Falcom's biggest and crucially, still extant series warrant their own threads, as with Ys and Trails, and occasionally someone like yours truly will have things to say about some other individual work outside of that purview, like with Xanadu Next, but this thread is for all the other instances in the studio's massive back catalogue where something inspires conversation, encompassing anything from briefer mentions to longer sharing of thoughts. For myself, I've fallen into a Falcom hole that I'm finding difficult to climb out of, so a centralized hub for this sort of talk might be pertinent for the time being. On that specific note, I just played through...
Brandish: The Dark Revenant, the 2009 PSP remake of the 1991 PC-9801 action RPG dungeoneering classic, inexplicably and incredibly put out by XSEED in English in 2015. It sat around my Vita ever since, and only now did I stick it out for the duration with it. I'm really glad I did! Some thoughts:
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I don't know how exceptional The Dark Revenant might be in context of its own series, but it's quite so enough for the weird journey it took to reach the tiny, tiny audiences that were still following digital releases of PSP games in 2015 or later. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in dungeon grids and floorplans, or just to get a sense of what this semi-famous branch of Falcom is about.
- I generally have little firsthand experience with the real-time dungeon crawlers deriving from Dungeon Master's formative example, and the way Brandish incorporates that playfeel with Falcom's own pioneering exploits in the wider genre results in a very pleasing fusion of design elements that are a little askew in theory but sing in unison in practice. I realize this is retroactive association to an extent, but all of that combined with the mapping presentation and emphasis even ties in the joys of something like Etrian Odyssey, where charting one's travails across an environment is as satisfying and meditatively calming an experience as anything video games can offer. That's the superficially paradoxical relationship I tend to have with these kinds of games that are commonly seen as hard, mean, and punishing: the challenges become routine, and the routine eventually comfort. I loved undertaking that process with the nuances of Brandish's unique genre and presentational melding shaping the experience as I went along.
- I'm of two minds with the narrative and its premise employed here. On the worse end, player protagonist Ares is one of the most insubstantial, immaterial avatars I think I've ever encountered, even grading on the Adol Christin scale. There is nothing to latch onto visually, as points of characterization, even quirks gleaned from game mechanics; he is completely irrelevant to anything the game is, and it's actually somewhat frustrating what a void of personality he is even if such things are not held as a priority for the success of a game like this. For the better aspects, the people inhabiting the sequence of ruins and labyrinths are all evocative chance encounters for the brief meetings you have with them, and especially the lineup of shopkeepers are worthy of praise: there are so many of them, with nearly all of them boasting unique designs and illustrations, and always having different things to say. My affection is not unrelated to the shop theme being among the best compositions and arrangements I've heard in any game, always managing to multiply the joy at discovering a new pitstop. Just the presence of people, all in commiserative circumstances to the player's own, with their own ways of coping with it helps give an emotional resonance to the repetition of the long, grueling escape from underground.
- Let's talk Dela Delon. You can look at all the official art shared here, or practically any other Brandish series promotional material, and find that her prominence which was already significant from the original game on only grew over time. It is not shocking, as Dela wears hardly any clothing at all and cuts a more memorable figure than poor nobody Ares. The sexualization of Dela interacts with an archetypal set that she's deeply intertwined with; that of the brash, hyperconfident braggart would-be nemesis woman of the hero of the hour, showcasing nominal competence in their work and being routinely foiled for that same overenthusiasm with which they approach their labour, and appearing ultimately lovable for it all. Doronjo from Yatterman might be the modern codifier from which subsequent depictions largely derive, but it's seen in folks like Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water's Grandis, Pokémon's Jessie, and most closely akin to Dela, in Slayers' Naga the White Serpent. As Naga, Dela is sexualized to the point of parody, and that the ostensible parodic aspects of the portrayal can also be read as a plain and authentic representation of the fantasy genre's depictions of women may be the most biting joke of all, regardless of intention. Also like her rough contemporary, Dela's outspoken bluster also lands her squarely in the position of the most interesting, actively characterized person in the surrounding narrative, resulting in any encounters with her ending up a delight, as she pratfalls out of sight time and time again chased by boulders, warped to who-knows-where by teleport tiles and plagued by the same pitfalls the player's learned to internally curse. This would be a dour, dour game without the intermittent input from her, in cussing out Ares or belabouring her own hardships while she soldiers on, ever-grousing. The later games go on to rationalize the actions of Ares, but in this tale the only thing we know is that he's the murderer of Dela's sorcery master with a bounty on his head for it, which Dela is seeking to collect after five years's worth of pursuit, so as an audience we have no reason to root against Dela, within the fiction or without. She makes the game.
- Dela's importance is solidified in the single best aspect of the game. As a 1991 original, Brandish's overall design sense is sharp, engaging and imaginative, but it's at times stretched a little thin for the ideas explored and iterated upon, and for how long. Ares's adventure also trends towards the easier the longer it goes on, in ways that are detrimental to the unique appeals of the game and the tension it can engender at its best. For all my usual preferences, I would've already been overjoyed by the simple existence of The Dark Revenant's exclusive and newly-minted Dela Mode, the first and only other time since 1994's Brandish 3 that the series's foremost sorceress was cast in a playable role, but that's not all that the mode offers. It remixes the first ten floors of Ares's scenario from the nondescript Ruins into the devilish RUINS EX, an assortment of traps, illusory walls, gauntlets of dexterity and pain the likes of which nothing in the main game even approaches in intricacy and conceptual experimentation. Every single floor is packed to bursting with navigational and action-puzzling scenarios that work the game's set of verbs and tools to the bone, pushing them to their absolute limits along with the player's. It's so hyperfocused on the purest, most finely-honed expression of dungeon-delving that it's impossible to see this as having been conceived in the original game's time, or existing on par with it--it's something that could only exist with the years of iterative experience and reflection shaping it into the way it is now, as the final coda for the franchise. That it is cast as Dela's shining hour--never taking away from her grumbly, beleaguered self--also reframes her from the exploited mascot to the true centerpiece of what Brandish at its best can be, and was.
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