acting albeit only in Japanese
Good story and narrative style
Wide range of customization options
Comprehensive tutorials
The camera can be turned around 360 degrees and can be zoomed in further if you need to get more up close to the action
Battles can be sped up
Solid performance with almost no dip in frame rate
Gameplay is awesome, but could take a while to be fully understood due to the many strategic elements and customization options to consider
Cool twists and surprises near the end of the game

CONS

Can be a bit too overwhelming to those not familiar with the genre
Individual units can be hard to distinguish from one another on the field, especially in handheld mode
Armor pieces and weapons are quite hard to come by; the healing/buff items even harder
No merchant NPCs, thus, items cannot be bought and can only be acquired via quests
Quests could have been much better and offered more rewards
Units cannot use healing items during battle

RATING: 4.5/5 Rune knights and monsters

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