The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante begins as one of the best choose your own adventure-type games I’ve ever played, striking a perfect balance between MS-DOS game Alter Ego‘s entertaining life events and the skill-building and intrigue of something like Omen Exitio: Plague. I can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed this game heading into its latter half. However, that back half has so many specific, easily-missable skill checks and decisions locked for no understandable reason that you can easily find yourself railroaded. I’ve played The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante for 14 hours, explored two of its three basic paths (from which there are slight deviations for different types of endings), and I’ve yet to achieve an end that didn’t result in everyone dying horribly. And that’s when I managed to avoid death myself; you can be killed by the most innocuous decisions in this game.

I’ve save scummed. I’ve replayed huge chunks of the game while making different decisions. I’ve min-maxed my character to cap their important stats. Even given all of that, I’ve only barely managed to survive to the end of the game on one attempt. The underlying systems here are opaque and so impossible to understand that people are going to have to make and follow spreadsheets to get the non-terrible endings, and when you lose the freedom to make decisions as a character and instead focus on making numbers go up, the fun of the experience evaporates into nothingness.

I’ve save scummed. I’ve replayed huge chunks of the game while making different decisions. I’ve min-maxed my character to cap their important stats. Even given all of that, I’ve only barely managed to survive to the end of the game on one attempt. The underlying systems here are opaque and so impossible to understand that people are going to have to make and follow spreadsheets to get the non-terrible endings, and when you lose the freedom to make decisions as a character and instead focus on making numbers go up, the fun of the experience evaporates into nothingness." }

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante has a truly interesting world of injustice and magic

You play as the second son of the Brante family, born of a lowborn mother and a noble father. The world is in the clutches of a caste system that separates commoners from nobility, teaching the former that their lot is to suffer and the latter that their lot is to rule and be smug about it, basically. This caste system is merely a priest’s interpretation of the intentions of their enigmatic gods, the Twins (comprised of a sympathetic older god and a more rigid law-emphasizing younger one) who once roamed the earth before departing and leaving behind a large, magical tree called the Silver Tree. This interpretation claims that being content and obedient in your lot is the key to everlasting bliss at the top of the tree after suffering a true death, as opposed to the bottom of the tree, where one experiences something more akin to hell. If you can’t tell already, the prevailing religion is a blend of Old Testament Christianity and paganism, and new interpretations of the Twins bear remarkable similarities to the New Testament.

Death is one of the more fascinating parts of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante; everyone is able to die three lesser deaths before their “true” death, meaning that you can be killed in a duel for honor and return to work the next day having defended it, provided that you haven’t died too many times prior. Your friends and foes are likewise advantaged, and this unusual part of the world is often used in intriguing ways. For example, if you become a judge, you can eventually end up litigating the case of a noble who demands justice for his alleged murder at the hands of commoners. Simply excellent.

Since [user-entered name] Brante is born to a noble father, you have options. You can remain a commoner and become a rebellion-planning schemer, fight to ascend to nobility and struggle against those who will forever be above you simply by virtue of being born to a privileged race, or go down the road to becoming a priest/inquisitor. I’ve tried the first two paths, and setting aside the frustrations caused by choices being locked for no obvious reason (which I’m chalking up as a gameplay flaw rather than a story one), both are filled with highs and lows. And no matter your position, you’ll always have to play peacemaker in your family of mixed nobility and commoners to avoid scandals or the complete dissolution of your family. The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante has a lot going on, and trying to stay ahead of the schemers could be fun.

If you don’t know why something isn’t working, then you can’t figure out how to fix it

My first run through The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante was with a character named Penguinis Brante. After witnessing the abhorrent, self-entitled behavior of those in the nobility, I decided to claw and scrape my way to nobility myself in order to change the system from the inside. I paid no attention to the stats and instead made decisions in that mindset, and the first three chapters passed by with only minimal resistance, though I did end up dying once near the beginning after being defiant with a noble. Penguinis successfully became a noble himself and worked in a law office (which seems to be mandatory for the nobility route), but every decision I made against nobility destroyed my career and reputation, and I only kept my career intact after fighting and improbably winning an honor duel. I investigated the wrong person, however, and ended up dying twice more to both him and his thugs. Then I antagonized someone in court and suffered my fourth and final death. How does no one reach you in time in court?

You can rewind time, but only to the beginning of an act, so I restarted the absurdly long fourth chapter. This time, I made it past that court case, but had no option but to drop my other investigation. The fifth and final chapter was in sight. Then the noble whose case I had to drop kidnapped and murdered me right at the very end. True death yet again. This happened a bunch more times until I gave up and created a new character.

By that point, I was angry at how railroaded I was after seven hours of playing, and thus began the life of the honorable Fuckoff Brante. This time, I knew enough about characters to make better decisions, but they blew up horribly in my face anyway. I went down the rebel path, was betrayed, and was left with one chance to acquire some illegal gunpowder that would likely open up many options later in the game.

When the gunpowder decision came, everything was locked and I had no option but to let it go. Without the gunpowder, I couldn’t get out from my precarious position without making deals, and those deals resulted in Fuckoff Brante’s entire family being burned to death in the final chapter. And after having every option locked for about 5 major choices in a row, he ended up executed by a mob. Railroaded again.

One final try, I told myself as I created Savescum Brante. This time around, I went into the save folder and backed up my save before every decision so that I could increase the stats required to be a good noble (because I wanted to fix the world like I initially intended more than exploring the inquisitor/priest path). The first two chapters are where you first begin to carve out your stats while managing your limited “willpower” resource, with the third chapter summing certain categories to give you scores for new categories. After the first couple of events in chapter 3, my “valor” stat—described as my “capabilities as a warrior” and “strength in battles and duels”—was already at the maximum value of 20. Somehow, I did worse.

First, I performed worse in a tournament than I did in my first noble playthrough where I ignored stats entirely, disadvantaging my later relationships. I then proceeded to die in every subsequent combat encounter. The valor stat doesn’t do what it says it does. Fewer options were locked this time around, admittedly, but I was still left with no option but to throw out the case against that noble I wanted to prosecute. Mousing over locked options doesn’t give you any indication of what you’re missing, either, as you can only see the prerequisites of major events in the “destiny” tab. If you don’t know why you’re failing at something, you don’t know how to stop. I restarted the fourth chapter and was a jerk to everyone. My career took off, and while I wasn’t able to keep my family together, I then maxed out the justice stat (which means that I gave rights to the common people). They then revolted in the fifth chapter, at which point all of the options were locked and I died to a firing squad again despite the stats telling me that the common people were 100% on my side. I reloaded from earlier and took the one option I had to flee. Exile was my best Savescum ending.

Everything needs to be rebalanced, and the stats need to be clearer about what they do

I’ve flipped the menu option for “hidden” and “open” consequences many times. There’s no difference; you’re supposed to be able to see what the consequences of your decisions will be ahead of time, but that wasn’t implemented in the version I was playing two days before release. The game was updated today, the day before release, but no obvious indication of your consequences was added. Between-chapter cutscenes were.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante needs several things to live up to its potential. First, mousing over a locked option needs to tell you why it’s locked. Second, fewer options should be locked. The choice not to have dinner with someone shouldn’t be locked behind an earlier decision because that’s nonsensical. Third, you need the ability to zip between years of the game instead of acts. The fourth act is like an hour long. Even if you rush it, trying to find a way through it can take several times that long. Letting players return to the beginning of an act is only helpful if that act isn’t longer than your standard roguelite. As it stands, Act IV is pretty much a permadeath roguelite where you’re always one bad decision away from restarting.

And that leads me to the final thing this game needs: more sensible stat decreases and clarity about what your choices do. When you’re at school, your relationships with several family members go down by one point for no reason. School and this event are both mandatory. There are parts of the noble/judge path that make no sense, too, with some choices destroying your reputation or career despite you acting surreptitiously. Other nobles don’t lose face when making backroom deals, so it’s stupid that you do. Even when you manage to unlock options, there’s no way of knowing what they actually do. During my first playthrough, a mysterious girl named Aylis was brought to me as part of my first case, and she was clearly using magic to enthrall Penguinis Brante. I wanted to probe her for information and use that to join her cause on the down-low, so I chose an unlocked option to interrogate her, which claimed to be a search for the truth. Once she revealed that she’s a witch, she was automatically turned over to be burned at the stake without any further options becoming available. That wasn’t the choice that I thought I was making. I hate it.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante has visuals and music, and I’m totally cool with that

Too often, I fall into the trap of trying to explain my feelings about the visuals and soundtracks of games in unnecessary depth despite them not featuring much of either. The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante does the usual choose your own adventure thing of providing pictures to the right of the text, many of which are reused later in the game, and this art is good. The music is also good. Both get repetitive when you’re constantly slamming your face into a wall, trying to figure out why your stats aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, or why everything is locked at a crucial moment. It’s all very atmospheric and enjoyable, helping to sell the tension, but it’s also not the kind of thing that’ll stick with you or stand out.

Story: 2.5/3 Gameplay: 0.5/3 Visuals: 1/2 Music: 1/2 ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ – 5/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

*A Steam key was provided for this The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante review. It took me 7 hours to reach the end, then another 7 hours to keep reaching the same bad end no matter what I tried.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante review – An ignoble end first appeared on Killa Penguin