Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice

Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice (ブレイブダンジョン正義の意味, Brave Dungeon: Seigi no Imi), also referred to as Brave Dungeon 2, is the sequel to the 3DS and Switch dungeon-crawler RPG, Brave Dungeon, developed and published by INSIDE SYSTEM. It initially released under an Early Access program on February 18th.

The game was originally slated for 2019 but was delayed to 2020 so that The Legend of Dark Witch Renovation  could be released for the series’ 5th Anniversary. In November 2020, the release date of 2020 was removed from the promotional image, making the release date ambiguous. Brave Dungeon 2 is now available on Steam, under an Early Access program.

Gameplay
Brave Dungeon 2 is split into 4 different stories. After completing the 3 main stories, you unlock the final story. Every story has a different gameplay style, but retains the same battle and level up system.

In general
Brave Dungeon 2 retains the gameplay of Brave Dungeon, while introducing new mechanics. The battle system has seen many changes. Two characters can use tag-team moves, assuming both characters are conscious and can act. Wait is now replaced with Defense. You can also run away without completing the map. Items can no longer be used during battle.

Level up system
Brave Dungeon 2 gives the option of choosing their future level ups. Players have access to 30 stars that must be individually leveled up. At first, the player has access to 10 stars, but unlocking 5 unlocks 10 more stars. The rest unlock Rank X. The player can choose which stars to level up, or randomly select stars.

Skill unlocks
After beating a boss, you can get skill points. You can then use those points to unlock new skills. The point cost varies on the skill, and each skill costs a minimun of 1 point. Points are shared for each character.

Character upgrades
Players can upgrade their characters by achieving Rank X. Upon upgrading, your character will receive a new outfit, alongside a special revenge attack. The costumes are interchangeable upon unlock.

Talk
Characters will have conversations during the journey. This will automatically happen during the story, but can also be manually triggered in the menu.

Base Camps
In Al and Papelne's story, the player has access to base camps, which restores the player's health and can be set as a respawn point in the event of a Game Over. Klinsy does not have this and instead, you warp back to the library upon defeat.

Al's story
Al's story is the first selectable story.

Dungeons
The dungeon in the game is one large map. Every "floor" has one boss. You need to beat the boss in order to see the map outside of that floor. There are several tiers of dungeon keys, the highest tier being the rarest. Once you get a key, you can unlock a door that's the color of your key. You can also carry several keys at once. Keys are found in the overworld, compared to Brave Dungeon where you had to beat the boss to get the key for that floor. Keys also no longer unlock floors, although they are still required for game progression. The enemies move and chase the player.

Al's playthrough finishes after going through the second yellow portal.

Party members
The following party members appear in Al's story. They are all unlocked by default.
 * Al
 * Seama
 * Mari

Seama item
Throughout the adventure, you will find many materials, which can be used to craft items made by Seama. These can be used for a variety of things, such as moving faster, permanently unlocking one or all doors for a specific key, and so on.

Dungeons
Klinsy's dungeons are akin to the original dungeons in Brave Dungeon. Enemies are static and no longer chase the player. Dungeons are mostly linear in design and are usually one-block wide corridors. The player can interact with the dungeons, such as putting out fires in the second dungeon. Players climb floors and there are 3 dungeons accessible. You can also warp back to home at any time, without an item.

The playthrough is considered cleared after collecting all archives.

Party members
The following party members appear in Klinsy's story.
 * Klinsy
 * Nevile
 * Stoj (unlocked after exploring enough in dungeons)

Papelne's story
Papelne's story is an open world-styled dungeon crawler. Papelne traverses a large map and collects materials along the way. Papelne has a stamina meter that depletes as she collects materials. After the meter depletes, movement and collection is much slower. Upon reaching a base camp, you can restore your meter.

Papelne's playthrough finishes after buildng the bridge and defeating a boss.

Crafting
Players are able to craft items throughout the journey with materials collected. Charl also crafts structures, as long as the player owns all required materials. Placing items and structures levels up your town, maxing out at level 4. Gaining a level adds an additional town member, which gives the player more recipes.

Party members
The following party members appear in Papelne's story.
 * Papelne
 * Patty (required unlockable by performing 2 urgent requests from Kewell)
 * Rudy (unlockable by going to the shoreline)

Final story
After completing the 3 main stories, the player may advance to the final story to get the true ending. All characters are available for use in this mode; granted that the player unlocks them first. The player unlocks fast travel and "Hampden Tower", the final area of the game. Hampden Tower has 4 dungeons available; however these are optional and not required to finish the game.

Party members
The following party members appear in the final story.
 * Blad
 * Bajel (optional)

Development
Brave Dungeon 2 has had the longest development of any Legend of Dark Witch game. It was unveiled in 2018, set to be released in 2019, before being delayed to 2020, and the eventually being delayed indefinitely. The game has an Early Access program, which released in 2022, and is set to release in January 2023. This would mean that NAN-A will work on the game for about 5 years.

Demo
Around December 6th, 2020, someone from the unofficial Dark Witch Discord Server has posted a link to where people can get the physical copy demo of Brave Dungeon 2. Currently, the demo is Google-Translated, and it only contains little parts of each character's stories. Note that many parts of the game remain untranslated as of now. Currently, the chat feature and Papelne's story are untranslated. In the demo, you can choose Al, Klinsy, or Papelne's Story. Al's demo ends after you finish the first boss, Klinsy's demo ends after you beat a dungeon, and Papelne's demo ends after you recruit Patty.

Early Access
On December 29th, 2021, NAN-A announced an Early Access to Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. The game can be beaten, however NAN-A noted the game to be incomplete. Throughout the early access, many features have been added, such as achievements and a fanart section, and many bugs have been corrected. However, many bugs have yet to be fixed. The early access is set to be completed in January of 2023, alongside the release of the Switch version. The game received an official translation in version 0.94.02.

Reception
Brave Dungeon 2 currently holds 50% on Steam, indicating 'Mixed' reviews. Almost all aspects of the game were both praised and criticized by players. Although some claimed it to be a worthy sequel to the original Brave Dungeon, others panned the game, deeming it one of the worst Dark Witch games.

The translation was criticized by almost all players. Many pointed out how some parts went untranslated, despite the game being machine translated. Some also criticized the performance of the game on PC. Many also noted the high amount of software bugs in the game.

One Steam user, named Oersted_LAL, was highly critical of the game, including the difficulty, translations, re-used assets, and file formats, leading to poor performance. Oersted also pointed out how NAN-A lied at several points in development. He ultimately claimed it to be "the worst of them all".

Brave Dungeon 2 is officially the lowest rated game in the entire franchise on Steam, beating the first game's score of 77%.

Additional party members and potential DLC
Assets for Zizou and Mati can be found in the game using external cheating programs, indicating that they would be playable. However, Zizou nor Mati appear in-game, even after beating Nightmare. Furthermore, they are extremely incomplete, as evidenced when trying to attack with Mati, the game softlocks.

The fandom has speculated that these characters may be completed and become accessible through downloadable content, similar to the Day DLC for The Legend of Dark Witch Renovation. No official word has come out from NAN-A about this.

DLC
Through SteamDB, you can see that Brave Dungeon 2 has DLC, although it is private. This further validated the aforementioned claims. Some have objected to this claim, believing that the DLC could be the game's soundtrack or an artbook, like the games preceding it.

List of Brave Dungeon 2 updates
Unlike other games in the series, Brave Dungeon 2 is the only game to have a public Early access release. See a list of updates here.

Trivia

 * Brave Dungeon 2 sets a number of records for the series:
 * This is the only Dark Witch game to get postponed.
 * The first sequel to a side series in the franchise.
 * The first game to have Lunatic not be the hardest difficulty.
 * Also the first game to have Lunatic selectable without beating the game.
 * The game with the most selectable stories (4).


 * Using Larva Wave in the demo crashes the game.
 * Zizou and Mati are inside of the Brave Dungeon 2 demo, however they cannot be played with conventional tools.
 * In promotional material, Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice was never referred to as Brave Dungeon 2. However, the game's executable file is titled "Brave2Dx.exe".