Blog:Brave Dungeon: Brave or Cowardly?

PREVIOUS REVIEW: EPISODE 1 ''Returning from her slumber, the mistress rises once more and hands Blad Brave Dungeon, after reviewing the first game. Blad rises to the challenge once more, and so the story continues...''

Brave Dungeon is quite the fan favorite in the series. If you ask someone "Rank the Dark Witch games", many will but BD up with the likes of 2 and 3. I was definitely a little surprised to say the least. My first play through didn't leave the best taste in my mouth. I thought it was repetitive as all hell and the combat was too easy. But that was a couple years ago, and my opinions on the Dark Witch games have shifted around a lot. So today we'll be reviewing Brave Dungeon for the Nintendo 3DS. We'll also take a look at the Switch and PC half-port, half-new game, Brave Dungeon + Dark Witch's Story: COMBAT. Gah, what a silly name. Apologies for the small rant, but Dark Witch games have always had really awesome titles. The Price of Desire, Wisdom and Lunacy, The Meaning of Justice, etc. And no, Break Rock Syega Crystal is not a good title. So why did they feel the need to add "Dark Witch's Story: COMBAT" to the title? Why not just call it "Brave Dungeon + Combat", or more simply "Brave Dungeon+". In fact, you know what? From here on out, I'll just refer to it as "COMBAT". I won't be mentioning it a whole lot anyways. As a final note, I played this game on Lunatic in a New Game+ save file. New Game+ is really cool in this game for reasons I'll explain later, but you'll absolutely want to use it as soon as you get it. Just make sure not to overwrite your original clear file. Anyways, lets get into the best part, the music!

Music
I'm going to run this joke into the ground, and yeah, Brave Dungeon's soundtrack is great. Interestingly, they remixed Dark Witch 2's main theme and intro, and that became the series' main theme. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed going into 3 that this was the case, but I don't mind it all too much. Brave Dungeon's soundtrack is intresting as it's half Dark Witch 2, half Dark Witch 3. It's a bit hard to explain in text, but Brave Dungeon doesn't feel as sequenced as Dark Witch 2, and whether that's good or bad is up to you. Personally, I don't mind it, but everyone's different. Even then, you can tell it's sequenced, even if it's less obvious. I don't really have a lot to complain about, but that's mostly because the soundtrack is 21 songs long. If I have to sum up most of the issues with Brave Dungeon's soundtrack, is that it's pretty repetitive, not helping that the song repeats when you leave a battle (Seriously? FFVII got that right years ago.). This game is one of the longer Dark Witch games to beat, and will take a while, especially on your first playthrough. But other than that, I'm not really a fan of some songs in the game. The first dungeon's music was far too repetitive for my tastes, the battle theme... eh. And Bajel's fight wasn't that good in my opinion. The rest though? Easy songs on repeat. My favorite song is Zizou's battle theme, which has an incredibly long build up, but just pays off in the end. So all in all, Brave Dungeon's OST is great! Now, lets get into the story.

Story
The story starts off with Al fucking dying.

Just kidding. The story kicks off in the Old Islands, where Al is searching for a magic item. She enters Godshill, and gets knocked out by several enemies. This is where we're introduced to Lugli, an innkeeper who saves Al. She gives her advice, and from here, Al is off to the races, and with a couple friends as well. Together, they traverse the dungeons of the Old Islands. After that, there really is no dialogue. But in the end, the girl who holds magical item named Bajel, fights Al for it. Al ends up winning, but Bajel teleports the item to Nightmare, where its reputation precedes itself. Al fights Zizou, and Al wins, and she now holds the magical item. And that ends Brave Dungeon. Yeah, a rather bland story for an RPG, isn't it? It doesn't really infuriate me, but it's just so boring, I couldn't care about it. The only part I really cared about is Bajel, who looks awesome. I'm a big fan of pixel art, and she looks amazing. Her movements are fluid and look great. But yeah, other than that, this is the only game in the series where I always skipped the cutscenes. The story really is just that bad.

Gameplay
Brave Dungeon is quite the abnormal RPG when it comes to progression. You don't earn stats when you level up, save for HP. In Newport, you can buff your character with Tres earned. Think SMT IV, for example. It's an intresting system that I like a lot, as harder difficulties give you more Tres, but lower difficulties give you less Tres. My only issue with this system is that you can only do it outside of dungeons, and that would've been really useful to have. Other than that, you can craft many accessories, some of which are really good, like the parry ring, or the 50% ring, which gives you 50% more HP. That's awesome! You can also buff your skills with lunch tickets, which are always decently useful. Annoyingly, it's random, but you can drop out party members if you want to buff a specific character. You can also use Class Change to get a new skill, alongside a big buff to your stats. You select your skills (you get them all in the long term), and then you change your class. Your stats also stack for each class change, so there's no real reason to not change your class. You can also change your character, all of them having various advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I use Mari, Al, and Stoj. Mari debuffs enemies, Stoj heals but packs a punch, and Al is an all around character.

Dungeons
Starting out, you have 5 dungeons. These dungeons have 4 floors each, save for the final dungeon, Godshill, which has 2 more. The last floor is reserved for the boss in Nightmare, and you can go for any dungeon at any time, save for Nightmare, which you unlock after beating Bajel. While this sounds special, in reality, there's only one true order, as most enemies above your level will mop the floor with you without a fight. However, if you're brave enough, you can go to another dungeon, fight monsters, and get more EXP and Tres than at your current level, which is neat. However, the dungeons in this game are unfunnily unremarkable. Like, if you think Dark Witch 1 and 2 had linear levels, Brave Dungeon blows them out the water and into the atmosphere. No joke, it's literally a straight line where you hold one direction at a time. It's not fun at all, and the only real point of the alternative paths is to get more accessories and materials (which you use to craft accessories). Even then, you get materials from battles, so it's kinda pointless. Once you hit Nightmare, this is where it starts to get really bad.

The Never-ending Nightmare
Yes, Nightmare is THAT bad, so it gets it's own section. The first person who gets the header's reference gets $5 in Steam credit.

Not only do you not have a map, not only is the difficulty astronomically hard, not only can you not jump floors with an item, not only is there large floors of poison which suck your HP up (other dungeons have poison, but this dungeon is loaded with it), not only are the first 5 floors randomized, but the floors are extremely large and non-linear, and can easily take up to an hour on your first try. And don't even get me started on Zizou, who hits like a truck, and has a move which heals over 40K goddamn HP. And if you die at any point, it's back to square one. I'm a fan of marathon stages in games. Mega Man's Wily Fortress stages are great, I really like the late game of Dark Witch 1 and 2, Gunvolt 3's D-Nizer Mode is great, and the Blood Stained Sanctuary from Cave Story is almost perfect in it's design. But this just went WAY, WAY, WAY too far. In fact, I still haven't beaten it yet. Because I got to Zizou, lost, and nearly destroyed my 3DS. THIS isn't fun. Not one bit. Fuck this dungeon. You cannot physically tell me how this is fair. One guy pointed out how it gives you over 3 million Tres so you can power up your character. OK, fair point. But that doesn't make this dungeon any more fun. If I wanted to grind, I'd go to literally any other dungeon. Also, some of you may point out that you should play it in New Game+, which I agree with. But it should've been very clear from the start. I have no idea what NAN-A was even thinking here. And you know what also sucks? This dungeon returns in Brave Dungeon 2, so I'll have to play it AGAIN! Although 2 is a lot easier, so I'm not sure about if it's gonna suck, but still! Didn't NAN-A know when to pump the brakes, maybe just a little? The only good aspect of this dungeon is it's music, which is an awesome rock song. Too bad you never get to hear it in full due to the...

Battles
The battles are your typical turn-based combat affair. You attack, they attack, you (de)buff, they (de)buff, and so on. So there's not much to explain. One annoying thing is that you can't run from fights unless you 100% the map. And that's not even a great thing anyways, as the enemy doesn't despawn. You might as well bite the bullet as battles aren't all that difficult. Not mindless or anything, just not that hard. Boss battles will be the bulk of your playthrough, and they can get kinda tough at points. They do really strong damage, so you'll want someone who can debuff enemies. Some also inflict lots of statuses, so watch out. And that's really it for the battles. So lets move onto the postgame.

Postgame
The postgame is pretty interesting in my opinion. It expands on what Brave Dungeon already does. You can unlock buffs in-game, and even unlock Zizou when you've beaten the game, who is really overpowered, but to compensate, she can't have any other party members. Brave Dungeon really pushes NG+, but to be honest, I'm probably not going to beat the game again, even if I think the game is decent. I haven't 100%ed the game yet, but I probably will, as it seems really easy to do. I'll update this blog when I do. Before I close out the review, I'll talk about COMBAT.

COMBAT
COMBAT is a rerelease of Brave Dungeon, and also sports a new game, Dark Witch's Story: COMBAT. Let's cover the new stuff in Brave Dungeon, and really, there's not a lot. Klinsy and Nevile are playable, and at the time, 3 was the game everyone cared about, so it's kinda cool that they added Nevile here. There's some new graphics for the dungeon, and the UI has been updated for the lack of a second screen. The game also has an enemy mode on PC, where you play as Hiroto, and accumulate monsters to fight with you. You can also reverse the maps on PC, which kinda messed with me, but it's still a fun feature. I'd say this is the definitive version of the game, so play this version if you're new to Brave Dungeon.

Anyways, COMBAT. It's a card game, where you play 2/3 matches against your opponent. You climb the ranks and earn Tres to power up your cards. The card-battling is rather simplistic and requires little-to-no player input. You can't even cheer your card on, which would've been cool. So I wouldn't even bother with this game, and as far as I know, you don't have to even play it for 100%. The card art is the only good part about this game. Seriously, why did they make Kinnopi so adorable?! But other that that, yeah, this mode sucks.

Overall, COMBAT is a nice upgrade, but it's asking price is a bit contentious. Brave Dungeon was $5, and COMBAT is $9, and $13 on PC. I think it's worth it (particularly for the postgame), but if you don't agree, I can understand that.

Conclusion
This review might seem pretty negative at first. Some of you may think I hate Brave Dungeon, but in reality, that couldn't be farther from the truth. Brave Dungeon is a decent game, at least in my opinion. Hell, you might get a kick out of the game if you enjoy the fundamentals. One guy I know (Oersted) loves the game, and he knows it in an out. But unfortunately, it's just not my cup of tea. But it might be yours. Even then, I'd still recommend the game, even if its flaws are really annoying. As for COMBAT, I think it's really nice, but I wouldn't double-dip unless you really liked Brave Dungeon on the 3DS. If you're a newcomer, the price is a bit steep, but I think it's still worth a purchase. Overall, I'll give Brave Dungeon a 7.5/10. The Switch port doesn't do much, but I guess it didn't do anything too bad. I'll give it an 8/10.

And that's another review in the bag. Normally I would host a voting session, but there would really be only one choice. Next time, we're covering the spinoffs. And then after that, the review series finale, Brave Dungeon 2. And that's a special case, so that's going to be last. I'd be a bit hesitant to review a game that's technically not even finished, but I'll explain my motives when I get there. But thank you for all of the support again, and have a good day. Take care.

''Blad abandons the mistress, but soon, he would come to regret that. But that's a story for another time...''

NEXT REVIEW: SPINOFFS