Brown Dust 2 Review | A Story For The Ages

Brown Dust 2, the latest edition in the Brave Nine series, has been released. Is the game worth trying? Is the gacha good? Does it evoke the sense of nostalgia the developers teased? Read on to learn all this and more in our review of Brown Dust 2.

Brown Dust 2 Review and Score Explanation

Brown Dust 2 Review Video

Brown Dust 2 Score

Brown Dust 2 Review: A Story For The Ages

Brown Dust was a game I was quite fond of back in the day, even before they changed their name to Brave Nine for the English-speaking audience. I loved the artwork, the story, the themes, and the strategic aspect of its gameplay. Not only that, I loved how generous the game was with its currency. Although there came a time when I eventually stopped (due to getting stomped in PvP; skill issues), I never stopped going back every so often to check out the new story chapters.

Brown Dust 2 proves more than worthy of carrying on the franchise. Not only that, it felt like the game was deliberately designed to hook people in with various activities to do, such as cooking, exploring dungeons, meeting NPCs, and of course, grinding for levels. It built upon what made Brave Nine unique, particularly its combat system, and streamlined it to be accessible to all skill levels by reducing the size of its field, allowing characters to be repositioned each turn, and giving each character multiple skills. They then crafted some wonderful tunes to go along with its combat and exploration phases, as well as wrote captivating stories.

I've played countless mobile titles in my life, and although some of them impressed me a lot (such as Guardian Tales and Punishing Gray Raven), nothing has ever made such a massive first impression on me as Brown Dust 2 did. And yes, it even beats Arknights' extremely impressive prologue. The developers have talked about how they wanted to create a mobile game that feels nostalgic, yet also fresh enough to blow people's socks off—and they have delivered on exactly that.

Finally, we have a game that's too good to be a mobile-only release: Brown Dust 2.

Brown Dust 2 Full Game Review

Pros of Brown Dust 2

Things Brown Dust 2 Got Right
Familiar Faces in Brand New Stories The Combat Is Artistic and Precise It Feels More Than Just a Mobile Game The Nostalgia Is Actually Tear-Jerking

Familiar Faces in Brand New Stories

Despite having a completely new scenario, Brown Dust 2 still shares the same world, and even timeline as its predecessor, Brave Nine. That's why it's not strange at all for the two games to share characters. Familiar faces such as Lecliss, Beatrice, Jayden, and Maria will be a common encounter as the player continues their journey. This mostly only applies for the character collection aspect and side stories, though. As for the main story, the set is entirely ruled by new characters. However, that does not mean you won't encounter other characters from the previous game, with younger versions of Alec and Celia set to appear deep into the story.

Brown Dust 2 introduces itself as a game within the original Brave Nine series, played by the protagonists Elin and the Mercenary Captain. So, in a way, you're playing a character from Brave Nine who is playing Brown Dust 2. This is readily apparent in its introduction. The game further reinforces this by having every main story arc being cartridges, called Story Packs, similar to those used by the NES. The setting opens the game to host practically unlimited possible plots. This ranges from the standard fantasy setting to the wild and wacky, such as a Japanese school horror plot or an adaptation of a Fallout game. The latter is presented to players via the Character Packs, game cartridges containing stories of that nature. In a way, those Character Packs can be interpreted as fanfics of the original story and cast. Anybody who has had experience reading stories at Fanfiction.net can attest to exactly how wide variety of plots and themes that fanfics can assume.

As of writing, there are currently three character packs for players to obtain. In order of unlocking, they're called "Jaydens;Gate," a shamelessly zany horror adaptation of Steins;Gate, "Firechip," a Fallout adaptation with an out-of-place romcom element that somehow makes it better, and "Beauty Impossible," a lascivious Mission Impossible fanfiction. They are a blast to play and contain some of the game's most challenging content, forcing players to adapt their playstyles due to being forced to use the story characters for those Character Packs without the option to level them up.

However, despite Brown Dust 2 gratuitously tapping into their character pool from the previous game, it doesn't mean that players entirely new to the series must play its prequel to understand it. Brown Dust 2's story is entirely self-contained. Players with varying experiences with the franchise can enjoy their stories all the same.

It's obvious when writers have a lot of fun writing the story, and it shows in this game.

The Combat Is Artistic and Precise

Brown Dust 2's combat is on a grid-based layout three blocks wide and four blocks long for you and the enemy. Each turn generally starts by selecting a character, choosing their actions to perform, setting their turn order, and then positioning them on the grid. This is repeated four more times to command all five characters. Upon ending your turn, each character will perform their actions following the turn order you decided. Depending on your selected skill, this action may involve attacking the enemy directly in front of them using the specified moves.

The game's strategic aspect revolves mainly around using your characters' positions and manipulating your enemies. To emphasize this, every character has at least one skill that knocks your opponent in a particular direction, whether backward, diagonally, or sideways. This is a necessary skill because each character needs an appropriate amount of SP to use their skills. It is a scarce resource in combat only gained by attacking normally or through an allowance at the start of every battle. This scarcity forces players to use knockback effects to use their skills' area of effect fully.

To further incentivize this, the enemies in Brown Dust are often quite powerful, with even the weakest monsters able to deal damage that scales with the player characters' HP. It's not rare for regular encounters to result in a wipeout when enemies knock your tanks to the backline and deal heavy damage to your squishy mages.

Healing is also very scarce in the game, with the only reliable source being food the player can cook in the overworld using relatively scarce materials. The overall result is a need to end every match as quickly as possible using every card the player has on hand. This often results in battles needing to be repeatedly restarted to take as little damage as possible.

Every match thus becomes a punishing chess match between the player and the opponent, where a single wrong move can result in a quick loss without any possibility of making a comeback.

The previous game, Brave Nine, had a combat system notable for its complexity. Not only was it challenging to learn, but it was also subject to a lot of volatility as a match progressed. It put a lot of emphasis on character placement and turn orders. But the real difficulty lay in two major features the game had when combined with Brave Nine's emphasis on placement and turn orders. The first is that each player can field up to nine characters at once, which made planning for both placement and turn order that much more painful. The second and even more critical factor is that the game did not allow you to change your character placements or turn order after the game had started. This is the reason for the game's volatility. Events such as buffs meant for mages going to the warriors instead when their original target has died, area nukes suddenly being thrown at single targets, etc., aren't uncommon. While even more careful planning can mitigate it to some extent, there is no way to evade the issue altogether.

Character placement and turn order balance offense and defense, so the player must place immense care and planning into every character's position on the grid and the order in which they move. Brown Dust 2 shares this philosophy with its predecessor, Brave Nine. However, the developers have managed to address those issues in the sequel. The changes include only allowing up to five characters to be fielded on a much smaller 3x4 grid (from the original 9 on a 3x6 grid), making a much simpler planning process accessible to players of all skill levels. Not only that, but it also allows players to change character positions and turn orders before they execute their turn. Another beneficial change is that each character can use different skills depending on the number of costumes the player has for them. Moves that change enemy positions are also in the game, allowing for montage-worthy one-turn-kill combos.

Adapting on the fly to the ever-changing combat situation is a massive blessing in every way. This is very important for some content, such as Character Pack fights, where players must make full use of the effects of each character's skills to win against the powerful enemies that could kill them in one hit. While some content, such as PvP, still requires pre-set positions and moves, the quality of life improvements Brown Dust 2 has made is a sigh of relief for casual players wanting to try the franchise out.

It Feels More Than Just a Mobile Game

Brown Dust 2 possesses some of the best visuals I've come across in a mobile game. The character art is awe-inspiring, and the environment and background effects are beautifully crafted. For a game that aimed to emulate old RPGs, they nailed the aesthetic perfectly, combining the nostalgia of vintage RPGs with modern graphics.

Each location is meticulously designed to feel like a natural counterpart of what it's meant to be in the real world. There are forest paths that wind around groups of trees and not through them. Caves suffering from intermittent blasting would sometimes dislodge large rocks from the ceiling and deal damage. The animations, admittedly, aren't as advanced as the fully-animated cut-ins from games such as Epic Seven or Aether Gazer. But it's timed well enough to not get in the way of the game's pacing, as Aether Gazer's does, and animated well enough to show the characters' personalities through their actions, unlike Epic Seven's quick cut-ins that focuses on flair.

The game also features some of the best music and sound effects I've heard in a mobile game for quite some time. The music, in particular, is simply mind-blowing. Not only does the soundtrack provide the perfect ambiance to each location, they also made sure to include appropriate background noises and foley sounds.

One particular experience that still remains fresh in my mind is my first time visiting Lugo Forest. The area was brought to life with the sounds of crickets chirping, the crumpling grass underneath the player's feet, and wild animals squealing and running about. All of this is delivered with a relaxing, yet endearing and beautiful musical piece playing in the background. The noises are timed so that it doesn't interfere with the music score being played, but rather enhances the experience instead.

The sound effects in combat are also incredibly well-made. Clashes feel very weighty, as though each blow was made with an honest effort, and yet it avoids being grating to the ears. Explosions are exciting to trigger with the right volume, too, especially when multiple bombs are triggered in succession.

The voice acting for each character is fantastic. No one sounded awkward, and the characters deliver each line full of emotion. They portray each character's personality well and manage not to sound cringy, even when they deliver lines meant to elicit exactly that kind of response.

Overall, the audio design may be this game's crowning achievement. It enhances every experience in the game yet remains distinct enough from everything else such that the tunes are both memorable and game-defining. It feels like an old console RPG brought to the modern day.

The Nostalgia Is Actually Tear-Jerking

Brown Dust 2 was specifically engineered to appeal to a certain feeling: nostalgia. In fact, the game shamelessly flaunts itself as a big nostalgia trip, as it uses NES cartridges as story arcs and refers to the entire Brown Dust 2 story as just a game being played by the protagonists of Brave Nine.

This game will make you feel like a child again. Everything about Brown Dust 2 makes it feel like you're playing an RPG from the start of the century, from how the sprites are made, to the dungeon-crawling experience, and even the quest structures. And while the combat system is a more modern take, the anachronism is forgotten as soon as you input your commands and your characters start moving. The character animations made me feel like I was watching an old Nintendo character fight monsters with their flashy, yet cute, motions.

Apparently, the developers have even researched the proportions needed for a character's sprites to give it the appearance of RPGs of olde. They also made sure to make the game feel like an actual console RPG by making every effort to make players control the game manually. It discourages the use of the game's Auto feature through multiple quirks and, let's say, intentional flaws in the AI. There are semi-linear dungeons to explore, treasure chests to uncover, traps to avoid, and NPCs to talk to and do errands for. There's also crafting involved, a lot of cooking, puzzles to solve, and mysteries to uncover. Every aspect of this game (well, aside from the gacha) is meant to take players back to a time when immersive worlds were made by the tales of the people around them and the actions players can perform.

Cons of Brown Dust 2

Things That Brown Dust 2 Can Improve
The AI Forgot The Intelligence Part The Gacha Experience is Disappointing

The AI Forgot The Intelligence Part

Tough luck to those players who prefer having an AI pilot your games. The AI used in Brown Dust 2 is, to put succinctly, dumb as bricks. While players can make great use of their characters' skills, formulate turn orders that take advantage of the combat situation, and reposition their characters to balance their offense and defense, the AI can't do any of that. Instead, the AI will simply have your characters use their skills based on what turn order the game starts you out with until you run out of SP, regardless of the situation. It won't reposition your characters on the grid or change your turn order to chain skills correctly. It won't even care about what's happening on the screen. Are your characters all at full health? That's too bad. The AI will still use healing skills. There's only one enemy left on the screen? It doesn't matter; the AI will still use an area of effect skill anyway.

You can imagine the game's AI as an infant with a toy hammer while the human player is like a licensed engineer with over two decades of field experience. The difference is just that great.

Automatic pathing in dungeons is far from a pleasurable experience, as well. There will be no shortage of instances when the AI will make your character run into exploding enemies and unnecessarily lose HP. It won't even avoid hazards that are otherwise easy to step around, such as a telegraphed rock falling from the ceiling or a buzzsaw slowly making its way from one point to another on a set path.

The unintelligent artificial "intelligence" is likely an intentional design flaw, because there's no other way to explain such a terrible AI design. The game even tells you to just play the game manually at one point, which is quite funny in hindsight.

The Gacha Experience is Disappointing

Characters in Brown Dust 2 join the party by obtaining their costumes. This can be done using multiple methods, such as having the character join you through the story mode, recruiting them when they visit the inn using consumable contracts, or pulling their costumes through the gacha.

Brown Dust 2 has three different types of banners for their gacha system, each with different rates to pull 5-star items. These banners are the Costume Pickup banner, where you can obtain the costumes we just talked about, the Exclusive Gear Pickup banner, where you can get the event character's unique equipment, and the Integrated Draw banner, which contains every costume and gear in the game. The 5-star rates for these banners are:

• 3% for the Costume Pickup banner,
• 5% for the Exclusive Gear Pickup banner, and
• 5% for the Integrated Draw banner.

I, for one, don't see any reason to pull on the Integrated Draw Banner. It's such a risky method of trying to pull for certain characters. Not only might players accidentally pull Exclusive Gears instead (which are useless without having the character they're exclusive to), they might also accidentally pull one of the currently 36 different costumes available.

Even if you were looking to get a specific costume, there are way too many costumes to try to pull from. The 5% 5-star rate is split up between a 1.5% chance to pull costumes and 3.5% for Exclusive Gears. So, let’s say you want Sylvia’s Desert Flower costume. Then you'd need to get past both a 1.5% RNG check and then also get it from a pool of 36 costumes, resulting in a measly 0.0417% chance of getting it. Since every banner uses the same form of currencies, the Draw Tickets and Dia(monds), you're much better off using them elsewhere. At least with the Costume Pickup banners, you have a relatively high 1.5% chance to get the rate-up costume.

The Costume Pickup banner with the 3% 5-star pull rate is likely the most important and the most relevant one for most players, as this is the one that can give you a new character to play. The Costume Pickup banner rotates every two weeks or so, depending on the duration of the event. It has no soft pity system in place, where your chances of getting a 5-star increase as you pull, nor does it have a hard pity system, where a 5-star is guaranteed after a certain number of pulls. It also doesn't guarantee getting an event 5-star character after pulling a non-event 5-star character, a mechanic seen in games like in Honkai Star Rail or Genshin Impact.

Instead, the game employs a spark system, where each pull gives the player a point. Getting 200 points, the amount needed to claim a copy of the event costume, will cost the player around 40,000 Dia (about 600 USD). That is an absolutely insane amount of money, regardless of how reasonable the rates are. Furthermore, even if you get a 5-star pull, the chances of snagging the event costume is a mere 50%. If you do the math, that comes out to about a 1.5% chance.

"Okay, fine, so there's a 1.5% chance to get the event costume from the Costume Pickup banner. Isn't that better than most mobile games? Genshin and Honkai Star Rail's 0.6% 5-star rates are much worse, right?"

However, Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact have both a soft and a hard pity implemented in their gacha, with the former starting at the 75th pull, and the latter triggering on the 90th. Aside from that, teambuilding is also designed to deliberately allow players to skip multiple banners due to the different resources required to invest in a team. That's why it's not as bad when players can't get the character they want on their first 5-star pull since they'll likely have enough currency saved to pull another one (after they skipped a few of the previous banners that weren't relevant to their team).

Brown Dust 2 has none of that. First of all, completing Daily and Weekly missions doesn't give any Dia. The game only provides a SINGLE Draw Ticket after finishing ten weekly missions, which is downright atrocious. Of course, currency used for pulling on banners can be obtained by other means. You can exchange Golden Threads, a form of farmable currency in the game, for Draw Tickets. However, the consistency at which you can farm them pales in comparison to getting a healthy amount of Dia from doing daily and weekly missions.

Then we have the complete lack of pity systems, with the developers deciding to only implement a spark system in the game. While the rates are decent enough with a 3% 5-star drop chance on the Costume Pickup banner, there's always a chance that a hundred pulls won't get you a single 5-star, let alone getting the event costume itself. In my experience of rerolling for a decent start, there was an instance where I made five accounts and didn't pull a single 5-star. That amounts to 150 pulls, total!

On top of that, the game actively encourages its players to not only get multiple copies of a costume, but also to get multiple costumes for the same character. This is because duplicates of a costume will upgrade the character's skill designated to that costume. The benefits vary from dealing greater damage, using less SP (a limited in-battle resource provided every turn) to use the skill, or lowering the cooldown for the skill. The improvements are often very drastic, with some characters being able to have their cooldowns lowered by more than half.

Since skills are attached to costumes, having multiple costumes on a character means they'll have more usable skills, allowing them to adapt well to many different situations. These factors will contribute significantly to high-level content, notably ranked modes.

Minor Nitpick on Temporary Characters

In story-driven games like Brown Dust, you'll encounter other characters that will join you, permanently or temporarily, in your travels. Temporary characters will be available for you to use in battles until they leave your side. While this is a great way to create some exposure for characters that may be difficult to obtain, such as certain 4-stars, the game forces them into your party the moment you obtain them and displace others.

For a game that relies so heavily on turn order and unit placement, having your units thrown around is quite annoying, especially if you suddenly find your frailer characters suddenly at the frontlines. While this may not be much of an issue for people who play the game manually, it's a big deal for those who use the Auto-play feature, as this could even lead to a team wipeout.

Brown Dust 2 Overview & Premise

Lathel is an herbalist living in a quaint village with his adoptive father and sister. One day, while looking for his sister's necklace that a crow had stolen, he encounters an evil warlock that almost kills him. He was saved in the nick of time by a passing swordswoman, who was able to chase the warlock away. To express his gratitude, he decides to assist the swordswoman and hunt down the warlock that was causing all sorts of problems for the village. But what he thought was merely coincidence was actually something much more, involving not only him but also his previous family.

Brown Dust 2 is a story of personal vendettas. It starkly contrasts Brave Nine's more far-reaching, grander story of conspiracies, country-wide crises, etc. Though that may seem like a downgrade on paper, it makes the characters more relatable. The main characters are driven by emotions far more than logic, or some vague sense of justice. It's a more engaging story on a more personal level.

You'll also get side stories of the main characters getting transported to another world, such as Justia suddenly experiencing the life of a Japanese schoolgirl with a haunted basement underneath their school.

Who Should Play Brown Dust 2?

Brown Dust 2 is Recommended if You Enjoy:

• Brave Nine
• Guardian Tales
• Octopath Traveler

If you're a fan its predecessor, Brave Nine, then getting this game is simply a must. The game brings back many familiar faces like Alec and Celia, and the gameplay is also a fresh iteration on Brave Nine. Players aiming to get a good nostalgia trip for old RPGs will also enjoy the game a lot, as it borrows several visual and gameplay elements from that era.

Due to its nature as a dungeon-crawling adventure type of game, people who enjoyed Octopath Traveler may also enjoy Brown Dust 2.

Is Brown Dust 2 Worth It?

Definitely Try The Game Out

Brown Dust 2 is undoubtedly a beautiful game. The philosophy that drove its writing, gameplay, and audiovisual design created perhaps the prettiest mobile game to release this year, beating even Honkai Star Rail in my opinion. Just from those aspects alone, I would highly recommend everybody open to mobile games to give Brown Dust 2 a try. However, the game does fail the one criteria that a lot of mobile players defer to when making their choice, which is its free-to-play-friendliness. Its economy and dupe strengthening feature is designed to make players spend in order to be relevant to high-level content.

So until that economy and/or power spike from upgrades are addressed, I would recommend playing Brown Dust 2 on a strictly single-player experience-focused mindset.

How Brown Dust 2 Matches Up to Recently-Released Mobile Games

Mobile Games That Came Out Recently	Pros	Cons
Honkai Star Rail	Not being limited to a single file formation provides Brown Dust 2 players with far more strategic options to tinker around with. Having characters with more than one skill and one ultimate also means greater flexibility in executing and planning strategies to sweep flawless victories.	Possessing a far more intelligent AI to use their Auto-Play function with, playing Honkai Star Rail is a much less stress-inducing experience. Combat is also simple enough for most of the content that it's possible to brute force yourselves through the majority of them. Also, the gacha experience is slightly more tolerable, with a decent economy, two pity systems, and regular rewards despite its meager rates.
takt op. Symphony	Brown Dust 2 excels in providing players with a lot of engaging challenges. By comparison, takt op. Symphony's combat and exploration is far too simple to compare. Players who love to knit their eyebrows at even the mundane being presented as puzzles will enjoy picking up Brown Dust 2 instead.	Takt op. Symphony, with character artwork provided by the legendary illustrator LAM and music by Noisycroak and Marasy, is a daunting challenge to defeat on those points. And unfortunately, despite Brown Dust 2 already having some of the prettiest sights and sounds on the mobile game market, it simply cannot beat takt op. Symphony's visuals and audio when it is made to be appreciated mainly for those.
Aether Gazer	Unlike Aether Gazer's story, which struggles to find a decent foothold with its rushed expositions and strangely-timed plot twists, Brown Dust 2 has not only a better-paced narration but also a cast of much more relatable characters. Those who enjoy a decent story to immerse themselves in should choose to play Brown Dust 2 instead.	As an aspiring action mobile game, Aether Gazer can deliver heart-pounding gameplay to its players, something that games of their genre can provide easily, but every turn-based game struggles with. Players who prefer fast-paced combat with excellent feedback and dynamic action will enjoy Aether Gazer.

How Brown Dust 2 Matches Up to Similar Mobile Games

Games Similar to Brown Dust 2	Pros	Cons
Guardian Tales	Although lagging behind Guardian Tales' amazing main story, Brown Dust 2's plot is also a gripping experience enhanced by its sympathetic and relatable characters. Brown Dust 2's audiovisual quality is also a few steps above Guardian Tales, focusing more on a fun visual experience than an immersive one.	Unlike Brown Dust 2, Guardian Tales' combat is real-time, meaning that players must trust their instincts almost as much as their logic when dealing with the many monsters and demons they will encounter. Guardian Tales also has a notoriously intense plot twist and appropriately gritty implications in the latter half of its first story arc, so players who enjoy getting a stroke will definitely love it.
Higan: Eruthyll	Although quite dated in their visual design philosophy, Brown Dust 2's models are meant to emulate old video game artworks instead of appealing to more modern demands. The game does this well, including opting for several gameplay decisions that turn the experience into a nostalgic trip to the past, such as the traditional dungeon exploration and semi-linear map designs.	As BILIBILI's first in-house-developed game, Higan: Erythyll features gorgeous models and voice acting. The gameplay is also engaging, being somewhere between Brown Dust 2's position-based planning and Kings Raid's real-time action sequences. Though the game's AI isn't anything remarkable, players can still enjoy a purely automated experience playing Higan: Eruthyll.
Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent	Brown Dust 2's combat trumps Octopath Traveler's in terms of strategic options. Being able to manipulate the opponent's positions while at the same time minding your own offers way too much tactical allowance for interested players to challenge themselves with. Its visuals are also better developed despite both going for the same traditional RPG look, complete with cutscenes for certain characters and more appealing interfaces.	Due to Octopath Traveler's single-player mindset, the need to peruse its gacha system extensively is basically nonexistent. Players can save up their currencies to pull for whatever character strikes their fancy, instead of Brown Dust 2's inherent need to keep pulling to stay relevant in specific ranked contents such as Mirror Wars (PvP).

Brown Dust 2 Trailer

Brown Dust 2 Product Information

Title	Brown Dust 2
Release Date	June 22, 2023
Developer	GAMFS N
Supported Platforms	Android, iOS
Genre	Adventure, RPG
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	N/A
Official Website	Brown Dust 2 Official Website

Alfonso Majarucon

Writer of things from game, anime and manga reviews to news and webnovels. Hopelessly addicted to story-driven games, especially cross-platform ones. Favorite games include Punishing Gray Raven, Arknights, Limbus Company, Elden Ring, Touhou, Soul Nomad and the Disgaea series (except 3 and 6). Avid..