Brandish : The Dark Revenant

Brandish: The Dark Revenant is Nihon Falcom’s PlayStation Portable remake of the first Brandish, a dungeon-crawling action RPG originally released in Japan on March 19, 2009. XSEED Games later brought an English-language digital version to North America in January 2015. Rather than continuing one of Falcom’s other long-running series, this PSP game revisits the 1991 Brandish adventure with rebuilt presentation, revised play systems, and additional material while preserving its unusual real-time maze exploration.

The story follows Ares Toraernos, a wandering swordsman who is caught up in a confrontation with the sorceress Dela Delon. Their clash sends both rivals plunging into the buried ruins of Vittoria, an ancient kingdom lost beneath the ground. Ares must find a route back to the surface through the dangerous complex, while Dela remains a recurring presence with motives of her own. The underground setting gradually moves through distinct areas, combining the remains of a fallen civilization with hazards, monsters, locked paths, and clues to its history.

Exploration is built around a closely following camera and a dungeon whose orientation changes as Ares turns. The character stays at the center of the action while the surrounding corridors rotate into position, giving a third-person game some of the directional tension associated with first-person maze crawlers. Players guide Ares through rooms and passages, manage their position around enemies, look for secrets, and work out how switches, doors, and environmental obstacles connect. The PSP controls also support the game’s immediate, real-time approach to movement and combat rather than a turn-based battle system.

The path to freedom spans more than 40 floors. Each region layers navigation puzzles with direct fights and traps such as deceptive floors and walls, spikes, poison, rolling boulders, teleporters, and other threats. Progress depends on careful observation as much as swordplay: a promising corridor may conceal a dead end, a switch may change another part of a floor, and a mistake can put Ares in a hazardous position. Treasures and useful equipment give the journey a practical sense of advancement, while the scale of the connected dungeon turns mapping and experimentation into central parts of the experience.

The Dark Revenant expands the original scenario with Dela Mode, which becomes available after completing Ares’s adventure. This extra challenge lets players control Dela, whose magic-focused abilities create a different approach to the same hostile world. Her route adds tougher enemies, harsher traps, and story material from her perspective. The game also includes optional diversions, including slot machines and the card game Blade, where winnings can be exchanged for items that may assist the main expedition.

For PSP players, Brandish: The Dark Revenant stands as a modernized version of a formative Falcom dungeon crawler. Its Japanese release arrived from Nihon Falcom, while the Western digital edition was published by XSEED and was compatible with PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV as well as PSP. The remake’s rotating-world design, compact real-time encounters, and demanding multi-floor labyrinth distinguish it from more conventional handheld role-playing games, while its Ares and Dela scenarios connect it directly to the wider Brandish series.