The Fire Emblem Influence Is Strong In Brigandine Abyss

Masayuki Horikawa and Rei Kondoh. That was all I needed to know when I first heard about this game. You mean to tell me the director of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is working alongside the guy who helped compose the Okami soundtrack (as well as other Fire Emblem games)? Teenage me from circa 2006 damn near leapt out of my body. You just don't get better than that. And it turns out that other Fire Emblem veterans are entering the fold too, which might make Brigandine Abyss a contender for the most Fire Emblem-y game Intelligent Systems never made.

With all that said, I must admit: I'm not that familiar with the Brigandine franchise. And I don't suppose many folks are either, since the first Brigandine game and its remake only received modest attention before the franchise as a whole fell off the face of the Earth for twenty-plus years. It's easy to see how a cult franchise like Brigandine could try to become more mainstream by way of injecting as much Fire Emblem into its veins as possible. It might be the entire point.

Both game franchises are grid-based tactical RPGS that involve the storyline of an evil empire threatening the peace of a many-nation'd continent. These similarities alone are enough to allow Horikawa and his Fire Emblem veterans to go nuts in spiritually reviving the revered magnum opus. So they throw in an anime aesthetic. And a protagonist with blue hair. And big weapons whose aesthetics strike the perfect balance between ridiculous and epic. Even the promotional art for Brigandine Abyss looks eerily similar to Fire Emblem: Awakening's main characters, wielding all of their weapons, about to make a lunge from the right side of the frame to the left. The monsters that fight alongside you in Brigandine don't seem too dissimilar to the laguz (beastmen who transform into animals) that fought alongside you in Path of Radiance, even if Brigandine's first title came out years before Path of Radiance. I'd like to think Horikawa and company are using the monsters of Brigandine Abyss as a proxy to spiritually revive the laguz. Speaking of monsters, Brigandine Abyss also has dragons that are under evil mind control. Remember Rajaion from Path of Radiance? Alas, we knew him well.

Based on what I've gathered from YouTube longplays, there are still some staples of the Brigandine franchise that make their way into Abyss. Like in previous titles, you can decide which of the six or so nations you'd like to play as, each bundled with its own unique set of protagonists and stories. From there, your nation battles with other nations for dominance. Before heading off into battle, however, you go through an organization phase where you can choose to buy and sell weapons, promote your nation's units and monsters (each of which contains unique stats and skills that admittedly look more complex than Path of Radiance's, by the by), and develop and mobilize the military bases you fight over and win as the game progresses. The gameplay of Brigandine Abyss itself is divided into two modes: Story and Mission. NIS America, Brigandine Abyss's Western publishers, privileged me with a special Discord preview of the game, although the Story mode was what was showcased to me. Mission seems to be a newer feature where you select one of twenty-four nations to go about unique quests, but based on what I've seen so far, it is unavailable on the current Steam demo.

When you're finally thrust into battle, you find you and your army amidst a battlefield laid out by a giant hexagonal grid. What I was shown was part of a special event battle made to progress the story, which meant that the game could throw in even more Fire Emblem vibes. The characters weren't fighting in the middle of an expansive field littered with disproportionally sized forts and forests like from what I've seen in the other Brigandine titles, but rather in the middle of a mountain town with houses and settings that vaguely reminded me of a more rugged, reddened rendition of some of Path of Radiance's towns (looking at you, Chapter 11: Blood Runs Red!) The town is even introduced to us through cinematic cutscenes that start with camera zoom-ins, zoom-outs, and pans similar to how many of Path of Radiance's battlefields are. And to top it off, the grid even glows the same azure blue. There's just no other way to put it: the Fire Emblem influence is nay unshakeable here.

The question remains: will Brigandine Abyss be a good game overall? More importantly, will it be a Brigandine game that its cult following can easily identify, or will this just be another Fire Emblem game wearing another game's skin? There's certainly a lot of potential here, but fans will just have to wait and see when the finished game finally sees the light of day this upcoming August.