Brave Soul - First Impressions

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

I just got done playing about 5 hours of Brave Soul and figured I would post some impressions quick before I went to bed.

Story: You get kicked out of your house by your parents for being lazy and are forced to go find work. You decide to become a hunter (mercenary kinda). I really like the main character . He has kinda a sarcastic attitude and suits me well. So far the story would get a 6-7/10 but I have not finished yet and the reason for so low is while you build up your hunter rank there is not a whole lot of story development.

Gameplay: Once you get used to the controls the game plays fairly easy. I am playing on hard difficulty and have no problems. The AI is fairly intelligent and the game was tough enough to kill me once. For the most part though its fairly easy and gets kind of repetitive. I hope you have a decent memory because the dungeons are maze like .

Sound: I like most of the midi music in the game, the only exception is the shop music. The intro music was very good and the intro movie was excellent as well.

Translation: The translation is good, I have only found a couple typos. The game loading screen at the very beginning say “Game Loding” (made me laugh) and there was a couple others that were extremely minor. The localization seems very good up to this point.

Final Thoughts:
I’ve playing about 5 hours and ended up going after Carol (not my first choice but she kinda grew on me, her fear of ghosts is cute ). I think I am probably about 3/4 the way through the game, so that would put it at about 7-8 hours to complete if you read the text. The tab feature is extremely nice, you can fly through events you have already seen and the choices you get in the game are well thought out and tough to make. Each woman reacts to your choice immediately and you can get a feel for their personality. I like this aspect and I like the fact that you are forced to choose just 2 out of the 5 women for your party. One complaint I have and this goes for alot of RPG’s is I wish they would make different character pictures for the different armor types, I get so much more satisfaction equiping a high end platemail suit when my character on the screen changes and looks better. Thats just me though. As for armor/weapons etc. you are given the standard options for customization: Magic dmg types, speed or power, magic defense or physical defense etc. Also there are quite a few available.

Well if anyone actually read this dribble, I hope it helped. I am pleased with the game as a whole so far. It was able to keep me playing instead of going to a party tonight, thats always a good sign in a game when you look up one minute and its 10pm and the next time you look up its 3am and you don’t want to go to bed . I hope you guys get your copy soon and I can hear your thoughts. Good night!

#2

Thanks for the preview, Bigdog. I’m anxiously awaiting my copy. One question - is the gameplay the same as in the demo? I ran that again today to familiarize myself with buying and selling items, saving games, etc. Looks like PP may have a winner!

#3
quote:
Originally posted by perigee:
Thanks for the preview, [b]Bigdog. I'm anxiously awaiting my copy. One question - is the gameplay the same as in the demo? I ran that again today to familiarize myself with buying and selling items, saving games, etc. Looks like PP may have a winner![/b]

Excellent news, sounds like they do indeed have a winner and one that I too am now eager to get my hands on and play.

#4

Anybody knows how is the system to get the girls,since I can’t imagine playing RPG game again and again from the beginning just to get all the girls(I’ve had enough hard experience leveling up from lv1 with Disgaea alone)

#5

The gameplay is the same as the demo to my knowledge, I did not go back and play the demo so I am not 100% sure. You pretty much use the left mouse button to move, and left mouse button to physical attack. Right mouse button casts a wave attack and if you scroll the mouse wheel it will scroll through potions and such to use the right mouse button and cast. The middle mouse button casts a area affect spell. This is the default and it can all be configured in the menu.

As for the system of getting the girls, each mission you complete that the girls like gives you love points (more if you make the right choice on the mission). Also you get double points if you do the mission in the girls home area. I have found it hard to get the girls since I have played 5 hours and not seen a h scene yet. I may be doing something wrong though (it is my first time through).

#6

oh sorry but you don’t get Hscenes until the very end when the girl actually falls in love with you…

#7

well then you can start imagining what happens when olf starts falling in love with you, elf…

#8
quote:
Originally posted by RedHell:
Anybody knows how is the system to get the girls,since I can't imagine playing RPG game again and again from the beginning just to get all the girls(I've had enough hard experience leveling up from lv1 with Disgaea alone)

If i was you i wouldn't worry about that...
maybe you didn't see laumness's post in the "brave soul and so it beginns" topic..Well i hope lamuness doesn't mind if i quote this here...
quote:

Once you clear the game at least once I will send you my save file which you can start from level 500 so you can blast through the game easily
ADD:
...and not to mention an excalibur in your item sack right at the beginning :P

remember to press the TAB button to speed up the game (just don't TAB when there is a dialogue)

[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 07-09-2003).]


As you can see, if he wasn't joking, you needn't worry about leveling up again and again.

[This message has been edited by allamala (edited 11-08-2003).]

[This message has been edited by allamala (edited 11-09-2003).]

#9

The Character familiars are certainly unique.

#10
quote:
Originally posted by ccunning1:
The Character familiars are certainly unique.

They do indeed, but there is something strange about the Dragon that seems familiar from another anime or place, just not sure where, or if I am just completely mistaken.

#11

Minor Spoiler:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
You guys probably already knew, but Marin (or whatever her name is) Has a complete kitty set that comes in three different colors, I think. Someone please correct me if I am wrong I know that she has a set.

Anyways, that’s something I didn’t expect that’s way cool.

#12

Yeah I got my copy today

#13

Haven’t been on the net for a while so I didn’t catch the info but if that’s true then all is well and good

Guess I should order it now.

#14

I feel that i must add my own quick review, and ill start off by saying that its an old school rpg, however it can get extremely repetitive, the game starts with like 2-3 levels to a dungeon then as you go along they monsters dont seem to get a whole lot harder after a certaint point… they only seem to become more abundant and the levels go from 2-3 to 8-15 (however the fast foward option does also work out of text too, which helps move things along to the battles where you wouldnt want to use fastfoward because you will lose life so fast and die… then have to do the mission again… from scratch (i wish u could save mid-mission)
However the characters are well done, dont really have any other complains yet, the game requires that you do pay attention for the most part, girls will give away hints to what they like, and which citys you should spend time in… (Id say more, but imma limit it to this) Im only 2/3 done with the game 1 time though, and i picked marin this time (bet u now know what my tastes are…)

#15
quote:
Originally posted by woodelf:
I think the going to different cities and places have each girl with special talents
is what makes this the style of this game.
Large scale monster bashing is not the goal
of this this game.
PS:I like the name spelled Marine.

Well i do kinda understand what the goal was... however.. what i was going for was they didnt need to make the levels so large to the point where all your doing is fighting a couple monsters here and there.

And im not going to disagree that the differnt cities and girls idea is great, matter fact i DID like that as well...

p.s. Yea, But Marin is her name.

I should also add that I like this game so far... those were my complaints.. i was in NO WAY trying to bash the game... if thats what it came off as id more than willing to delete the posts if you think it will stop someone from buying the game.

oh and no offence peachprincess but In the BS manual... its the first time in a while that ive seen a simple error like "sure" spelled "suer" heh (trying to imply here that i DID actually do some reading of the manual) (not criticising) its just funny, usually that one dont pass spell check. lol

[This message has been edited by Gambit (edited 11-11-2003).]

#16

I dunno, i may have been a little stressed yesterday… slept all night (and today is my day off) and about the only thing i have to complain about this time though is my poor memory

#17

AHAHAHA!!! LOL just found the funniest thing!
Peach Princess… i love what that guy said in the castle… (wont go into to much explination, but i know you know who i mean)

#18

…what castle? you mean at the border?

#19

Yay, I recieved the game yesterday
and for the most part I have been very impressed.

I have found a couple of dungeons unecessarily expansive IMHO, and I’m not yet that far through the game. Is there any way to have the characters move faster on foot? Occasionally while walking though a dungeon my characters suddenly slip into “hyper speed”, but it wears off after a few seconds. I haven’t yet worked out what causes this.

There is one point of confusion - after completing a mission I was absolutely positive that I had achieved the necessary criteria to get an event with Carrol, but she wasn’t interested when I talked to her shrug.

And how do some of you know how far through the game you are? I couldn’t tell if I were 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, whatever.

If only I wasn’t stuck right now

#20



Still waiting for my copy to arrive.

------------------
“His last thought is wry, Not bad for a dead man.” Moon Knight vol.1, #1 (1980)