Brigandine

"Atlus picks up w/ Brigandine were Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre left off"

Personally I think that Atlus keeps a great streak going with a RPG/Stradigy game that combines the look of Ogre Battle and feel of recent games like Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics. First thing I noticed that set this apart from your run of the mill tactics game though was the 3-D battle sequences. The graphics are a bit weak, especially outside the 3-D battles, which sometimes get bad themselves with large monsters like Dragons (they get sort of block like). The sound is good enough for the game, I didn't think it was bad, but the music got to be very redundant, but that's what they made stereos for anyway.

There is an intricate story though and great game play, which more then make up for the weakness in graphics. The main idea is to conquer the entire continent by having your human leaders control your monsters in battle. Each battle can have as many as three human leaders and as many monsters as their Rune Power allow. With Easy, Medium, and Hard modes Brigandine offers fun and excitement for any strategy game fan.

When you start the game you are prompted to pick one of five Lords who all see the present as an oportune time to expand their empires when the Almekian Empire is over-thrown by their top general and plunges the continent into war. The game includes a large variety of class changes for monsters and the human leaders. Each country has a blend of strong, average, and weak Rune Knights to take into battle. But one of the more interesting, but sometimes difficult things to find time for while defending and expanding your empire, is the side quests. This is a great way to put the weaker Rune Knights to good use though. Most of the time they return improved in some way (EX.- gain STR or INT points), return w/ and item, or if your really lucky a new Rune Knight.

Overall, the game has a great story w/ average sound and graffics, but with 3 difficulty modes and 5 lords to beat the game with, it offers a tremendous replay value, which is something I thought Final Fantasy Tactics didn't have. I would say that it's worth buying. I was lucky enough to get it used, but I would have paid the extra 15 bucks to get it new as an avid RPG/Stradegy game fan.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99