Forsena / Grand Edition

Here you'll find a but of a player's guide to Brigandine Grand Edition. Hopefully it will take some of the guesswork and trial-and-error of some of the menus.

The game begins (if you let it) with an FMV.

Once that is over, of if you press [START], you will be taken to the game's Root Menu (in English).

• NEWGAME
• CONTINUE
• TUTORIAL
• RECOLLECTION

The Tutorial and Recollection might be a future project, but for now I'll focus on actual gameplay. Also, loading a previous game is basically identical to English Brigandine, so I won't go into that.

QUICK CONTROLLER NOTES:

• One thing might already be obvious to people who've already played imports: In Japanese games, O is select and X is cancel.
• You can skip any animation by pressing [Start].
• There's no need to manually scroll through each line of dialogue (which you probably can't read, or else you wouldn't be using this guide). To make the written dialogue auto scroll really fast, simply hold down the square button.
• This isn't a controller note, but I'll put it here anyway. Many times you will be given a confirmation choice (seen right.) The choice on the left is ?(hai) = Yes. The choice on the right is (iie) = No.

When starting a new game, the first choice you're given is between Story Mode (seen as the above selection to the right) and Multi-Player Mode (seen as the below choice in the pic to the right.)

I have already written a brief guide to the Multi-Player Mode

For the purposes of this particular guide, we are selecting the first choice, Story Mode.

The game will ask you to chose a difficulty, with Easy, Normal and Hard clearly displayed in English.

Your next choice is to select a country. Use the D-pad to move from country-to-country (just like in the previous version). You'll notice the striking difference that Esgares is available as a selection.

Next comes a small semi-animation with the game's first intro superimposed over the landscape of Forsena. There have basically been no changes from original Brigandine, so if you've played that you've read this stuff before. You can skip this by pressing [Start].

Next comes the game's first FMV (not counting the opening FMV). Zemekis and Cador talk. Once again, this is not all that different from what was written dialogue in original Brigandine.

After that you'll see another familiar screen, that of the flaming castle with words superimposed over it. Again this is basically the same intro as the original. You can skip this by pressing [Start].

Now we're into the meat of things. The next FMV is the intro movie for your country. Even if you don't understand a word of what's being said, and even though the animation is not of the best quality and some of the voice actors are terrible, this is one of the most exciting moments for many of us - our beloved charas are moving and talking!!!

Once your country's intro animation is over, you're taken into the game. Tha basic structure of the game remains unchanged:

• 1) Organize Phase
• 2) Attack Phase
• 3) Combat

I don't count quests as a phase because there are no menus, you are basically just reading what happens, and you cannot save while quests are taking place.

Now, one of the main points of this guide is to help people navigate the menus, so choose your menu

GAME MENU (Press [Start])	CASTLE MENU Press O when cursor is on a castle	BATTLE MENU Press [Start] When in Battle Phase