Not Abysmal
Brigandine Abyss is the latest releaser in the Brigandine series and one that I had heard of but not played up until now. At first glance the game looks solid, a turn based strategy RPG game set ion a medieval fantasy setting and you the game almost instantly gives off the setting of nations at war with each other.
The game has you start off by picking one of six story factions to play as and you are then sent into confrontation with challenges on the continent of Meltitea with the objective being to win the war and uniting the continent. Alongside the story mode there is a mission mode which has specific mission requirements in order to complete.
In order to unite the continent you will go through different phases, the first which is the organisation phase in which you strengthen your units and any time spent should be well prepared as this is the key to victory, you will then enter attack phase which will allow you to invade other countries by participating in turn based strategy battles. The battles themselves take place on a hexagonal field.
The story of Brigandine Abyss is fine although I wouldn’t say I cared for it on a deep level, the opening into was fine but kind of felt rushed with the characters faction I chose father being killed almost instantly and I felt underwhelmed when all was said and done, the characters and animations are fine but with some entirely focused on typical anime tropes some end up feeling less developed than they should. There are six stories to try out and while some may have their reasons for being in the war, I did not try the other stories outside of the Gran Dragnica faction.
Being a turn-based Strategy game the games take place on a battlefield but before this the game shows an overworld map with points on the map with not much guidance as what you should do, if this is your first time playing a game like this then it can feel overwhelming. You spend money during the organisation phase in order to rally new troops including Monsters to fight for you and you can spend a large amount of time doing this, a lot of this is finding the right balance in which kind of monsters as you should be using as while it may be tempting to use the most powerful monster this allows less room for others and being a strategy game, rolling with a tank to do your bidding is likely to not work in your favour in the long run.
The in game battle maps is where the game also falls short as there isn’t much in terms of good design in these while most of the game especially during the overworld map screen looks more polished. The UI and character models are all great but the feeling is lost when the battle engagement maps leave something to be desired.
The games combat is extremely slow in comparison to the games story which does at times move way too fast, this is a very noticeable flaw and while this is an SRPG there are at times ways you can exploit the game, leaders only need be killed so any monsters that are in their control will be wiped out should you take down the leader. While units can die you are able to resurrect them and the items are plentiful contrary to what the game makes you believe.
While the games negatives are there and the game does come away looking low budget it isn’t terrible and has an addictive gameplay loop. You are constantly organising your team to do your bidding down to changing their equipment and levelling them up as well as boosting the cities under your control. Once you have a few hours under your belt Brigandine Abyss does not feel like a SRPG with a high level of degree of knowledge needed to overcome what is ahead, the game does look foreboding and overwhelming at first but eventually you can find yourself grinding through it without a second thought. If you thought the game has a serious nature it does not, if you have played any JRPG the tropes are all here and while death and war is all around you will still converse with faeries and pirates who are just are not threatening at all.
Overall Brigandine Abyss is not a bad time, as someone that has come into it without knowing anything about the game although my opinion changed going into it thinking it was a serious narrative with highly strategic battles. Instead what I got is a simple strategy JRPG with a story that is easily ignorable but fun gameplay overall.
A PlayStation 5 review code was provided by NIS America. This article is featured on Opencritic
