Brain Lord

 

Just played Brain Lord

I don't feel like going too in-depth for this game. So instead I will just write some basic impressions.

so anyway. Brain Lord.

I don't understand the title of this game at all.

Nothing in the game is a "Brain Lord". The main villain is a Demon King. The plot involves the power balance between Demons and Dragons - as the last Dragon is slowly dying, there will be nothing to counterbalance the Demon King's evil. So it's up to the hero to defeat the Demon King before that happens. Y'know, normal fantasy RPG stuff.

...So where does the name Brain Lord even come from? What is it referring to??

"Brain Lord"...???

I don't think the word "brain" is even uttered a single time in the entirety of the game's script. ...is there any explanation? or did they think it sounded cool for some reason?

I don't think it sounds cool, it just sounds...  not representative of the game at all. it sounds way too 'heavy metal' for a regular ol fantasy rpg.

Weird title aside, Brain Lord is a SNES game from 1994 published by Enix. It's an action-RPG. I played on emulator.

You play as Remeer, the son of a Dragon Warrior, who is tasked with exploring and investigating the disappearance of dragons from the world. Remeer is part of a squad with four other members, and as you play through the story, you'll frequently run into your squadmates during your expeditions in the dungeons. Which is a cute detail. Sometimes they give you items, give you tips, or even open a shop so you can buy and sell items. It's nice to feel like you're adventuring as a team, even in a game with only one playable character.

The graphics of this game.... are honestly kinda not so great in my opinion. Environments are fine, but the character sprites just look really really weird. Characters are represented at an awkward half-overhead view that doesn't read well. Remeer looks weirdly broad when viewed from the front, and weirdly fat when viewed from the side, I just... don't like the way it looks lol.

Remeer can attack with a variety of weapons - sword, boomerang, bow, flail, axe. They aren't all useful - sword has the best arc, bow has the best range, flail has the best damage, and axe can break small rocks In one cave but is otherwise useless. Boomerang feels entirely useless.

Remeer can also jump, which is used for platforming in the dungeons. There is no EXP, rather Remeer gets stronger by finding powerups in chests - health upgrades, strength upgrades, and defense upgrades. Also by equipping stronger weapons and armour of course.

The game structure is quite skewed in favour of dungeon-exploration - the game has two small towns, two tiny overworld connections between them, two small connecting cave areas, and five MASSIVE dungeons to explore. The bulk of your playtime in Brain Lord will be spent inside the dungeons.

The dungeons are full of traps, monsters, puzzles and secret passages.

The first two dungeons are the trickiest and most interesting in terms of puzzles - they have secret walls to push, button combination locks to solve, and occasionally specific holes to fall down that lead to secret areas. These puzzles are hinted at by signs you see on the walls of the dungeons. Gives this game a very dungeon-crawler feel to it, which is something I always like.

You get "x-ray glasses" that can be used to see a map of the current floor you're on, but it really only shows the floor plan, and doesn't show doors or stairs very clearly. It can be useful for noticing hidden pushable walls though, if you're paying attention.

Most of the secret stuff is hinted at in some way, which is good, but there are a few optional secrets that aren't. Or at least I didn't find the hints. 

But there are some puzzles in this game that are just...plain bad. The worst puzzle in the game is this: There's a locked door, and three buttons on the floor. A sign nearby says "To open door, the secret is on your control pad". ...try all you might to press the buttons in the correct order, nothing ever happens. The solution is to face the locked door and press the X button on your controller. ... ... the buttons on the floor do nothing. ... I mean, what? What kind of puzzle is that? Just a red herring puzzle? I had to look up the answer online.

 

The third dungeon is the most obnoxious dungeon, in that it has slippery ice floors, spikes that pop up from the ground without any visual cue to watch for, fountains that poison you instead of heal you, signposts that poison you when you try to read them, and some other things designed to antagonise the player. Also, bizarrely, the Ice Castle is the only dungeon you can't return to once you complete it, so if you accidentally missed a health upgrade, it'll be gone forever if you beat this dungeon before getting it. ... I don't understand why this happens - nothing in the game necessitates the dungeon locking itself after beating it - it just literally removes itself from your warp menu with no explanation. ...all the other dungeons are fully backtrackable, and nothing else in the game is missable. Did they just want to make the Ice Castle as annoying as possible, or what?

The fourth dungeon, the volcano, is annoying in its own way - its main gimmick is rocks that randomly exist or not exist whenever you scroll the screen over them. Most of the time the passage is blocked by the rocks, but if you walk back and forth a lot, you can eventually get lucky enough that enough of the rocks chose not to exist, allowing you a path forwards. This isn't really a puzzle, this is just annoying. The cherry on top is when you find a special "Rock Breaker Axe" in this dungeon - its description mentions it can break rocks, but it doesn't work at all on these gimmick rocks, and in no way helps you overcome the dungeon. It just breaks the regular small rocks from earlier that any axe can break. ... Is this game just full of jokes at the player's expense, or what?

The fifth and final dungeon's gimmick is that it has a lot of pitch-black rooms with invisible walls to navigate through. it sucks.

The later few dungeons also get really annoying with the enemies and traps and platforming jumps too. You end up taking a lot of stray hits as you navigate around. Thankfully, just before entering the third dungeon, you get given a familiar who can restore your health. If you grind the familiar up to max level, it will restore life at a rate of 1hp every few seconds. Which means that you can at least mitigate the damage from the traps if you keep this familiar equipped at all times. As long as you don't mind spending a while leveling it up first. 

Overall... This game was okay. The first two dungeons set expectations high for a game full of interesting unique puzzles, but the latter half of the game really phones it in with bad unfun gimmicks that I wouldn't exactly call puzzles.

I don't really recommend playing this game tbh.

Also the name "Brain Lord" is stupid.

the end.