Originally released in 2017, Neowiz’s Brave Nine (also known as Brown Dust) is a strategy turn-based RPG that earned notable success on the mobile platform in its prime. Riding on the release of the game’s sequel, Brown Dust II, the developers have seen fit to bring Brave Nine to the Steam client this year.
While the recent playtest gave Steam players a chance to learn about the IP, there are some kinks in the PC port that leaves it a mixed bag; the game is playable and doesn’t suffer from any major bugs, but this version of Brave Nine feels rushed for an attempt to attract more players.
▍Solid Gameplay Performance, But Long Sessions Are Risky
Brave Nine’s core systems aren’t demanding on a device’s processor, as the game’s turn-based combat is automated throughout the entire fight with little input from the player outside of preparations.
Attacks and skills have simple but effective animations, which is an asset when speeding through fights at 3x speed or adjusting the speed throughout the course of the fight. Overall, Brave Nine’s combat is visually appealing without being overwhelming, but also shows the game’s age.
Other menus don’t suffer from any visual problems, especially the gacha menu where players are expected to spend most of their time during the beginning of their journey. The app’s live 2D art is also animated beautifully, setting up an excellent opportunity for new players to try out a long session of the game as Brave Nine appears to function well enough at the surface level.
Unfortunately, an extensive gaming session is where this turn-based RPG falls short, as the game can suffer from some noticeable memory problems roughly two hours after the game is open. The severity of the memory issue isn’t enough to forcibly restart the application, but attack animations and transitioning through menus slow down enough that it’s tempting to do so anyway. Luckily, this issue doesn’t occur enough to be a sore point, but it’s still alarming for a game without accessible graphic settings that can help players with lower-end computers.
▍Too Much Visible Loading Time For a Smooth Experience
Brave Nine players will become very familiar with the game’s loading circle, which appears whenever the player makes almost any change to their account. For a live service game, this becomes an irritating issue very quickly when it appears, preventing any other inputs from taking place until the process is completed.
Out of all of Brave Nine’s menus, the constant loading screen when rolling the gacha is surprisingly the biggest issue encountered during the playtest. Normally, it’s expected that any mobile gacha will load whenever the player obtains a new character, as the game needs to retrieve that character’s game assets for the player to view and listen to.
However, it’s a completely different story if the game has to load any time the player rolls the gacha. Brave Nine is guilty of this problem, which is a serious concern for how well the game can handle an official release with servers facing a much higher load. This issue might not be a big deal at first glance, but players looking to reroll or those who’ve saved up gacha currency for a long rolling session will feel a sour experience going through each multi-roll.
On the other hand, Brave Nine quickly loads PVE battles that never suffer from any mid-battle loading shenanigans. Yet, PVP matches are a different story, as despite fighting against a computer, Brave Nine is prone to errors that force the application to restart. It’s confusing that these problems exist, especially when Neowiz has had time since the game’s mobile debut to address them.
▍Rushed Features With Careless Execution
The Steam version of Brave Nine makes a big mistake in its port right from the beginning; being a direct copy of the mobile game without considering the properties of the PC client. This problem doesn’t directly affect Brave Nine’s mechanics itself, but instead shows up in the game’s displayed text and some minor game features.
Most of the game’s text is well suited for a typical smartphone but fails to take advantage of the wider screens that a PC or Steamdeck provides. Some text is also displayed poorly or overlaps on certain pages, including the bio pages of the player’s characters.
The ability to view the full size of a character on the home screen is also affected by this direct port, as tall characters suffer from a portrait view that cannot be moved around. It’s clear that this angle assumes that the player is on a smartphone device, which doesn’t work nearly as well for a Steam game.
▍Brave Nine’s Steam Debut Needs Some Work
Brave Nine’s playtest on Steam is functional for what it aims to do, but the port lacks care when compared to the high-quality visuals that the game provides to the player. As a playtest, some of Brave Nine’s features couldn’t be fully tested without a healthy and active player base. But what the game does achieve is creating a run-of-the-mill, traditional RPG to pass the time; not necessarily a bad trait, but this port will need to polish up to meet the standards of modern games.
It’s too soon to say how Neowiz will address some of the technical issues found in the playtest, but its flaws might just be enough to dissuade Steam users from trying out Brave Nine during a season of high competition.
