Any Brigandine (PSX) fans?

[HwitVlf]

I don't know if anyone here likes turn based strategy games such as Brigandine, but I'll post anyways. The Playstation game Brigandine Legend of Forsena was developed by Hearty Robin in Japan and translated by Atlus in the US. A few years later, Hearty Robin released a much improved remake called Brigandine Grand Edition. It had a considerable number of improvements like anime cut scenes, voice acting, and multiplayer, but it was never released in the US.

A few different people tried to translate but Brigandine Grand Edition through the years, but they all gave up fairly quickly.  Grand Edition has a MASSIVE amount of text, an insanely complicated text drawing system, and a lot of Japanese audio that would need to be subtitled or re-recorded. It's quite an intimidating project.   I actually did some work on translating it before King's Field (Jap), but never made it much past deciphering its "proprietary" graphic setup thereby translating some menu labels.

Recently, I was contacted by a fan wondering if any new progress had been made which got me working on it again. So far, I've made some progress: added English text support to all four (ugh) of the text drawing routines Grand Editions uses, added a couple different variable width fonts, made some tools to help with editing text pointers and such, and translated a few items and names.

Ben mentioned in a different thread about maybe getting some sound bites for NPCs from the people here (BTW Ben, I'd be happy to record something for you if you decide to go that way); when/if I get to the point of re-recording the Japanese voice acting for Grand Edition. it would be cool if anyone here wanted to voice a character from the game. The game is set in a medieval/fantasy world heavily influenced by Norse mythology. There are around 40 different Knights , most of whom have a short voiced script at some point, so there's plenty of room for 'character acting'.

Note to self: finish implementing variable width font for lower menu text. 

[Holy_Diver]

I played all generals on the original but I don't think I ever got the secret boss to appear. I am pretty sure that's a thing, and I knew about it while I was playing it.

I purchased GE from the Japan PSN store, but I've never played it because A) the movie elements I found tedious. And B) The polygon fights were removed for no reason. Are there new units? I don't get it.

I love the huge variety of characters, and they are all well done. Unfortunately I just can't play strategy genres anymore. I've always had an aversion to RTS games (which is the main thing my brother plays) but I played just about every kind of Japanese game when I was a kid. They'd have to be really bad for me to not have played them.

My main beef with these kinds of games is they get really repetitive very fast. And by the 5th map it just seems like every level becomes a test to see if you can finish a map that is 30 minutes longer, and by the last map its just an endurance thing, can you finish a 12hr map? I don't understand the appeal.

In my adult life (edited: more than 10 years ago) I played Majin Tensei up to the last map (Pandemonium) and I decided, no more of this, this is a form of insanity. Majin Tensei II is supposed to be one of the best Megaten games, but by the third map its TKO for me. I don't play lots of genres anymore. I would play JRPGs if they were anymore good ones to play. I played Grandia not long ago. But mostly first person adventure or something like Armored Core is the only thing I can stand to play. Apparently the game industry feels the same way. I think most of the other genres you eventually grow out of. Anymore I just want something like a movie except more visceral. Because I am a huge moviemedia bufffiend. So I only want intellectually stimulating stories-and-images-and-immersion without any tedium.

[HwitVlf]

I think the secret boss you are referring to is only in the Grand Edition. It has new units, knights castle(s), a reworked battle system, and you can also play a new country, and the added multiplayer is a huge improvement over the original Brigandine. In a translated version of Grand Edition, the movies should hold your attention better that japalygook.

I don't consider RTS games as real strategy, they are almost always so choreographed that there's really only one path to victory- spam-build one or two unit types and swarm the enemy. The turn based strategy in Brigandine Grand gives you the opportunity to construct synergistic battle groups specifically designed for the Castle where the battle will take place. Don't bring mer-men to desert war! The number of possible battle fronts, troop arrangements, resource availability, and unit classes means no two games ever play alike - rather like a complex version of Chess. And Brigandine can be really hard so you have to stay on your toes.

Turn based game players have always been a minority -more and more as the need for immediate and thoughtless gratification becomes more entrenched in society with each generation born into the "boob-tube" era of a computerized world saturated with 'gratification without effort'. For instance, there's almost no threat of dying in most FPS games these days. They're more like "god complex" simulators than an actual challenging game. Brigandine has challenging play combined with a fairly well crafted story - which is unusual for a turn based strategy game.

[Holy_Diver]

^You finally replaced the avatar I made for you.

I'm just shy of 100% positive a/the secret boss was in the first game. I know he is a character, and I am pretty sure there was a way to showdown with him, but it is really elaborate I think. Basically he exists to make the 6th general in the middle a more sympathetic character. He was a bald wizard I think. I don't know if I ever saw him in game.

Many RTS games can be played in a more turn based fashion. I just don't enjoy them. They feel like sheep herding simulators to me. I also lump many games into that category that are probably turn based. But many turn based games have real-time modes too I think. Even latter day Final Fantasy games had ATB. What ever happened to that series?

I thoroughly enjoyed everything about Brigandine. But the movies in GE. I don't mind that they are Japanese at all. If they were in English they'd probably have engaged me even less. If not make my ears recoil into my head. When I purchased it I kind of hoped that I could enjoy a game like that again. Another one was Dark Wizard. It had similar showdown scenes and many of the same qualities. But I don't think I have the time to spare even if I did end up enjoying myself...

I kind of always wondered what it would be like if the games would turn into a 1-on-1 fighting game. I don't think I can remember a single game that really lets you do that. Such a game could easily retain a strategy edge since units are rarely evenly matched. It would be crazy to take the old models from the first game and recreate the cut scenes somehow so that when an emulator gets to the fight part the game could pause and then a plugin could play the scene and even let you control it. I think we'll see a lot of weird stuff like that done over the next few decades. I don't see why it couldn't be done for Brigandine.

[HwitVlf]

You're talking about Bulnoil who was the real baddie behind all the turmoil in the game like Seath was behind it all in KF3.  You can fight him in Grand Edition, but it was just a rumor (probably started by a certain dude who wrote an inaccurate FAQ) that you could fight him in the regular Brigandine.

I'm sure there are quite a few fun hacks you could make to a game like Brigandine If a person wanted to take the time.

[Holy_Diver]

You're talking about Bulnoil who was the real baddie behind all the turmoil in the game like Seath was behind it all in KF3.  You can fight him in Grand Edition, but it was just a rumor (probably started by a certain dude who wrote an inaccurate FAQ) that you could fight him in the regular Brigandine.

I'm sure there are quite a few fun hacks you could make to a game like Brigandine If a person wanted to take the time.

Urban legend was going to be my next defense.

Found this (http://media.gamerevolution.com/images/games/sony/brigandine/brigandine_004.jpg) while looking for images of Bulnoil.



I'm sorry, but I just can't forgive a game for removing this. It's so glorious

[HwitVlf]

Centaur... mmmmm... tastes like chicken.

I liked the attack scenes too, but in defense of the decision to remove them, I did disabled them half way though the game because I'd seen them enough.

[Holy_Diver]

Centaur... mmmmm... tastes like chicken.

I liked the attack scenes too, but in defense of the decision to remove them, I did disabled them half way though the game because I'd seen them enough.

I would never turn them off. But if there was a button you could press that would make the move without the cut scene (many games like this did not use all of the buttons) then I would have probably would've used it some if not most of the time.

I would speculate they were removed because they clashed with the anime. Even though the character faces are very anime, I don't like the decision to include anime, and prefer the 3D cutscenes. Doesn't help that I don't care for the visual style of the anime. There are a lot of good head to toe character designs in there though.

I really enjoy the 3D art style. It bugs me that people don't appreciate minimalism in games. There will be a time after photorealism like with fine art, where we will see modern art video games, which I think will eschew photo realism as passe and probably try to reach the greatest possible heights or depths of minimalism in game form. To say this image is not beautiful is mistaken. It's probably more beautiful pixel for pixel than anything Dark Souls has to offer...

This reminds me of the scene in the Macross (Robotech) TV series where the two ace pilots play a dogfight video game that is like a hologram. It's a video game featuring the same fighters the characters pilot in real life. So they make a scene in the arcade because they are naturally very good at the game. Now the game could present them with photo realistic simulacrums of the military grade hardware they pilot every day, but instead the game features a simple abstract blocky representation. One player is all red, and the other is all blue. To me this is the natural decision. Its much more beautiful from a design perspective. And I think it would be very tiring and tedious to pilot a photo realistic hologram in order to win a game. At some point the realism is getting in the way of the game itself. I wouldn't mind the option of photo realism, but I think most people after playing two or three games would choose the abstract presentation.

[HwitVlf]

Max and Miriya! Like all good love stories, it all started with two people looking deep into each other's eyes ... and trying to kill each other 

I think highly stylized games have been around since day one and they certainly are now (Kentucky Route Zero). I don't think it's an either/or though. Realism becomes bad when it's done without artistry and is used as a crutch to make a game appear quality even though it's soulless blather. I don't know if you played Dishonored, but it is a realistic recent game that I would put in the ranks of "a work of art". But that's because of the crafstmanship in its design and story.

[HwitVlf]

I made a pointer tool which helps a lot in Brgandine. With a little adaptation, could likely aid in translating many Japanese games.  It scans a file for text; when it finds some, it looks for the pointer that references the text's start  location and saves all the info to a text document. When the scanning process is done, the tool reads the text document and lets you enter the translated text in the original file (the PSX exe in Brigandine's case), line by line, while automatically adjusting the pointer values for you.

So far it's working quite well!