Blog:Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice: Cowardly

Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. Need I say more.

Brave Dungeon 2 is easily one of the most controversial games in the series, right next to good ol' 3, however, for different reasons. 3's changes to the gameplay made it one of the more love-it-or-hate-it games in the franchise, but The Meaning of Justice has been all over the place. From it's development, reception, and release. This game was just a spiral of disappointment. I just got into the community when I found out Brave Dungeon 2 existed. I didn't even know Brave Dungeon existed, so I beat that, hated it, and then just waited for it's sequel. I kept waiting until an anonymous person (who I'll reveal later) gave me a code for the demo. I played it and really enjoyed it. So when the Early Access released, I was pretty psyched. Of course, I didn't get it until recently, and then those next 9 months of my life waiting for this game happened. And it made me rethink my entire opinion of the game, and basically anything remotely related to Dark Witch. I still love this series, but waiting for this game was a pain. I'm going to come clean right off the bat and say that this review won't be very positive. The easiest way to put it is that Brave Dungeon 2, while not a complete faliure, is a disaster. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't think twice about calling it the worst in the series. And I'm gonna lay it all out on the battlefield. But before we begin, I've got a couple of guests here. For the first, and probably last time in this series' history, we have not one, but 2 guests here! First, we have the other bureaucrat on this wiki, Mali!

I guess I'll add a little bit of info: As you probably know (or don't know), I'm Mali, and like blad said, I'm the other bureaucrat of this wiki. I have some feelings to say about Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. It's a game that I originally thought of it as being the best game next to Dark Witch 2. With all of the hype given when the game was first teasered, new pixel art, recurring characters to help join your sides, and a brand-new environment that has paths that feel familiar, while some are new to the table. I honestly liked this game, and for what the Early Access had to offer, it offered a different side of things. yeah, it had everything that the teasers and the demo (only available to those who purchased the BD Physical pack), but from what I've seen more, I've wished that INSIDE_SYSTEM had done a better job with this game. Can't wait to go over the things I've found.

Second up is a notorious game modder, also responsible for adding Yamcha into this game. Here's Oersted!

While I don't understand this wiki stuff, I guess I'm here. Blad is adding the text for me since I dont do stuff with wikis like these. I did the thing with Yamcha in BD2, and I'm a fan of the game, I think. Stuff's complicated, with everything that goes on with it.

It's about time we reviewed this game, so let's get into the best part, the development!

Development
Yeah, I say the development, because how this game's development went is straight up comedy gold. Brave Dungeon 2 was revealed Brave Dungeon 2 was slated for a 2019 release, before being... delayed. Yeah, for the first time in Dark Witch history, a game has been delayed! It was jarring, to say the least. The first game might've technically been delayed by 4 months, but who the hell knew what a Legend of Dark Witch was at that time? The game wasn't even revealed at that point. So we waited, and come 2019... delayed. 2020... the game was delayed again, this time, indefinitely. 2021 is when we would get a resemblance of something. NAN-A announced an early access. And I was pretty excited, but also a bit scared. Early Access games have a poor reception, but I wanted Brave Dungeon 2 as soon as possible. And in February 2022, the Early Access released, initially to positive reviews. And that's where Oersted comes in.

(Mali)

Early Access (Oersted)
The Early access of Brave Dungeon 2 is an even bigger joke than it's development history. We've got incredible amounts of reused assets, bugs that went over 80 updates without being fixed, borderline porn of Stoj being added, and all sorts of questionable stuff.

This early access was announced a while back, don't remember exactly when, but I went out of my way to buy it as soon as possible. What I got was a worse experience than the switch demo. This demo was originally released as a bonus for players who purchased Brave Dungeon 1's physical release for the Switch, and it's actually pretty impressive how much better this demo is compared to the entirety of early access.

As development progressed, NAN-A lied more and more about the developement, and the game progressively got worse and worse. It's impressive how NAN-A made the game worse nearly every update, adding new overpowered features, introducing new bugs, and such.

There isn't much else I can say here. It's a mess, and most Dark Witch fans are starting to realize this, which is great. The more people that vocalize their disdain for this game, the more likely NAN-A is to make the game ACTUALLY GOOD.

You know what isn't a mess? The soundtrack!

Music
This is really one of the only unambiguously positive things we have to say about this game. This OST is awesome. Seriously, I did an entire gamerip just to listen to it outside of the game. I'll make it public one day, but it needs some fixing. I can't think of any bad tracks to it's name. I'd go more in-depth, but I don't know all of the tracks yet, and I don't play with headphones on. So for now, I'll just leave it at that.

In my opinion, this is the only redeeming factor of the game. Every soundtrack in this game is almost as great as Dark Witch 3's and 2s. I know Raito is only the only composer yet again, which can be noticeable with how many instruments he reuses in the soundtrack, but I have to say that this game will have an exception. My only issue is the battle theme, the intro, and the title screen. I wished that Raito had done a better job with this. especially the title screen. it's LITERALLY just the Brave Dungeon title screen and Dark Witch 3's title screen, but with different instruments to give it a different feeling. While that may be a bit of a change in pace, it's noticeable for a huge fan like me, and I could've expected something else. I give the music s solid 8/10 for this game.

Story
The overall story of the game is soulless and uninteresting. I can sum up all 3 main stories in one sentence.

Al's Story - Get through big mazelike forest to make a path to Hampden Tower. Klinsy's Story - Get through 3 mazelike archives to get books that can break the seal to Hampden Tower. Papelne's Story - Build a town and bridge, completely unrelated to Hampden Tower for some reason.

That's it. There's no more to the initial stories, no real character development. Things are pulled out of nowhere like Mari suddenly having the ability to sense danger near bosses in Al's story. This is never brought up again, and is only used in two cutscenes. Why even introduce something like this?

When it comes to the fourth and final chapter, there is borderline no story. When done right, this can be really good! It's not good. Each character, after unsealing Hampden Tower, was defeated by the spirity within it, and was thrown about the land, similar to Live-A-Live's final chapter. HOWEVER, each character simply just... Retreated. They weren't defeated or anything. They simply fled because every character suddenly became a coward.

When you find everyone, they all suddenly become "Brave Heroes" and stop the spirit of Hampden Tower. In the end, they all go their seperate ways, with some being paid. No development, no dificulty.

I should note that this game has literally no official translation. Yeah. Everything comes from internet translators, so the dialogue is... well... Typos flood your screen, and everyone sounds like a robot. Say what you will about the other games' translation, but anything is better than fucking Google Translate. NAN-A even opened a channel in the Early Access server where you can improve the translation, which ultimately proves redundant as the official translation is coming later. So what's the point? NAN-A didn't even commit to the FULL MACHINE TRANSLATION. This is absolutely laughable, and when my screen fills with Japanese text, I just burst out laughing. If you're going to be lazy, at least commit to it.

Overall
The gameplay style is mostly overhauled, and I think it was for the better... in a void.

Dungeons
The dungeons in this game are so much better in this game. First of all, the game takes a sort of open-world approach, at least for Al and Papelne. Al has one big dungeon, and you collect keys along the way to progress. Believe it or not, this system is actually pretty fun. The main problem with it is that there's no fast travel. So often you'll have to bash your head against the wall just to get to the next map. It's not terribly annoying, but I should still point it out regardless.

Battles
The battles in this game are not fun at all. The main issue is the insultingly easy difficulty. I play on Lunatic mode, the hardest difficulty you can play from the start. And the game is insultingly easy. I suspect the only thing that changes with difficulty is the amount of HP enemies have. I switched from Lunatic to Very, Very Easy, and I noticed enemies died within 2-3 hits, but on Lunatic, it took several hits before they died. So what's the point of playing on Lunatic? More EXP, but in this game, EXP is heavily skewed in your favor. You get so much exp, and at one point I was 8 levels above the enemies in a new floor. What's even worse is the godawful bosses. I deeply apologize to Litty, because these bosses are a drag. And worse yet, they re-use bosses left and right. Jesus Christ, I never want to see the ghost boss in my life ever again. And this Shady boss fight can kiss my ass. The Flubber one also sucked as well. Let's go every single one, shall we? The ghost boss is so tedious. He makes it so some opponents can't attack, and this fight nearly broke me on Lunatic. It's just not fun, and it doesn't matter on lower difficulties as you can easily 3-shot this guy. Shady's fight is easy if you break one of her rules. If you use Hyper Freeze, Shady's clones attack your entire party. But this fuels your revenge meter. So if you use Mari or Al, just spam their revenge magics, and then use Seama to attack the real Shady. It's so easy to do, and if you're at a high level, you can just tank the fight until you win. Finally, Flubber. He'll grow big at some points, and you can't attack him. But just... don't attack him when he's big. He literally will not even attempt to attack you. God, I thought the Syega Machines in 3 were bad, but this... IT SUCKS. ENOUGH SAID.

Klinsy (Mali)
Okay, so I haven't really played enough of Brave Dungeon 2 to know about Klinsy's side to the story, but from what I've seen and can tell is that the gameplay takes more of like the original Brave Dungeon. The enemies are static, most of the stages have a 1 block gap in between, and during the story, you find Stoj to play as. There are also some seals that are more like a puzzle game. You have four different types of blocks, and you have to find where on the board does it match the blocks you can have. You can choose to bruteforce it, but you have to wait a bit until doing it again, or you can escape the battle(?) I don't remember.

Going back to Stoj, oh my gosh, they have OVERHAULED her design! I know it's the same pixel artist that worked on the first Dark Witch, but jeesus! Stoj looks nothing like her original counterpart! I can say the same for Neville, too. Her new look is pretty on the spot and an overhaul, too. The eyes on her pixel art don't look as weird as what they've looked like in the original and Dark Witch 3. (I'm bringing 3 up because she looks nothing different than her BD look) However, they reverted back to the original pixel art for her second-class change, which can be a bit tacky, but instead we get her smiling. That's the best part about this. This is the first time she is smiling, too!

I think Klinsy's stage is the worst playthrough in Brave Dungeon 2. Not only does it revert all of the good changes from Al's playthrough, the bosses are absolutely the worst part of the game. It singlehandedly ruined my entire experience. The dungeon design is like the original Brave Dungeon, flat and boring, and even though there are gimmicks in the stage, they all fucking suck. The playthrough also has puzzles that interrupt the flow of the game, and are PISS easy. But back to the bosses, FUCK ALL OF THESE WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BODY. Once I got to the Lava Library, I genuinely thought my playthrough was over at this point. I died over 5 times before I beat him. The other bosses are piss easy. For the love of god, DON'T PLAY ON LUNATIC, or these bosses will take FOREVER. THIS SUCKS.

Conclusion (all 3)
Overall, Brave Dungeon 2 is frustrating. Not because it's really all that bad. The core gameplay could be fun, but Brave Dungeon 2 is brought down by issues that bog down the whole experience, and as a result, Brave Dungeon 2 didn't do any justice for the original Brave Dungeon.

Our scores are as follows:

And that unfortunately ends the review series on a really sour note. This game has a bunch of promise, but it ended up half baked. Some of you may be asking why we're reviewing the game now instead of waiting for the full release. After all, that's not fair, is it? I'm just going to say this: I don't care if it's in Early Access. NAN-A wants us to pay $20 for this. A game that's technically not finished yet. I'm less insulted by including a free demo with a physical edition, as it has a bunch of stuff with it, including a demo. That's awesome.

Anyways, my work here is done. If Mali or Oersted want to add stuff to the end of this, they can. Alright, see you guys once Dark Witch 4 releases!