0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Brave Prove

         

Brave Prove is an action role playing game viewed from a top down perspective, the game has an anime visual style to it. The game was developed and published by Data West, with Brave Prove being the studio’s last video game developed. The company moved away from video game development, and now developes car navigation software. The game was released on the 19^th of April 1998, with the game releasing exclusively in Japan for the Playstation.

Notable People who worked on the game, Hiroshi Yoshida who worked as a Monster Programmer on Brave Prove did work on the programming side of development on a few more occasions but largely moved into the Design side of Development.

He was a Free Roaming and Level Designer for Xenosaga Episode II which was released in 2004, he was a Quest and Event Planner for the 2006 released Baten Kaitos Origins and Game Designer for 2010’s Trinity Souls of Zill O'll.

Most recently however he is best known for his work on the Souls series and Bloodborne. With Yoshida working as a Gameplay designer on Dark Souls II and Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin. He was a Game Designer for the 2015 released Bloodborne, before moving up to be the Lead Game Designer on 2016’s Dark Souls III.

Kenji Kojima who worked as Sound Director on Brave Prove, after the closure of Data West he worked as a Sound Director for the 2005 released Spikeout Battle Street, and was a part of the Sound Staff for the 2008 released Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit.

In 2008 Kojima worked as a Sound and Music Scripter for Sonic Unleashed before moving to Capcom where he has worked ever since, with Kojima working as a part of the MT FRAMEWORK Development Team and is credited on games such as Resident Evil Revelations, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, Resident Evil Revelations 2, Dragons Dogma, Ultra Street Fighter II The Final Challengers and a few others. Most recently Kojima is credited as working as a Sound Programmer on Resident Evil 7 Biohazard.

Brave Prove is a top down action role playing in game, similar to The Legend of Zelda but with more emphasis on RPG elements. Arys the main protagonist gain experience from defeating enemies, and will level up once he has earned enough experience, higher levels will result in Arys unlocking additional abilities.

The game world also has man useful items that Arys can use, including bombs, arrows and healing herbs as well as equipment upgrades. As Arys progresses through the game world and encounters each of the guardians that protect the light crystals and befriends them he will gain the use of their elemental powers, these can be used to boost Arys’s sword attacks and provide additional special abilities.

Basic movement around the game world is done with the D-Pad, pressing the direction wanted will move you in that direction, double pressing the direction input will make Arys run. The game is action based so to attack enemies in the game world the Circle button is used, magical attacks can also be used with the Triangle button.

Items can be used by pressing the X button, to select an action item the L1 or R2 shoulder buttons are used. As previously mentioned the Circle button is use to attack enemies, the game has however a much more complete combat system than just simply hacking at enemies.

Arys is able to lunge, stab and slash at enemies, these moves can also be combined into combos by imputing the correct button combination. For example to do a lunge stab you press the direction you are facing twice followed by the Circle attack button.

Another example is a Slash x3 with a lunge and stab, to do this you press the Circle button three times followed by your facing direction and circle together, followed by the opposite direction you are facing and the Circle button together twice, there are many more combinations you can perform while in combat.

The game features a status menu, the menu can be accessed by pressing the Square button. This menu will show you current level, hit points, level up, the total amount of ore you have, this is used to increase the strength of your sword, the total amount of gold you have and element.

You can also view the current selected item as well as equip items and use items, there is an elemental section where you can equip and unequip an elemental, these elementals are acquired on your travels to the Light Crystals and their guardians.

Saving and Warping are done at a statue of a lady, these statues can be hit with your Blade using the Circle button, hitting a statue once will heal you, hitting the statue a second time will bring up a menu with the choice of saving or warping.

Selecting the save option allows you to save your progress, warping allows the player to warp to other statues in the game world, this does not allow you to warp to every statue in the game though, also this option is locked out until the player acquires the Wind Elemental.

Shops are available for the player to purchase items and other items, these items cost the player gold, with herbs having a constant price worldwide of 10 gold as do items like bombs, gold arrows and mushrooms, items to increase the players defence such as armor, boots and gauntlets can also be purchased from shops, this items have a +Def rating with the items increasing defence the most being quite costly, with a +30 Def pair of boots costing 2500 gold.

Items have varying effects depending on the item, for example a herb will restore 20 HP, mushrooms and turnips which are also healing items restore 60 and 100 HP respectively, while a Blue Fruit will fully restore the players HP. Additionally there are also Red Fruit, these healing items when consumed will increase your maximum hit point total.

Bombs can be used to destroy walls, floors and many other things, Gold Arrows allow to attack enemies from distance, additionally there are two other kinds of arrows, these are silver arrows and explosive arrows. Elementals that the player can acquired can be levelled up using coloured gems, with one large coloured gem levelling up an elemental, while two small coloured gems will also level up an elemental##

The game also features action items, these include the crossbow, which fires arrows for ranged attacks, the game also features a grappling hook, this the player can use to pull themselves across gapes that they encounter in the world.

Levelling up in the game is done by killing enemies, when an enemy is killed a certain amount of experience points are awarded to the player, when the player has acquired enough experience they will level up. 

As the player levels up enemies will give you less experience, for example if at level 1 and enemy gave you 20 experience for killing them, when at level 2 this enemy will only give you 18 experience, this continues as you increase in level to the point where weak enemies can not be farmed to quickly increase your level.

Weapon strength is increased by the previously mentioned Ore, in your stats it will tell you how much ore is required to level up your weapon, once you have acquired enough ore you will have to go to a blacksmith who will strengthen your sword. The first time you need to use the Blacksmith you will have to find him, he is hidden in a cave somewhere in the game world, once found he will be present in all of the towns in the game

Elementals have two effects in the game the first is allowing the player to use magic, the second is allowing the player to use elemental attacks with their sword, levelling up the elementals will increase the power of the elemental magic.

The player takes on the role of Arys a young swordsman who is a member of the Wild Fangs, a peaceful mountain tribe that is searching for an ancient treasure called the Dark Crystal, which they believe has the power to bring peace to their troubled world.

The tribe has recently learned that the Dark Crystal is hidden deep within a cave near to the village, the leader of the Wild Fangs sends his only daughter Sheena and the tribes top swordsman to retrieve the crystal. Arys a long time friend of Sheena worries for her safety and sets off to help her.

Sheena and the Swordsman find the Dark Crystal, but a strange creature appears, Sheena saves Arys’s life at the cost of her own soul, which is stolen and whisked away by a mysterious figure. After this a fairy who claims to be the Crystals guardian tells Arys that the balance has been destroyed, and unless he finds and seals the Light Crystal to restore the balance his world is doomed.

This being a Japanese only released game there are not critic reviews available for the game, as a result we will be heading over to GameFAQs for their user ratings of the game. We find that Brave Prove is currently sitting at an average user rating of a 3/5 from a total of 5 user ratings, as a result the game is currently the 22^nd lowest rated RPG for the Playstation and overall is the 11373^rd rated game on GameFAQs.

Taking a closer look at the user ratings received for the game, and largely the game was not disgraced, even earning itself a full 5/5 from one user, another single user each rated the game at a solid 3/5 and 3.5/5. A further single user rated the game as being average with their 2.5/5 rating, the final user who rated the game at a lowly 1/5, this rating brought down the game average from a 3.5/5 to its current 3/5.

Next up is the games difficulty level, here we find just two users rating this category, with an even 50-50 split with one user rating the game as just right, while the second user found the game to be on the tough side. Averaging out this comes to a difficulty level of just right/tough. At the time of writing this no users have rated the games lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where unsurprisingly this Japanese and only released game is not listed, the same goes for Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com. So as a last hope we will head over to Amazon.com in the hopes of finding at least one copy of the game.

Sadly we don’t find a single copy of the game at Amazon.com either, I also checked Amazon.co.uk with no luck either. As a back up last hope we head next to ebay.com where we do finally find the game, but only a handful of copies are available and are quite expensive.

The cheapest copy that is currently on the market is priced at $72.98, this copy comes with the disc, case and manual and is in good overall condition. From here prices jump past the $100 mark, this next copy thanks to the shipping fees, priced at $73.67 you can add an additional $30.75 if you are in the US bringing the price up to $104.42, this copy is in good condition and comes complete.

A third complete copy of the game is also on offer, this copy is even more expensive priced at $147.57 with an additional $7.38 shipping fee, bringing the total to a whopping $154.95. This copy comes complete and in very good overall condition.

  

Written by

P J Gibbon