Brigandine Abyss Story Mode: All Six Campaigns

The setup

Two hundred years before the game opens, the sorceress Lunadea forged the magical armour called the Brigandine and used it to break the ambitions of the Abyssloa Empire. In the present day, the Kingdom of Solginat has grown into the continent’s greatest power and begun to make unsettling moves; the rulers of the other nations gather around the queen of Mysteine — the country that inherited Lunadea’s will — to condemn it.

Then the Abyssloa Empire is reborn. Six nations rise against it, each for its own reasons, and each of those six is a Story Mode campaign.

The six campaigns

Full profiles for all eighteen are on the character list. The producer has named the protagonist of five campaigns outright in the developer letters — Largo, Garnet, Zeilzarde, Alysbelle and Saya; Pandemyuon’s lead has not been stated in the same words, so this table leaves it blank rather than assuming it is TYPE-F.

What each route is about

Gran Dragnica opens with a dragon stolen by the reborn empire and Largo setting out to get it back. It is the dragon-taming realm, organised into “dragonshells” — Largo heads the Moonlight Claw Shell and represents the Greatlands in diplomacy, while Lori heads the once-greater Stardust Scale Shell and has watched her own standing slip. It is one of the two prologues in the free demo.

Scarlet Will is a mercenary company of the southwestern steppes rather than a kingdom, newly led by Garnet, with the second princess of Solginat among its ranks. The other demo prologue, and the route that puts the Solginat question in front of you first.

Mysteine carries Lunadea’s legacy directly: High Queen Mysfaene is her descendant, Zeilzarde is the “Shield of Mysteine” who commands the queen’s knights, and the campaign opens with an Abyssloan coup they are escaping. Zeilzarde is also the outlier among the six leads — a 46-year-old commander who fights on after being cursed blocking a magical attack aimed at his queen, and the producer has said he pushed for a middle-aged protagonist deliberately.

Purifanoe is the fae village route, following Alysbelle — a ten-year-old girl raised among faeries who believes she is one of them — as the war reaches her home and secrets about her surface. The producer has said this may end up being the most popular of the six.

Samura Village follows Saya, a swordswoman who takes over the Mihashira Samura clan unexpectedly after her father’s death, supported by the healer Kiichi and the clan’s top spy Momone. The producer describes the Samura region as sitting east on the continent and loosely based on Japan, and Saya’s route as a multi-layered story where family secrets drive the plot.

Pandemyuon is the darkest route: TYPE-F and TYPE-S are siblings turned into living weapons by the heretical researcher Dr. Pouje, who is himself one of the three named leaders you field.

Order, difficulty and saves

Campaigns are not gated behind one another. The producer has confirmed you can choose freely between stories and missions, and the game provides 20 save slots so several routes can be in progress at once. Difficulty — Easy, Normal or Hard — is chosen when a campaign begins.

For a first run, the starter order page argues for one of the two demo prologues, on the grounds that those are the campaigns the developers themselves used to teach the systems.

The enemy

Abyssloa is not selectable, but its four named figures appear across the routes: Chaossolus the Abyss Emperor, Heinbart the Blade General, Tathis the Thaumaturge — and Lunadea, class “Hollow Moon”. The saviour whose armour ended the first empire now stands with the second one. Which route explains that, and how, is the thread the six campaigns share.

Related

• All 24 nations — including the 18 that are Mission Mode only
• Mission Mode — the other half of the game
• Achievement list — the six story completions in context