Brigandine the Legend of Forsena is a Playstation game that was developed by Hearty Robin and published by Atlus USA in 1998.
In the Legend of Forsena, the Kingdom of Almekia's Zemeckis and other knights rebel, killing King Henguist and renaming the country the Esgares Empire. Word of this reaches the remaining countries who realize they have no choice but to partake in a war to reunite country. As the player, five of the countries can be chosen normally, each having their own characters and storyline. Esgares Empire can also be controlled if a code is input at the selection screen.
Depending on which of the characters you start as, you control a number of different cities in the games world, one of six colors to signify ownership of that location as well as a certain number of knights. The game takes place in months, which is one turn outside of combat that has both an organization phase and a battle phase. The organization phase allows you to recruit monsters, move knights, or send knights on quests, while the battle phase allows any number of knights to attack a bordering city. Each city also has a mana value, so every month that passes, you'll gain a combined amount of mana for the cities you own.
Knights, short for rune knights, don't refer to melee characters. They're called rune knights because all of the characters in the game you can use have rune power that allows them to control a certain amount of monsters to help them fight. Each rune knight starts as a certain class and every 10th level allows them to increase to a different tier of classes as long as they've mastered a class from a lower tier. Upgrading from one of the basic tier sets at first allows you to choose a path for that character. A fighter for example can choose one of three melee paths, and choosing one will lock out the other two, but still allow for the character to go through another basic tier class. Since five levels are required to master any class, you can do that in order to create characters who have abilities or spells from more than one path.
With each battle only allows three knights from each country involved, monsters are the backbone of your army. Each knight can have up to six monsters in their party and each monster requires a different amount of rune power. While each monster starts off at level one, the monsters can upgrade to a more powerful version at level 10 and 20. Some monsters like Dragons can take one of two paths leading to a different final upgrade, while others might have a single upgrade or a single path. Also, some monsters that cost a low amount of rune power and appear much weaker than others, are far more useful in the first or second upgrade while still having somewhat low rune costs. An example of such is a dragon which costs 75 rune power is much better than a lizard man that costs 30 rune power, but when the Lizard Man upgrades to the lizard guard at 45 rune power, it's more powerful than a dragon but has less HP. One thing about monsters in the game is that While knights only get wounded and have to wait a month, monsters can be killed, so instead of summoning another at level one, you might want to be careful with your high level monsters. The max level is also 30 for all knights and monsters.
Combat starts when either you attack one of the enemy cities or one of the enemies attack any of your cities. With 31 different cities in the game, there are 31 different battlefields. It's an overhead TRPG with a hexagonal movement and attack system. Three knights can each bring six monsters, so each battle potentially have as many as 42 different units. Turns are phase based, but by level, so the highest level knight and all of his/her monsters will move, then the next highest, though if more than one knight has the same level, it'll randomly choose which one goes first. Spells in the game and most special attacks can't be used after moving so it does take a bit more planning and strategy with magic to be as effective as it can be. The maps in the game are also very large, with different types of environments like mountains, forests and water, and sometimes may take a few turns for your party and the enemy party to meet and start combat.
One final thing about combat is knight and monster elements and other bonuses. In Brigandine each knight and monster has a maximum of three elements and if one unit has the opposite element, the unit takes an additional bonus amount of damage. If it's the same element then it'll be less damage. If any attack is in a range of one, then the attack is countered, so while the first attack received a bonus, so will the counterattack. Spells on the other hand can't be countered. Red and blue cause more damage to one another, white and black cause more damage to one another, and everything else is considered neutral. If you have a character or monster that has say three red while attacking someone with one blue or one red, the one with three red will count as three bonuses or three bonus protection while the single blue/red will only count once. Certain monsters gain bonuses when fighting while standing on/in a mountain, forest, or water. Also, the Wyvern and its upgrade Couatl get a bonus for attacking flying monsters while all others get a bonus when attacking ground knights/monsters. While having a bonus doesn't mean one attack is going to do so much as decimate another, it just gives a boost to each attack. Finally, each knight has a hex area, and while the monsters don't get a bonus for being inside this area, they lose a large amount of stats for being outside of this area, as well as a higher chance to be captured if the knight is wounded.
When starting off as one country, you'll have the same number of knights, same number of monsters, and same number of locations each time you start as that particular country, as will the computer opponents in the countries that they start with. The AI in the game is very good, or atleast as good as can be, as there are certain sitatuations that you as a human can take advantage of that the AI can't be programmed to do. Also, similar to board games like Risk, or strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, your objective in Brigandine is to own all territories in Forsena, so while playing through the game, you should expect to lose a few battles here and there. It's this type of gameplay style along with Brigandine's gameplay that really gives it an infinite amount of replay value.
The graphics in the game are both 2D and 3D. The world map, each battlefield, character sprites are done in 2D and look decent enough. Summoning monsters and when attacking transitions to 3D. Both of the 3D effects, whether it's summon monsters and attacking or casting spells can be turned off, something I recommend. While they look cool, seeing them over and over can have even a single battle drag on for a much longer period of time. This is really no different than turning animations off on games like Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, or other titles that have similar effects. The games soundtrack is also very good.
In my opinion, with all things factored together, the amount of replay value, depth to the game while staying simple to play, and how enjoyable it is as a strategy game, there is no better game, including its remake, which I feel that both games are as good as one another.
Gameplay - 10
Design - 10
Presentation - 10
Balance - 10
Overall - 10
I haven't done a video review, but here's a gameplay video I've recently added on Youtube. While it states "the final battle against Iscalio," there's nothing that ruins the game as this could just as easily be a midgame battle as it is an endgame battle. I show my monster list in the beginning of the video, and while attack animations are off for most of the video, I turn them on at the very end of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1MiDVvX4Lg
