Brandish 2: The Planet Buster

 I played Brandish 2: The Planet Buster

This is a dungeon-crawling action-RPG developed by Nihon Falcom and released in 1995.

Originally, it was made for the PC-98, and was then later ported to Super Famicom. 

There was never an English release of Brandish 2, but two different fan translations were created by dedicated fans over the years, one for SNES, and one for PC-98. I decided to play the SNES fan translation version on emulator.... mostly because setting up PC-98 emulation is really really annoying and fiddly. 

(...though I'll have to figure out PC-98 emulation if I ever want to play Brandish 3, since that game didn't get a console port.)

Brandish 2 is a direct follow-up to the first Brandish game, which I wrote about previously. 

The main character Ares (aka Varik) returns as the playable hero, and his archrival Dela (aka Alexis) returns as well.

While travelling in the deserts surrounding the kingdom of Bundevia, Ares is captured and thrown into prison by the evil king Badorrer. 

Ares's Planet Buster Sword, which he found during the events of the previous game, is taken from him and locked away in the castle tower.

Now Ares must escape the prison, retrieve the Planet Buster, and put an end to Badorrer's schemes. Along the way he encounters Dela again, who wants the Planet Buster for her own reasons. She agrees to help Ares retrieve it in exchange for getting to keep the sword after Badorrer is defeated. Along the way, Ares meets a few other characters, including the king's hired mercenary Karl, and a mysterious woman named Helene.

In the ending cutscene.... Ares does give the Planet Buster back to Dela, but she soon finds out that the sword has been drained of its power and has disintegrated into dust in its scabbard. Ares doesn't tell her this, instead he just throws it to her and flees on horseback. The game ends with a funny scene of Dela chasing after Ares. ...Her antics in this game are still mostly comic relief.

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The gameplay is largely similar to the first Brandish. The exact same camera system is here, with the same somewhat-disorienting 90-degree snaps whenever you turn. The control scheme also remains unchanged for strafing, shielding, jumping, resting, and attacking. Examining / Interacting has been made a bit less cumbersome - you no longer need to specifically swap between the hand or the magnifying lens cursors, you can instead just press the interact button in front of something, and it will work.

But on the whole, Brandish 2 feels very much like ...just playing more Brandish. They didn't overhaul the gameplay at all. So if you really liked the first game just the way it was, Brandish 2 offers another full adventure of the same exact stuff. And I think that's great!

There are some definite improvements to the UI and playability. Now you can have your inventory and minimap displayed on screen at all times, with the ability to toggle them on and off if you would prefer to not have them in the way of the view. I liked having the map on, but the inventory off. It's nice to be able to look at the map without having to keep pausing all the time.

Unfortunately for me, this game didn't change the way the map fills out. It still only uncovers the exact tile you step on and its surrounding tiles, which means you still have to meticulously walk into every corner of every room to fill in the map. And you still are left with holes in the map if any tile can't be reached.. .... You know, I kind of wish that they made it so that, once you uncover every possible tile, the rest of the unreachable tiles would get automatically revealed on the map. That would also make it easier to get 100% map completion too, since it would be easier to see which floors weren't done yet. After the ending cutscene, the game said I got 99% map completion, and I don't have any idea where I could have possibly missed a tile of floor somewhere. :(

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The main difference with Brandish 2 is the structure of the adventure. It's no longer a linear trek through 40+ floors of a tower going only upwards and upwards. Instead, the world layout of Brandish 2 is much more open-plan. Ares will travel through a series of different areas, which connect to each other at various points, sometimes with multiple exits and branching paths. Some areas also have shortcuts that lead back into previous areas, so backtracking is also a lot more convenient too. Backtracking to previous areas is sometimes a part of the progression, and all the added shortcuts really do help you get to where you need to go quickly. It feels a lot nicer to move between areas now that everything feels so connected.

Additionally, there are a couple of towns now! Brandish 1 did have a few NPCs and shops here and there, but Brandish 2 has a few cute little towns to explore. It's nice that there do exist a few safe areas outside of the typical mazelike dungeon floors.

This new world layout makes the game feel a lot more fully-realised. I quite like it.

The areas in Brandish 2 have a lot of variety. They are: Prison, Islet Cave, Wharf, Castle Wall, Castle Town, Woods, Ninja Yashiki, Dark Zone, Castle, Tower, Laboratory, Fortress, Nucleus.

A few of these areas are reminiscent of Brandish 1, especially the returning Dark Zone, which has the exact same aesthetic as before (but a new layout).

The Laboratory, Fortress, and Nucleus all have the same kind of icky organic aesthetic from the final area of Brandish 1, where the walls are made of pulsating flesh. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that....  I don't think it's supposed to actually be exploring inside a living creature any more, like I was speculating with Brandish 1. It's kind of just indicative that it's an evil bad guy zone, I guess.

And it's nice to see some outdoors areas - the Woods have nice green grass and trees, which you don't get to see much of normally.

The areas have around 1-4 floors each, so none of them are as huge the main areas of Brandish 1, which were 10 floors each. This means that the game has a lot more visual variety to it. The scenery around you changes more often as you play through the adventure. It makes the game feel a little less repetitive, and it makes it easier to remember what happens in each area.

When I was looking up information about this game, it came to my attention that the Super Famicom version I was playing is actually a truncated version the game. Around 18 floor layouts were just completely removed from the SNES version...which is a little disheartening to hear about. This includes two entire locales, "Ice Zone" and "Green Zone", of which I've never seen and know nothing about. These areas remain exclusive to the PC-98 original, so if I truly want to see everything Brandish 2 has to offer....... I think I might want to get that PC-98 emulator working, huh. :/

But on the whole, despite the removed content, the SNES game does not feel incomplete, and nothing critical to the story is missing. I think they were doing their best, trying to fit something that originally came on FIVE floppy disks into one Super Famicom cartridge.

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I think the bosses are a bit more difficult in Brandish 2 compared to the first. ...though you still always have the option to save and rest to recover HP anywhere, so they can still be cheesed to death with patience. But I do see that more effort was put into making the bosses feel more like a tough obstacle to overcome. 

On one hand, I appreciate the extra challenge, but in effect, it really only made me have to leave to go rest more often per boss. Which is a bit on the lame side. 

I do know that being able to leave bosses half-way through to go rest and heal with no penalties is an intentional part of the game's design. (And the PSP version of Brandish 1 even has an added NPC recommend this strategy to you before the first boss). ...But I dunno. It's always been a bit of a weird thing.

I think it feels more weird in this game compared to the first Brandish, because more of the enemies in this game are humans. The bosses in the first Brandish were mostly big monsters. So I guess it feels weird in Brandish 2 to leave a human boss's room, heal up, and return, without them having anything to say about it. You'd expect a human to be smart enough to follow you out the door, wouldn't you?

I did notice myself running out of magic far more often. It's possible that MP regeneration was slowed down, or maybe MP cost of spells was increased. Either way, I found myself having Low MP the majority of the time. It made me have to rely on my weapons more.

The Fire spell was not as powerful as it was in Brandish 1. I think this is because, unlike Brandish 1 where it can last you the whole game, now you can actually acquire an upgraded version of Fire called Flame, which has the same MP cost but deals more damage. Though neither spell was as good as the new "Blitz" spell, which shoots a huge laser in front of you. Once I got Blitz, the game actually became super easy. The final area was kind of a breeze, actually. I think the difficulty might not be so well-balanced in this game compared to the first.

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...I don't really have much else to say about Brandish 2. It was another fun adventure using the exact same gameplay as the first Brandish. I really enjoyed it, and I'm glad to see that they made more than one game of this style. It's a bit of a shame they never released it in English.

I do want to play Brandish 3, but..... PC-98 emulation is a pain. And there isn't a fan translation for 3 yet. I may go for it another day.

Uh anyways, that's about it. I'm a fan of Brandish now! Unlike Ys, Falcom never continued this series into the modern day. There are four Brandish games, plus the PSP remake of Brandish 1, and that's all that exists. I suppose dungeon crawlers don't have the same widespread appeal that Ys's more fast-paced action-exploration has.