by Danreb VictorioOur appointment with NIS America during PAX East was one of the opportunities I was most looking forward to, as I got to play Brigandine: Abyss behind closed doors, and it turned out to be quite a humbling experience. Typically, such a punishing demo would make me lose interest, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something worthwhile here, especially after the talk I had with the developer after the play session.
Preview: Abyss demo pulled no punches
The Brigandine series is a bit of an obscure one, even with hardcore JRPG fans. The last title, Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, released on Switch, PS4, and PC to generally mixed reviews but saw better sales than expected. That leads us to the latest title in the series, Brigandine: Abyss, published by NIS America. No prior experience is needed to play the game, but that didn’t prevent me from being absolute ass.
After enjoying a nice anime cutscene to kick things off, one thing I noticed offhand was that there were TONS of units, and in traditional first-time-user-experience fashion, the game delivered a crash course to the various details behind each unit when you select them. But this wasn’t my first rodeo; I know what I’m doing… or so I thought.
You know what they say happens when you eff around.
I had units on the left, units in the middle, and units at the bottom of the screen, and one by one, I saw them all meet their demise. It didn’t help that the translator and dev didn’t jump in — not that they had to —but I was clearly struggling, and I was hoping they’d help me out. As awkward and deflating as that was, the conversation I had afterward was a good time.
Interview with Masaru Saito, Producer, Happinet – Brigandine: Abyss
Before the interview, with the help of a translator, Saito-san chatted a little with me about my experience with strategy RPGs. I told him I was well-versed in them, with my primary experience in Fire Emblem, Triangle Strategy, Disgaea, and Shining Force. To that, he nodded and smiled, and I’m guessing that’s probably why I didn’t get any real assistance in my session. After that, he spoke about his experience with Happinet, the developer of the Brigandine series.
Masaru Saito, Producer, Brigandine: Abyss (MS): Funny enough, during the game’s alpha stage, I actually left Happinet for a little while to do something else. I actually came back to the company later on, and I became the producer this time.
Danreb Victorio, Executive Editor, SmashPad (SP): That is pretty funny. Would you be able to delve into why Happinet is bringing this series back at such a time?
MS: Genuinely, we had wanted to get this out sooner after the last game, but it wasn’t too long after that when the company decided they wanted to do another game in the series. It was just a matter of getting all the resources, and it was really four years ago when we started developing the plan and began moving forward.
SP: Given that it’s been quite a while since the last title, are there any conventions from other SRPG games that really inspired the game?
MS: Before we actually started working on Brigandine: Abyss, I spent a lot of time playing other SRPGs. That included a wealth of titles, including indies and ones from Western developers. I played a lot of XCOM. There were a variety of games. I honestly should’ve probably bought them with company money since I was playing them for research purposes, and I bought them all with my own money! (laughs). I didn’t want them to make them company property. I wanted the games to be mine, so there you go.
SP: For a lot of people, Brigandine: Abyss will be their first time with the series. What are you hoping to get out of players after they’ve tried or even finished the game?
MS: What I really hope is that people unfamiliar with simulation-type games will play Brigandine: Abyss, and that exposure to it will make them interested in the genres. The thing that would make me most happy is that the title will make them interested in playing other games–other strategy games–and whatever they may be.
I think the big thing is that lot of people have an image that these kinds of games are extremely difficult, and I’m hoping that this will make them get past that and see how interesting they can be. They obviously can be really difficult, but they also can be really interesting when you overcome the challenges coming your way.
SP: Well, speaking of difficulty, I obviously died here, and I mentioned earlier that a lot of demos, especially SRPG demos, don’t really start with this difficult of a learning curve. Was there an intention to see the difficulty right away, maybe to show that it could become easier later?
MS: Most of it wasn’t necessarily intended to be difficult as much as it was supposed to be a showcase of the skills you had available (in the demo). We purposely leveled up all the characters so high, so that they’d have interesting skillsets for you to be able to play around with and see how the game will eventually play.
The actual demo that’ll be released before the game will be a little more like what you’re accustomed to. It’ll be an introductory tutorial: you’ll be given introductory units and just a primer on how to play strategically and everything, so it definitely won’t be like this.
SP: Got it. I don’t feel so bad now. (jokes). So the cutscene at the beginning, to me, it just felt like totally random stuff. I was curious if this was actually a part of the game, or whether this was exclusively for the demo.
MS: Yeah, what you saw was actually a part of the game of the main game. There are six scenarios that you can follow, and we just kind of took snippets of each one and put them all together just to give you an idea of the gameplay. The cutscene really just sets the mood and makes it feel like more of a preview trailer, if anything.
SP: Awesome. If you were to recommend another SRPG game that a well-versed player should play in preparation of Brigandine: Abyss, what would it be? Outside of the Brigandine, I mean. 🙂
MS: Heh, there’s a lot of fun games out there. Hmmm… Fire Emblem is an easy one to mention, but one game I’m a big fan of myself is a game called Battle Brothers.
SP: Battle Brothers? I’ve never heard of that one. Is that only in Japan?
MS: No, it doesn’t have any Japanese, but it’s one that I really enjoyed. Just to quickly talk about this and other games, I don’t understand a lot of English, but games like this one and XCOM were games that I really enjoyed.
SP: Those are all the questions I have. Thank you so much to both of you for your time!
Brigandine: Abyss is currently planned for release on the PC and PS5 on August 27, and while anything can change between now and then, that does appear to be a solid time for the game to come out, based on the calendar we’re looking at. We’ll have more on the game as it becomes available. You know I’ll be looking forward to retribution once that demo Mr. Saito mentioned comes out.
Brigandine: Abyss
