The devs asked us to leave a comment on the game page so I'm using this as a chance to put my ruminations on this clever little indie rpg to paper for the first time...
Braver has no branching paths, won't do a number on your feels, has a cast of supporting characters that are completely forgettable, doesn't try anything new or daring, has no minigames or unique moments that change up the gameplay loop, no comedy, and no real worldbuilding. Its simple turn-based combat beginning to end.
So why did I play this game for over a hundred hours? Cause it sounds like it should just be another game in a literal ocean of rpgs that don't do anything different...
I don't know if anyone reading this is old enough to remember the reference or these feelings but after you get the ship in Final Fantasy 1 and wind up in a new town, just outside the gates there's a Green Ogre enemy that's really hard but gives a ton of gold and xp. The town is full of expensive items that if you wanted to afford them, you'd have to kill a hundred of these hard Green Ogres and grind for hours.
So what did we do? Well I can't speak for you but I spent an afternoon in my jammies doing an ogre genocide. And why?
Because I believed that the game would be hard, that I would be finding a solution if I put in this time and effort. That I was planning for the future and felt like a small fish in a big pond but knew that I wanted to be big.
That's the feeling you get from Braver beginning to end. From the time you walk in the first cave and there are optional bosses harder than the main story boss just off the beaten path, and beating them gives small little upgrades like +1 AGI and the game doesn't tell you what AGI even does.
But you have hopes that this RPG, unlike so many others out there, will actually require you to think and plan and put in effort and care and not just waltz through bosses.
And in that category it gets an A++ and gold stars.
IMHO a good game doesn't need to innovate, it just needs to refine what it does best. For example 'To The Moon' has almost no gameplay but absolutely nails music and emotion and that's what a lot of people want out of a game. Braver has almost exclusively gameplay and nostalgia for the era before there were guides and world maps, it doesn't care for normal tropes and does things like set the max level to be 75 instead of 99 and prevents you from levelling up any more...but then makes you fight level 99 enemies for the entire second half of the game. It doesn't waste time showing off flashy systems, but it nails that childlike urge we all have of wanting to be the big fish. It's about being the underdog and going on a hero's journey.
Braver is a testament to the power of classic gameplay and the joy of overcoming challenges the old-fashioned way. It's not about reinventing the wheel; it's about reminding us why we fell in love with gaming in the first place.