Brigandine The Legend of Runersia

I recommend this game but with my thumb up only 70% of the way and only when it's on offer.
On paper, this is the perfect game for me: collecting heroes and monsters, raising them, changing classes or evolving them, and collecting loot. But the game comes with a host of issues that damage the overall experience very badly.
1. It's on PC, but is "optimised" for controllers.
The default mouse and keyboard controls demonstrate a complete lack of thought by developers. After some play time (mouse + keyboard) I recommend you remap it to this from the very beginning.
a. Keep the standard WASD
b. Change the toggle left and right between menus and selectable units to Q and E
c. Change confirm, cancel, more info to V, C, X, Z
You should have a much easier (logical) time this way.
I do not recommend playing with Keyboard only as it's extremely clunky that way (and so likely would be for controllers as well).
2. Low variation between armies / Many Knights are good for nothing
The game is marketed as 100 knights and 50 monsters to battle with. While true, the Knights lead 1 army each and cannot lead each other.
a. This limits your play style and combinations since all the Knights end up leading the same few monsters since "50 monsters" includes later evolution forms.
b. Low level knights you obtain late game are difficult to raise to any value, especially when you don't need them to lead more troops and they can't do Quests properly.
Can't you send the lowbie Knights out Questing to find stuff and level up? Nope. You can't.
3. Terrible Quest system / low loot volume / Knights on Quests do not grow
The Quest system is terribly designed and hell for people who love loot.
The noob Knights keep failing Quests. Only high-level Knights with advanced jobs can succeed most of the time. But those high-level idiots only return with 0-1 item each, usually of slots you don't need, mostly of low rarity.
So, after over 50 farking turns, 6 Knights failed to find me a single high grade Monster robe at the Mana Spring. I only started finding them after I increased the number of advanced Knights from 2 to 6. (The other 4 Knights were never noobs and had Tier 2 jobs with high success rate. Also note that in order to grow them, I had to manufacture conflict in a way that makes no sense.)
And after over 10 farking turns of 10 advanced Knights looking, I have still yet to find a single high grade dagger. Ironically, the guys who are Questing for daggers are mostly Thieves that I forcefully power-levelled into Treasure Hunters using "last hits" barehanded because I could not find any weapons for them to begin with.
I don't actually need the daggers at all, I'm just looking out of principle.
I get that rare items are rare and shouldn't come too easy. But this set up doesn't work for this game if you love loot, because you can actually end the game in 1/4 of the time without using any rare items. (I actually finished the first time without doing a single Phantom quest and found it rather unsatisfying. I didn't even know you could get a set bonus for equipping items of the same rarity tier.)
It's just an overall terrible experience when you're forced to artificially lengthen the game, keep sending Knights out and they keep coming back empty handed or with crap that can't be used, sold, traded or fused, only discarded using very clunky controls. This isn't like lengthening your FF8 play time to play Triple Threat or Witcher play time to play Gwent. That's actually fun, this isn't.
And to make things worse, Knights don't get EXP or Job Proficiency from Questing for items. You get literally nothing and it's just bland.
It should also be said that Quest locations also don't indicate what Knight / Job is compatible with the quest until the Knight goes there. So you unless you metagame by reading a forum, you have to manually send Knights here, there, everywhere and keep changing their jobs at the location until you figure out who can be used where.
In summary, the entire Quest mechanics, interface and features needs an overhall. There needs to be a Quest menu you can select the item types you want that automatically dispatches the Knights to the locations.
4. Job proficiency challenges
A great and fun feature of this game is swapping Knight classes to gather more passive skills and spells. Unfortunately, if you get a high-level Knight late game, you can't.
Job proficiency appears to be tied to every level up. If the Knight comes to you already high-level and without any other job proficiencies, you cannot level them up another 10-15 times to gain any other useful job spells / passives. Too bad.
And of course, if you get low-level Knights late game, you also can't because the game is ending and you don't have enough time left (or reason) to raise them.
You can't send them out for Quests to get proficiency either way, remember?
Quite stupidly, I used Zoar's tear to level up Knights faster so I can find more loot for fun instead of ending the game. Frankly you can end the game easily without ever doing a single Phantom quest and getting the Zoar's tear.
5. Bugs: Cannot dismiss Knights / Mouse randomly stops working
In Challenge mode, your total Knights are capped at 20 including the Overlord you choose. You're required to dump the extra Knights, but you can't. There's a bug that stops you from clicking them. You have to keep sorting and resorting them until you can click and dismiss heroes.
A fix that sometimes works is to sort them to the higher part of the list but this failed for me sometimes too.
Occassionally the mouse just stops clicking and that isn't fun either. It's solely a game issue, the mouse works fine when I change windows. And yes, thanks to that I got to verify that the game is indeed very clunky without mouse.
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Lastly, not really an issue but a pet peeve. I can't believe that for a game so focused on using Monsters as an army, you don't have Knights and Monsters that make it easier to steal the enemy's rare Monster aside from Charm. And there's no class or monster that can summon more monsters while on the field (apart from the Lich, sort of).
It would be nice to see more troop variety like soldiers, spiders, teleporters, undead class up variants, obstruction / trap creators and summoners.

I thoroughly enjoy this game. I played the original back in the day, it's not exactly the same but it's still a good time if you like turn-based strategy / tactics games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Hoshigami, Vanguard Bandits, etc

Absolutely. Without a shadow of a doubt would I recommend this game to others.

This is a wonderful tactical game that really can be played casually, intensely, and in some ways, competitively (not online or anything). It's a really sweet fusion of "Risk" and Chess, and standard tactical RPGs with elements, equipment and storyline all tied together.
There is a very high replay value if you enjoy the gameplay, as you can conquer Runersia with any of the 6 main factions, learn more about the lore of each nation through said replays, and even if you don't want to play through the campaign 6 times? Well, you'll at least want to play through twice as there are... decisions to be made....

Anyways! Super fun, couldn't recommend it enough. Become a Rune Knight today!

The best pill of nostalgia. Almost thirty years ago, for more than a hundred hours, I was completely absorbed in the legends of Forsena. It was the peak of game evolution, the best thing I was waiting for day after day after school. The legends of runersia for most people will be incomprehensible, not understandable and immediately the question will arise - why? And they will be right! In 2025, it's just an absurd jrpg. But if you are painfully familiar with Vaunard's face on the cover, then this game will take you away for a long time. Adjointed mechanics, guessing monsters and countries, believe me, you won't care about the plot and everything else. You will play nostalgia and will not regret anything.

Game is absolutely amazing. Can't Wait for Brigandine Abyss to hit later this year. Only wish the OG game and the Grand Edition of the OG game would port to Steam.

B:TLoR is a turn-based strategy and tactical conquest game. The overworld is comprised of 6 warring nations and roughly 30-35 forts, each of which is connected to other nearby forts through predetermined routes (resembling a series of interconnected nodes). Each fort you control contributes to your overall mana income, with mana used to both recruit and maintain your army of monsters. Monsters may also be summoned at these forts, with different monsters available at different forts.
Your overall army is comprised of your leader, some generals (called rune knights) and the monsters. You may attack (or defend against) other connected forts with up to three different armies, each led by a RK, with the number and quality of monsters each RK may lead governed by their CP, which increases as the RK levels up. Within a given battle, if an RK is "killed" then the army led by that RK is forced to withdraw. RKs may not be perma-killed, whereas monster deaths are permanent (though even here limited resurrection is possible).
The power of both the RKs and your monsters are governed by their underlying statistics, skill sets, and spell sets, which obviously increase as each levels up. On a given turn each RK will either be part of an attack squad (typically with two other RKs), will defend (again typically with two other RKs), may move to another fort, may choose to gain experience, or may search for equipment.
The game is mostly won once you control all other forts, though there is some post-game content for a true victory.
The battles are fought on hand-crafted maps (permanently defined for each fort), with each map featuring a unique layout of various terrain types (water, forest, etc). Monsters and RKs each have a preferred terrain type, with accompanying bonuses and maluses for native and non-nonnative types.
Pros:
+++ The underlying interaction of systems is elegant and makes for great strategic and tactical decisions.
+++ Roster management is a big part of this game and RK/monster progression plays into that in a big way.
++ The monster roster is diverse and fills out the game's mechanic-space well.
++ RK skills and spells are pretty good.
++ The effect of terrain is strong and encourages diversity.
++ The wrinkle that knocking out the RK takes their whole army off of the map for that battle adds a great layer of tactics to the battles.
+ There is a class-based promotion system in place, with cross-classing available. Some skills and spells will carry between classes so the effort is (kind-of) worth it.
+ AI is decent enough, as long as you don't go out of your way to abuse it. I mean you should still have your way in battles, but some careful thought is required for some of the early fights.
+ Equipment is OK.
Cons:
--- The information as to which RK needs to quest in which fort to have a chance to get what equipment was quite dense for me. There were many times I would send an RK to a spot that I thought they would be compatible and they weren't. A much clearer means of conveying this info is needed.
--- The spawn points on some maps are way too far apart. Spending two full turns moving 16 creatures just to get to a spot where next turn I am close enough to get close enough to engage is a waste of my time.
-- The UI is clunky. To be fair there is lots to manage. That said, there are separate menus for the overworld, each fort, and for the game itself, each of which requires frequent accessing. Constantly getting into and backing out of various menus is painful.
-- Cross-classing seems cool, but it is tedious to ensure that your character doesn't "Over-level" at some point, thereby precluding them from maxing both classes. A simple point system could have been used to remove this burden. Beyond that, by the time your cross-classing bears full fruit (level 30) the game is almost over at which point you really just need your leader and two other RKs anyway.
-- About 60% of the way through you will have figured out that you are going to win. The gameplay after that point is kind of weak, as you require less of your RKs and the enemy has no high-level monsters left. To be fair many 4x-type games suffer from this issue.
- The postgame is neat to go through once, but since there is no time limit, it seems you can just grind your way to victory through experience and equipment questing.
- The game is kind of rough to get into for the first time, at least I was overwhelmed.
Summary: I beat the game fully on Normal and then beat it again on a Custom Hard setting. The first half of the game is the most enjoyable and I think offers very interesting tactical play. The underlying systems are very strong, though the UI often falls quite short. Both parts of the end-game (conquering the last 40% of the towns and the post-game battles) have their issues for me, bringing down the package as a whole and ultimately precluding me from running this game back over and over. The lack of randomness at set-up doesn't help matters in that regard. Still, what is here is very strong for a few play-throughs. I actually do have many more nitpicks that I didn't include for brevity's sake. Though this game isn't perfect, it does a lot of things very well and I am excited for the arrival of the recently announced sequel.
Overall: 8.5/10

The game is OK for me but not as great as the original PS1 version. It still kinda feel like the 1st game but what I don't like is the "Quest". I like the randomness of the quest on the 1st game and I enjoy reading what happened on their quest. This version of Brigandine however doesn't have quest scenes aside from character recruitment quest.
On the other hand, the game is good, same battle mechanics, great graphics and some added mechanics like putting equipment to your monsters which is not possible on the 1st game.