Brave Story

[fedaykin]

So, as an incorrigible RPG addict, I just played through Brave Story and was surprised that a thread doesn't seem to exist for it, though I'm guessing lots of others here have engaged in a bit of courageous traditional JPRG-ing.

Initially, my patience was tested with the weakness of the narrative (I am aware that I probably need to have watched/read Brave Story to appreciate the game world properly), the initial fetch quest and the incessant easy random battles. Then Norio Wakamoto joined the party with a giant bacon halberd and the battles started getting more interesting. Add to this dual-wielding samurai Meladee (goodbye forever, cat girl ) and an awesome showdown against the Emmet Queen and my appreciation grew further.

When I finally got the dragon/airship and stealth, I realised that the game had become great fun and the tuning of the encounters was pretty tight. Norio was still Nutcracking (it looks more painful than it sounds) the bacon out of everything until the end of the optional dungeon but I still enjoyed the ride. I wonder what you guys think of this admittedly very "standard" JRPG.

[Mickeymac92]

I've been meaning to get Brave Story for a long time, but I could never find it in stores by the time I got a PSP. I may have to bite the bullet and, ugh, pay for shipping. fedaykin's post was very interesting to read, and it reminded me why I wanted it so much in the first place.

[Kazeno]

You can get it on PSN...oh wait.

Anyway, I highly recommend it, it's a fantastic RPG. It has the usual brilliant translation by XSEED, a great soundtrack and fast and fun battles (insomuch as turn based battles can be fast and fun).

It's not nearly as immersive as Legend of Heroes: TitS, but sometimes that can be a good thing too.

[Wyrdwad]

It's one of my favorite PSP titles, from *long before* I got my job here. The novel is also really great, and I highly recommend reading that in conjunction with playing the game.

I'd say avoid the anime, though, as it tried to cram the entire 819-page novel into 110 minutes. And that... didn't really work.

-Tom

[Eon]

I am a member of S.N.O.B. and proud of it.

[Dust]

Yeah it's one of my favourite PSP titles as well, right up there with Popolocrois, Gurumin, Xseed titles, etc. You really should pick up the novel too like Wyrdwad said. It's a pretty good read.

[Kazeno]

Might have to pick up the novel then. What's everyone's favourite party/group?

[Wyrdwad]

I like me the girls. Yuno never left my party, and while I switched out Meladee for new members as they were introduced to me, I always switched her back in shortly afterward. (:

-Tom

[fedaykin]

Personally, I mainly rolled with Sogreth and Meladee, for aesthetic and practical reasons. Aesthetically, I liked Sogreth's enthusiastic voice acting (Norio was obviously enjoying pretending to swing that halberd), even if his voiced dialogue is obviously limited to battle quotes. For Meladee, I generally prefer strong female characters, so a badass duel-wielding leader was preferable to me to Yuno's "cute sidekick and damsel-in-distress" persona.

Practically, they seemed like the best characters in the game, in that Meladee was a competent healer (Zed Heal spam), but also reasonably fast and physically strong compared to the alternative casters. Sogreth also did consistently high damage even against armoured bosses with his defence-ignoring special. It was hilarious to see the elite Black Knight enemies use their shield guard move (raising their defence by some absurd number) only to get smashed off of the screen by Sogreth (literally), who just doesn't give a damn.

I did switch out Sogreth for the Demon World as Leynart's anti-demon spear was too tempting. What can I say? I'm always a right munchkin...

[Adrian-kun]

Frankly, I found the game to be quite bland. It just didn't resonate with me the way other tiles had. Actually, I found the whole camera swirling effect before you were able to input battle commands way too annoying. I know you can press the X button to skip it, but why do I have to do that in the first place? Imagine playing Final Fantasy 'add number from 1 to 1000' and having to press a button after each battle turn or risk staring at environment for no apparent reason. That would suck right? It made me turn off my PSP. Anyway, I'm thinking about purchasing the novel. I've read that it has almost 800 pages. That should keep me occupied for a very long time
You guys should have localise the NDS version instead. It's a nice point&click adventure style game. It's probably better too.