Brigandine Abyss Event Battle Phases Hands-Off Preview

I must admit to only being familiar with the Brigandine series in passing, though my inner SRPG fan’s curiosity has been piqued by what I’ve heard. It’s a curiosity that’s led me to pay close attention to the upcoming release, Brigandine Abyss. I was recently fortunate enough to preview one of the game’s event battles.

Brigandine Abyss is noted for offering two modes of gameplay, depending on players’ SRPG preferences. The Story Mode is fairly self-explanatory in that you choose between six story campaigns to see through to their arc’s completion. The game’s dub is in Japanese, with different subtitle language options, and the Story Mode features animated cutscenes to help move the plot along, a first for the series. For those less invested in the minutiae of the story, there’s Mission Mode, which instead features strategic battles centered around the game world’s twenty-four factions, all of which have different objectives to complete. Depending on the objectives, route lengths in Mission Mode can vary greatly.

The preview of Brigandine Abyss I saw focused on an event battle during one of the Story Mode campaigns. Before a battle, you maneuver through what’s known as the Organization Phase, where you can view your troops’ status and manage them according to your needs: upgrading classes, buying equipment, and sending units out on quests to obtain valuable (and limited) resources. Certain units are best suited for particular types of quests, though “training missions” are the only ones always guaranteed to yield results.

You also have to keep in mind the locations of your various bases on Brigandine Abyss‘ enormous world map, as it’s vital to hold some units back to protect them when trying to progress, as enemies will often try to wage fights against nearby areas to further their own strongholds. Certain units can change classes at specific points throughout the game if their levels are high enough, but upgrading classes requires some strategy and thought as, in some cases, you could create a powerful unit that’s suddenly too much for their former squad to handle. They may also have multiple class routes for you to choose from when it comes time to change classes that’ll affect how they do in the next skirmish. You can also view the battle map for the upcoming fight to plan your units’ positioning.

Once you’re confident about your preparations in the Organization Phase, the Attack Phase begins. This phase is where you’ll order some of your troops from their bases to assault enemy territory, though you have to carefully consider who to send and who to leave as a defensive barrier for your town territories. Having thoroughly planned out the invasion, the third phase, called the Invasion Phase, begins. The Invasion Phase is when the traditional, turn-based SRPG combat takes place.

Brigandine Abyss‘ battle maps use a hexagonal grid. Height differences come into play depending on a map’s terrain, with certain vertical variations making ranged characters crucial. Each squad of units has a leader, but the other units in it can move independently when needed. They can also use a mechanic called “Rally” to grant the squad leader stat bonuses.

Positioning is vital during this stage of combat, especially if you have mage characters with limited mobility that you’d like to get into range to be useful. There are some bonuses that can increase their movement range, though they come with caveats. Magic is especially potent due to its 100% accuracy. Most other skills have lower accuracy, especially if a character doesn’t have a high crit rate from linking with another nearby unit on the hexagonal grid.

This preview’s story battle featured a ninja character with a skill that allowed her to swap positions with any other unit within range, which proved a boon for moving enemy units into reach of attacks. The Octopus monster on the enemy’s side was capable of drawing your units closer to it, which in turn also made them likewise vulnerable to attacks. While skills that knock back enemies can be beneficial at times, they also create opportunities for a unit to be attacked by enemy units more than once. It’s worth noting that sometimes, to block enemy advancement, just one strategically placed character on the map can make all the difference.

You can opt to take out each member of an enemy squad for extra experience and resources, or focus on the squad leader to thin their ranks even faster. When a leader is removed from the battle, their followers disappear too. Using skills repeatedly strengthens them, but most units can’t recover magic points once they’re lost, so it’s important to strategize when and where to use abilities during fights. You can also use resources to pay a “revival fee” to bring back defeated units. Once you complete a battle and meet the objectives, you gain bonus experience points that can help level up lower-level units if you brought them along to the fight and they survived. Following these rewards and a cutscene to advance the story, the Organization Phase begins once again.

I was honestly impressed by what I saw of Brigandine Abyss in this short preview. The idea of starting out as just a small blip on the map and then slowly taking over different regions while managing units and limited resources seems intriguing enough, and the hexagonal turn-based SRPG combat seems very thought out and well-designed for those who like to put more tactical thought into their actions during battles. Even out of context, the small bits of story I saw through visual-novel-style dialogue before and during combat, alongside the animated cutscene that followed, were engaging enough to pique my interest.

Based on this preview, Brigandine Abyss shows a lot of potential and promises a wealth of strategic possibility and content for SRPG fans when it releases August 26th on PC via Steam, and August 27th on Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. I’m also looking forward to even more SRPG enthusiasts getting the chance to try the demo when it releases on consoles on July 30th. The Brigandine Abyss demo is already available on Steam, which now (or soon) features an option to bump the game’s performance to 60 fps.

Our thanks to NIS America for inviting us to this preview event for Brigandine Abyss!