Brave Nine, previously titled Brown Dust, is a Korean Free-to-Play mobile RPG, published by Neowiz Games for both iOS and Android. It officially launched globally on March 7th, 2019.
Set in a world of swords and magic, Fabian, known knight and noble loyal to Emperor Altair II of the Karian Empire, shocked the world as he turned traitor alongside six followers in his rebellion who later become known as the Six Devils. Against a grueling warfront and countless enemy soldiers, Fabian reaches the Emperor and kills him, later slain by the Emperor's son and Fabian's student, Crown Prince Adel. The story of the murder is declared as "The Day of the Eclipse", its turmoil giving rise to new nations declaring independency and subsequent conflicts, in turn granting opportunities to those willing to fight: Mercenaries.
Years later as the mercenary business has continued to rise, you play as the son of Fabian, masquerading as a leader of a growing mercenary band in order to reveal the hidden reasons of what truly caused him to turn traitor.
Battles take the form of automated Turn-Based Tactics, where you place your mercenaries on a grid who take turns either attacking, charging their spells, or buffing allies depending on what class they have and what initiative number you give them.
The game also has spinoffs in the form of:
- Brown Dust 2, where strategic battles have been minimized to take place on smaller 3-by-4 grids and players can explore instanced maps with your party as sprites. Its story takes place 11 years before the events of Brave Nine, following a new cast of main characters.
- BraveNine Story, a Lighter and Softer version based on Brave Nine that focuses on its story. However it was shut down on February 29, 2024.
You can go to the English website here
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Brave Nine provides examples of:
- Action Bomb: Many of the undead mercenaries are used as suicidal attackers with a larger attack radius.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Some of the larger rewards on Mystic Island are exponentially higher than collecting shards.
- Anime Theme Song: Official JP trailers feature "VOID", though the Global version has "Call of Destiny".
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English translation from its Korean origins is far from its best, to put it lightly. You won't find much problems at least for the main story content, but some side content like character backstories and the historical archive are in greater need of proofreading.
- Com Mons: The normal-colored scrolls will get you 1★ or 2★ Mercenaries and are very easy to collect. 3★ ones are numerous through gold scrolls (so long as you've got a lot of them), and even 4★ rolls can appear more often then one might expect.
- Competitive Balance: The four classes (sans Legend and Mythic Mercenaries) have defined roles to act as a party you must plan for.
- Warriors are the general damage dealers, each of whom can vary in special effects and attack ranges to suit whatever they're taking on.
- Defenders keep your enemies from getting to your more fragile Mercenaries, boasting high health and defense to do so.
- Magicians generally have the biggest firepower of all classes and specialize in taking out clusters of enemies, or have debuffs to soften the enemy. They have to spend a turn charging up their spell, but it's well worth it once they unleash it on the next turn.
- Supporters only buff Mercenaries they give up their turn to and are incapable of dealing any form of damage or debuff, so they’ll surrender and lose the battle if they’re the only survivors left. However, they can be potent depending on what team you are setting up.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Book 1's story has had a couple of changes; in Chapter 6, the Captain was hired by Wilhelmina to curb Pirate activity since they are disrupting Sbern's economy while the revised version has him assisting Alec instead in exchange for a boat back to Rotendam. At one point was the Captain attracting a girl in every region to accentuate his Clueless Chick-Magnet tendencies, which later got toned down in a later update. Crown Prince Adel begins playing an important role in the overall story, with the Captain, Elin, and Carlson once being members of his company until they went independent. Another is the revision to the Captain's backstory, adding in Elin's twin brother who pretended to be Fabian's son and let himself be executed to fake the real one's death.
- Fanservice: Many of the male and female mercenaries are in skintight suits, or low-cut tops to show off skin.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The world and your mercenary army can contain: monsters, devils, demons, undead bombers, elves, angels, beast people, and an old geezer.
- Fictional Currency: While you do use gold and diamonds for currency, there's also Mystic Dust for the Mystic Island trades.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite being recruitable, many characters will interact with you in the story like you've just met.
- Guest Fighter:
- Brave Nine so far has Mercenaries available from DJMAX, The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, and DARLING in the FRANXX.
- As an inversion, Legendary Mercenaries (the Six Devils, Dominus Octo, and Personaz) feature as units in another mobile game, Triple Fantasy.
- Item Farming: There are locations to grind crystals for ranking up and awakening mercenaries that rotate on a weekly basis.
- Mana:
- A brief passage in Naressa's World History Episode 11 says that magic uses mana stored in the human body or the atmosphere. Mana stones mined from the earth are an easy way of getting around the limitations of storage and required willpower, and there exists the extreme method of sacrificing life for it.
- On the flip side is "Terra", which is dark mana that corrupts anyone that comes into contact with them and is used by demons of the Night World, where it's also full of the stuff. In the main story, it's safe to assume that anyone who's dabbling with it is bad news at best, or malicious at worst.
- Olympus Mons:
- Legendary Mercenaries are the top-of-the-line units of their class, complete with effects unique to them that are Purposely Overpowered. However, they cannot be acquired from the regular recruitment pools and instead have a dedicated banner that requires the unique Ancient Coins to buy with.
- Mythic Mercenaries are a step up from the Legends, themselves requiring four types of endgame resources. But as with the Legends, you'll see why they're in a class of their own upon deployment.
- Play Every Day: Login bonuses ranging from EXP, rank-up materials, free 4-star mercenaries, and Diamonds.
- Private Military Contractors: You are a leader of a mercenary brigade amongst the many now becoming prolific due to the Day of the Eclipse causing divides between nations, leading to plenty of conflict mercenaries take advantage of on top of the monster threats. Accordingly, the acquirable units of this game are called Mercenaries.
- Saintly Church: The Arclight Order, worshippers of the Creator, Eilexion, has been the state religion of the Karian Empire for centuries, although some of their members border on being or are Knight Templar. They are divided into two groups: the priests spreading their faith, and combatant Paladins and Interrogators.
- Schizo Tech: You can have your team consist of knights armed with swords and lances, a British soldier holding a Revolution-era rifle, robots that explode, and futuristic mechs.
- Stripperiffic: Loads of women (and some men) wear clothes of questionable coverage.
- Women from Allan like Barbara and Elija typically stand out by being Nubile Savages. A couple of men there get on it too.
- Stadione wears a shirt with several vertical slits that go from near the top to the bottom, showing off her skin and part of her breasts. It's also evident that she isn't wearing a bra.
- Alec: in his normal version, his shirt is unbuttoned and so shows off the muscles of a brick wall; his beachwear skin bares all his muscles-over-muscles; and his genderbent version doesn't button her shirt too and so leaves it bound by a belt that somehow keeps the shirt draped over the important parts, not to mention shorts that seem more like bloomers.
- Turn-Based Tactics: An intrinsic part of gameplay is positioning and deciding in what order your mercenaries act.
- Firstly, battles are decided through a variation of Simultaneous Turn Resolution in which your units' actions are followed by the enemy's. Before starting, you have a "Command Phase" where you places mercenaries on your side of the grid and assign a number to each of them, where the mercenary numbered '1' gets to act first once you begin the "Execution Phase". This will be followed by the enemy side with the same number acting, then your mercenary with the number '2' goes next, then the enemy's second-to-act as well, going through the numbers in order; the numbered units are displayed on a Visual Initiative Queue at the bottom of the screen while the battle plays out. After the last numbered unit acts, the battle will continue into the next round, recycling all unit actions (Skills that have been activated will not repeat; Magicians who have used a turn to charge their attack unleash it on their next turn) until all damage-dealing units on one side are annihilated (since Supporters cannot attack, they will surrender if they are only ones left).
- The tactical part of this is taking into account what each of your mercenaries do—say that Arines, a Supporter, has to buff an attacker; if the attacker has an earlier initiative (like '2') and Arines's is later ('3' or above), the attacker will act early without the Supporter's buff, so you have to bump Arines earlier up the queue. The complexity only gets bigger the more you have to shuffle around your mercenaries or switch them out, and weighing them against the enemy's own skills and status.
- World of Buxom: It's a lot easier to count non-busty exceptions like Rigenette and Refithea than to count every female character who has a prominent bust.
