Brigand: Panama DLC

Genuinely great addon that almost supersedes the basegame

Bloody fun DLC campaign. As advertised it was about half the length of the main game for me. It's kind of as if you skipped most of the early game, accelerated midgame and then half of it's basically endgame compared to the original campaign. Lots of combat, fun puzzles and just as much cool details, fun choices. With this my Brigand journey is over for now! 9/10

Loved it. It's a lot more Brigand and it's only $5. If you're even thinking about diving back into Brigand I don't what there is to consider here.

Good addition, makes some less useful skills better. More linear, but there's enough side content to not make it feel like that's a bad thing. Very difficult final fight too, pretty cool.

A nice expansion to the base game, expanding the scope of the mechanics whilst turning down the scope of the story somewhat, making it a bit more... personal, maybe? The story still doesn't really make much sense, but at least it doesn't expect you to be the middle-man in a (sovereign) state-wide conflict. This game sends you on a quest to find Ozee and stop him from getting his hands on a super weapon. There is more freedom regarding diverging paths, more varied playstyles, and generally more fun. If you liked the base game, you'll definitely like this. [spoiler]Also, there's a neat OFF reference in here, whether intentional or not. Bonus points for that.[/spoiler]

Brigand: Panama is an inferior product when compared to Oaxaca. If you enjoyed vanilla you might still want to give it a try, but if you decide to skip it you won't miss much. It's a smaller more concise game with straightforward story, a couple of NPCs and fairly few side quests. Unfortunately, I had a frustrating game breaking bug and had to restart the game. The developer claimed to have fixed the issue later in a patch though, so it might not be as broken any more. There aren't many interesting location, and the ones present have worse design than in Oaxaca. There seems to be way more focus on combat than anything else (while Oaxaca focused on combat, there was plenty of other stuff to do). This expansion is rather average overall though, unlike the base game, I wasn't sucked into the setting much and just completed it because why not. If you never played Brigand at all, get just the base game, if you have played Oaxaca already then know Panama is rather mediocre and I'd recommend it only if you crave more and have no other RPGs to play at the moment.

Just in time for my birthday...From what i've already played off site...this expansion is amazing on every level. Anything this man make is an insta-classic. Thank you for this. 666/10.

Literally just the main game but better. Better story, everything is clear and easily understood, you have a lot of options to how you approach your objectives, better use of skill systems, etc. If you liked Oaxaca, or even if you didn't like it but still thought it was kinda cool, you'll like this.

Take everything from Brigand Oaxaca and amplify them to the next level. Brigand Panama is a huge improvement over the base game in every aspect. The narrative is much more engaging and keeps the sprinkle of bizarre that was in Oaxaca. Every character has their own personality and backstory that is just as interesting as the main narrative. Brigand Panama brings in a lot more dialogue between npcs which helps get you attached and care for them. On the downside, you'll be hurt emotionally when they die from an enemy. There are many new things to play around with such as different rockets and grenades, flowers for stat boosts, traps, new enemies, new skills, and areas that flow well with each other. The biggest improvements that the dlc brings are making the stats that sucked in Oaxaca more viable such as stealth and melee. No more instant death from enemies expect for one case with a boss. And, I have to mention again, the character development of other characters is so much better. The world feels a lot more dynamic because of it. The only downside that I can think of is that some areas feel less optimized for performance than others and I encountered a bit more technical issues in Panama than I did in Oaxaca. If you enjoyed Brigand Oaxaca, you'll like Brigand Panama a whole lot more.

Not gonna be many people looking at this who didn't like Brigand Oaxaca, so let me just say this. Brigand Panama is everything good about Brigand Oaxaca, distilled down to its essence. Sure, you do not have a big city Pochutla to loot and collect side quests in, but the game is tightly focused and lightning quick in pacing. It's amazingly easy to play and does not waste your time at all. Losing some, but not all, of the exploration focuses the game more on progressing through the combat arenas with trips to town to cash in quests, buy more supplies, and generally clean up the mess from your last several shoot and loot sessions. It plays so fast and smooth I dropped about 20-30 hours in 3 straight back-to-back clears because I was having so much fun. If you want more Brigand, do not think twice. Panama is faster and focused tighter. The dungeons are way less complicated than they were in Oaxaca, but you can take allies into them now, and there are no longer hellholes filled with blind corners and insta-kill exploding laser spamming jerks requiring perfect die-retry memorization. You can get rifles as soon as just after the first gunfight (grueling, every run it took me over 20 tries. Though simply ignoring it is an option, it is not a particularly strong one.) and it is viable to bypass pistols entirely. Companions start with their skills near top tier, and you have a gun repair companion and medkit skilled companion both by the halfway point. The game's hardest dungeons all have save points RIGHT OUTSIDE and you can literally head back out and save halfway through them (Excluding the finale, which demands you do it in one go.). And even though this game is quite tough and good at killing you, it does not throw a fight at you anywhere near as bad as the temple or the airship fights in the main game. (And the one you could argue it does, there is a save point not 40 feet from it.) The story follows Ozee, the pirate bandit from the main game, the one character you (practically) could not kill under any circumstances, the smart alec who knew everything that you could trust as far as you could throw your airship. He and his colorful crew are trying to take their gunboat up the Panama Canal and you, a different character from the main game, are in pursuit, trying to find out what he's doing and why. Along the way, you'll meet a militia, a pirate faction, some of the exploding cyber ninjas you hated in the main game, and some new foes (or friends?) in the form of voodoo flinging mummy zombies. But the main story is everyone is after whatever Ozee's after for different reasons and is certainly not a retread of the militia vs pirates story of the main game. Fear not. I will say the big reveal is a BIT of a let down, I can't go into spoilers, but the big mcguffin Ozee is after feels a bit like a non-sequitur and the Panama finale is an attempt to one-up the incredibly off-the-wall stupid fun undersea finale of the main game but does not quite land quite as much ridiculous coolness as the main game, but I still found it great fun. I really love Brigand, even and especially the parts I hated. And Panama is almost everything I loved about the main game, trading some of the slow boil exploration for more, better balanced combat scenarios. As before, smart play trumps most builds, and in all of my clears I usually had about 30-40 dead points wasted in skills that did not help me get more content or beat the game, so you really have freedom to experiment with builds here and the speed of play to really enjoy them. (That said, no, sorry, you can give me spears all day I still am not going to believe a strength build is viable in the slightest. Quit trying to ruse me into trying melee for anything other than stunlocking, I ain't falling for it. And if you expect me to spec survival so I can swim underwater for an hour to find a bunch of 1 pixel loot you are OUT OF YOUR MIND.) If you are at all interested in more Brigand after the original game, I give this the strongest possible recommendation.