The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante Reviews

Incredibly well-written story and amazing world building

If you like this type of game, it's a good one of these. First playthrough took about 7 hours, could easily do 2-3 more.

Only for true masochists. The idea is quite radical: to reduce a RPG to the "choices that matter" only. In the (nice, a bit too barebone) presentation, you simple have to choose what you are doing since you are a toddler - whom to befriend or antagonize, what to learn, to fight, to ignore. I only had to two goals in my virtual life, to survive and keep my family intact. Both went to hell unceremoniously before even the last act, among the empire and basicly everything else, even while trying to act rationally and even strategically. The long term consequences of your decisions are never remotely clear and mostly come back to haunt you (reminded of the Witcher the Third). As in real life. Keep ample amounts of alcohol ready.

This is not a story-driven visual novel, but more like a data-driven one.

A great political / life sim / visual novel. Will have you in tears at the end. Highly recommend.

This game is a masterpiece so minimalistic and yet so impactfull multipal endings sad good neutral some of the descions are gut wrenching some are wholesome some are funny but all of them matter the side characters like sophie or tommas where the highligh of the game the main cast can t keep up tho the best of them was nathan the rest ist just a bit to stale in comperision still a solid 8.6/10

This is one of thr most innovetive and fun games I have played in a while. I simply cannot express how much I like this game.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is a superb visual novel. Its presentation style, world building, and overall use of theme all blend together seamlessly. However, as a game, I feel it does a few things that really irk me. The way the main character's stat points influence your choices as a player was quite frustrating through my first play-through. Being locked out of major decisions because I was a point or two shy of the threshold just sucked. I would have vastly preferred the stats to influence a base chance of success/failure for major narrative choices instead of just gating you off completely. It is what it is though and despite my tone I still really did enjoy my time with this game; so much so that I played through it twice. The setting and story are just that good.

I wish i could choose neutral. As with a huge score of reviews on Steam these days. It's not that i necessarily "don't" recommended the game. It's that i offer up a thought for possible future players to make an informed decision of whether or not this game will be in their taste subjectively with a small slice of objectively formed information regarding the main game mechanic, which many may find fault or issue with. And alike many won't. I'd like to like it. It's a game after my taste... But it shares the same issue as most other games with belief/ alignment systems. If you don't specialize, lock in to a certain way(skill), you in turn get LOCKED out of choices in the majority of the game. No skill will ever be high enough to unlock any choices. And not even a vast surplus of willpower to overule pre-conditions can alleviate that. Which would have been a way to balance it out. (Sitting having 25 willpower, but being skill locked from not having specialized,) Or maybe have a creative/god mode to experience the game to it's fullest. A bunch of skill checks, or willpower requirements seems silly. While other requires none, which also seem silly. Clearly written and reiterated. If you play balanced/ generalistic... Then there will be barely any choices and the story will be mostly railroaded into vanilla forks with barely any flavour outside the then shoehorned main branch. This in turn kinda defeats the entire purpose of the game mechanic of shaping the story. I'd recommend the Roadwarden over this one.

Let me start by stating that this is a very short game (each playthrough is around 3-4hrs long, depending on how fast you can read), so I've played through the story a good few times despite my short playtime. This game is pretty entertaining and has a lot of potential. Up to the first half of the 4th chapter the story is fun and pretty cohesive, and so is the gameplay. However, as the plot progresses and nears it's climax, it becomes VERY difficult to roleplay, as the requirements for significant choices become more and more contradictory and weirdly specific, especially during the final act: to even be allowed to do anything at all and not be just a bystander you have to pretty much cheat and follow a guide or roleplay as a severe schizophrenic with bipolar disorder. I'm not kidding - on my last playthrough, I made Brante into a wealthy and respected judge with a united family, yet at the climax I found myself locked out of literally EVERY choice that was not the default-always-available one because I failed to met a single plot requirement or relationship status for each. If you want to roleplay in this game, instead of min-maxing like a freak and following guides, you can, but go in knowing that you'll meet an early death or become powerless at the end, because you didn't play as the dev's intended. Now, for some praise: I really like how the game doesn't just throw lore at the player - to get what's really going on you will have to replay several times, as it's not afraid to lock lore and story bits behind life paths or decisions. You'll probably not even fully grasp or be aware of some things and events on your first playthrough, and that's intentional. It keeps things fresh and interesting. Getting to experience the same events from different perspectives, with varying amounts of information is also very fun. I remember, on my second playthrough, unraveling a plot line that, during my first time playing, was only mentioned in passing due to the life path I chose and going 'oooh, so that's what led to that!'. Very cool. It also makes you wonder how you could come to influence the events you see only in passing in future playthroughs. Anyways, I think it's a fun game, definitely worth a play if you like text-based games with a lot of replayability, but maybe wait for a sale, as the final chapters are pretty disappointing.