 Snastro! Brandish is one strange game. Sure, everything looks fine on the surface. Cool artwork, great-looking graphics, there's a dragon, there's a sword. Must be some kind of adventure game. The music sounds cool, and then... What in the hell is going on? Am I somehow teleporting to three different rooms? Why can't I move around? Okay, I can move forward and back, I can jump, but what is going on when I press left or right? Well, what's actually happening is that the room itself is rotating instead of your character. Well, it's supposed to quote-unquote rotate, but it just sort of instantly moves 90 degrees. Yeah, it took me like 15 minutes to figure that out. So in essence, Brandish is a first-person dungeon crawler except with an overhead view. Why they decided to roll with this instead of just picking one perspective and sticking with it, I have no idea. But that's the biggest hurdle here. I should mention there is an option to switch from lateral to rotate, but it barely makes any difference. You're still stuck with this awkward perspective. No, let's not stop there. Let's also have inconsistent scrolling and random stuff popping up out of nowhere. And if that's not enough, let's have the map on a separate screen so you constantly have to bring it up. It's like they deliberately set out to create the most disorienting game ever made. So if you can get past all that, then hey, Brandish is okay. Of course, that's like saying, hey, other than the Great Depression, the 1930s were a kick-ass time in the United States. It's obviously a hurdle the size of Mount Everest that you have to get over in order to get into a game like Brandish, but on the off chance you do, the rest of the game is not that bad. There's pretty traditional RPG stuff here with weapons, armor, items, magic, exploring dungeons, flipping switches to unlock distant doors, finding hidden areas, and of course fighting monsters. The combat here is odd, because remember, this is essentially a first-person dungeon crawler, so while the fighting appears to be in real-time, there's still kind of a turn-based element to it. You can't just spam attacks like mad, like in top-down adventure games. There's still a my turn, your turn, kind of a thing to it. Another big factor here is resource and item management. There's a limited amount of space to deal with, so use what you've got, and use it often. The story is actually something a little different for once. In a time of peace and prosperity, this king apparently gets so bored that he decides to try and conquer the one place beyond his influence, which is this tower guarded by a dragon. So he sends his army after it, but instead of fighting back, the dragon destroys itself, putting a curse on the king, who then turns into this horrible beast. The tower and the entire kingdom sink into the ground, and everything is seemingly lost forever, until your character, Varric, kind of stumbles upon it, and ends up getting lost inside. In the meantime, you're chased by Alexis, who's seeking revenge for killing her quote-unquote master. So the two of you blunder around until you find your way out. Bear in mind this is the English translation of the story, I understand the original Japanese version of the story is much different, the names are different, and Alexis' outfits leave a little less to the imagination. Despite a kind of unique story, I don't think Brandish is worth playing today because the fundamental basics of simply moving around is just too jarring to get over. However, this is a lot less of a problem in the PSP remake where you actually rotate around, and you have a much better idea of where you are and what you're doing and where to go, so if the concept here seems interesting, then that's the game I'd recommend going with. There's also a sequel for Brandish Comic-Con, Brandish 2, that's since received an English patch, but that game is an entirely different ball of wax, and will probably get its own review someday. But yeah, often times you'll hear the phrase ahead of its time, used as a way to praise something, but in the case of Brandish, it's not a good thing, it may be ahead of its time, but yeah, there are a lot of ideas crammed in here, and I guess I can see from a developer's standpoint what they were trying to accomplish, but it just does not work. If the very act of simply moving around is too disorienting, then the game fails as simple as that. What's the opposite of a pick up and play game, a sit down and wonder what the hell to do game, because that's what this is. If you want to get into Brandish, start with the PSP remake.