At the outset of PSP Brandish, Ares is dropped inside a dungeon which is populated with treasure chests, roaming creatures, gateways, and plaques that dot the walls. Before the proper game begins however, a short tutorial commences which gives players pointers on moving around, jumping, and attacking. The mandatory tutorial is a good way to start since the controls are unconventional. When moving around the dungeon, Ares always faces forward and sidles left and right like a crab when the d-pad is pushed in either direction. To change Ares' orientation, players will have to press the "L-Trigger" or the "R-Trigger" to rotate 90° counterclockwise or clockwise respectively. Pushing the "X" button makes Ares jump which is useful for leaping over pressure-sensitive plates that trigger doors or to avoid traps. Once the novelty of the controls has worn off, Brandish is basically a dungeon crawling game that offers basic RPG elements where the hero explores, finds treasure, and kills a bunch of monsters. An auto-map feature shows off the local area on an overhead map where Ares' exploration fills it out with every nook and cranny that he wanders into.

Bonus Schwag
Some early preorders will ship with a bonus Brandish Original Soundtrack as shown below. The OST packaging contains 2 CDs which in turn contain a total of 28 tracks of music composed by Falcom Sound Team jdk and arranged by Yukihiro Jindo.

Jan Code: 4956027124839

View the back cover and screenshots on the main NCSX website.

Region-Free
Japanese PSP games may be played on North American and European PSP handhelds. There is no region-coding on PSP game UMDs.

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