The Newest Unlikely Game Franchise Revival: Brigandine

If I made a list of video game franchises that were most likely to be revived, Brigandine would be far from it. The PSOne strategy RPG was developed and published by the now-defunct (at least in their prior form) Hearty Robin in Japan, and localized for North America by Atlus USA, and it found a good niche audience in both territories. But the series didn’t go beyond an enhanced edition of the game Hearty Robin released again for PSOne in Japan in 2000. It was one among the several interesting and experimental titles released for PSOne that never received sequels or successors.

Well, until now. This is why I made a personal choice to never bet on anything.

The series is getting a revival in the form of Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, officially confirmed for Switch on the latest Japanese Nintendo Direct. It’s being developed by both Happinet Games and Matrix Software, two familiar companies in the Japanese RPG and strategy RPG worlds. The former republished the enhanced version of Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena for PSOne in 2008 after Hearty Robin’s disappearance, while the latter has assisted in developing several titles over the years, including the remakes of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV for DS. It could be in good hands.

As the name implies, the game will occur on the continent of Runersia, though no clarification exists regarding whether it takes place within the same universe as the original game. Like its predecessor, = the story will involve six nations, with the player having the choice to ally with one early in the game. Nearly all of them possess special and unique iterations of the titular Brigandine armor.

The Norzaleo Kingdom wears the Brigandine of Justice, the Republic of Guimoule wears the Brigandine of Glory, the Shinobi Tribe wears the Brigandine of Freedom, Mana Saleesia Theocracy wears the Brigandine of Sanctity, while the United Islands of Mirelva wears the Brigandine of Ego. (United Islands? Ego? Hmm.) The final one is the Holy Gustava Empire, which doesn’t have a Brigandine. The main goal will be to unite the continent and its warring nations regardless of which nation the player chooses, but they’ll interact with different characters along the way. Given the number of nations involved, expect the character count to be high.

The gameplay features and battles will be, also unsurprisingly, reminiscent of the old game. Rune Knights are the platoon leaders, and each one can utilize up to six monsters. There are catches here, though. The monsters require Mana to summon, and the types of monsters that can be summoned will depend on who summons them and where they’re summoned. (No answer about whether the summoned can summon.) Both the knights and monsters are capable of equipping weapons or armor to strengthen their attacks and defenses, and can eventually learn special attacks and armor.

The battles themselves will take place on a hexagonal grid, contrary to the to the square grids featured in most SRPGs. This is similar to — you guessed it — the original game. There’s also a weapon and elemental triangle, similar to the Fire Emblem games, here defined through red, blue, and green colors.

It’s a surprise that someone is making a new Brigandine game for 2020, but it’s almost as surprising to see a new SRPG coming from a Japanese developer at all. Despite Fire Emblem’s success, Japanese developers and publishers have mostly abandoned the genre. One of the biggest to leave it behind was Nippon Ichi Software, who released SRPGs annually at one point. But their last new release (Disgaea 5) was over four years ago, with none on their current schedule — ports notwithstanding. Valkyria Chronicles 4 was the last moderately-budgeted non-FE example, which doesn’t appear to have done well for Sega. While Sega’s prior Sakura Wars titles were SRPG/dating sim hybrids, the series is being revived as an action RPG. Brigandine will join the Langrisser series in unlikely revivals, though hopefully this title will turn out better than that franchise’s first new effort.

It doesn’t sound like many staffers from the original game are involved, but experienced developers and planners are working on the project. Kenji Terada, a scenario writer for the first three Final Fantasy games on NES/Famicom, is crafting the scenario here. The surprisingly good art and designs here are coming courtesy of Raita Kazama, who previously provided some character and monster designs for Experience Inc.’s Stranger of Sword City and contributed to several other projects. Tenpei Sato is composing the game’s music, well known for contributing to Nippon Ichi’s titles, most notably the Disgaea series. He also contributed to the updated version of the original Brigandine.

A video presentation for the new Brigandine title will occur during Tokyo Game Show this week, so we might see it in action soon — if the demonstration will be uploaded online. The game is planned for a worldwide release in spring 2020. It will receive a retail release in Japan, but unless a western publisher is keeping quiet at the moment, it could be an eShop-exclusive release in the west outside a possible Limited Run Games physical printing. Questions remain about the game itself and the release, but they’ll be answered soon.