Yes, the “X” is part of the name.  I assume that it’s silent, like the X in Hunter X Hunter, Spy X Family or Highschool DXD.  I really do wonder where this style of naming came from, sometimes.  It’s not important for the sake of this post, though.

This is not a game I would normally have thought I’d enjoy, and it’s not one I had ever heard of until the Switch’s eShop dropped it in to the middle of my “recommended” list.  At Y1650 (or about 11 freedom bucks), I figured it was worth a try.

All that out of the way,  Brave X Junction is a very abbreviated JRPG with a really interesting take on combat – it’s Blackjack.  The card game you learned when you were in grade school.  Every fight consists of you trying to get as close as possible to 21 without going over, with your opponents doing the same… usually.  Sometimes they are capped at 19, so you have a considerable advantage, and sometimes they can go as high as 23 without busting which puts you in a much weaker position than you’d think.

Fortunately, you get to cheat.  You can save cards for later and shuffle them in and out of your hand, and do things like steal cards from your opponent’s hand or swap your cards for theirs.  There are all sorts of skills and powers that make the experience considerably more engaging than I expected going into it, and by default all of this is happening with a timer going – let the timer run out and you may find that you were halfway to your perfect hand but now you’re staring at a 13 or something and hoping the other guy busts out.

(You can turn the timer off, but you get fewer rewards from combat if you do.  I liked having the timer on, myself.)

I should actually correct myself  a bit on that last part.  The game has three playable characters that are unlocked over the course of the initial couple of dungeons:

You have the Fighter, who is very much a tanky character that can block attacks and has lots of hit points and generally muscles through things.  She’s who you start with, and if you want a little lower stress experience I think she’s pretty good.

And despite what you might think, she’s very protected, with the power of God and bikini armor on her side.

The Magician is the glass cannon and one of the best examples of that I can remember.  Her play style actually encourages trying to get the opponent to go over their limit and bust out, while having a low scoring hand herself.  Since damage calculated at the end of a turn is partially based on the difference between your two hands, you can either hit something very very hard or you can get crushed – there’s little middle ground.

Also she has one of those character introductions that really brings home the low budget translation on offer.

Finally, the Thief.

Did I mention that the translation was a little dodgy?

Like, to the point of quotability sometimes?

Anyway, she has a lot of skills revolving around chipping away at the enemy’s health while manipulating your hand and theirs and trying not to be physically present when the other guy attacks.  I’m not usually a fan of this play style but when you combine it with the timer it makes for a surprising amount of tension.

Sometimes you don’t dodge in time though.

Finally, she’s the token glasses girl and has an outfit you might conceivably see someone wearing in public.  All around positives for the character.

While there’s not much depth to character customization, you can collect playing cards that increase your hit points or give you new skills.  These come more or less naturally while playing and I had almost all of them before unlocking the final dungeon.  You have a lot more going on with the equipment system.

You get a weapon and an accessory, and both can have multiple skills slotted.  I was fond of this combination of skills that let me get double damage if I won the initial hand of a combat and that let me “win” a tie condition – meaning that if both me and the other guy had a hand of 20, for example, I’d get a hit in.

The combination of the opening-round double damage and the occasional double damage (and flashy animation!) from drawing a blackjack makes for some very, very satisfying big numbers, as an aside.

The point is, it’s not super complicated!  There aren’t a ton of stats to keep track of or a complex skill tree to debate over where points are placed.  It’s just enough to keep the loop of fight-monster-play-blackjack fresh.

Dungeons, likewise just the necessary:

Every floor of a dungeon is a bunch of spaces, each with their own encounter.  There are traps (sometimes you can luck out and not trigger them), treasures, and enemy squares.

Some of the treasure squares are also enemy squares.  If you see two or three treasures in a row, at least one will probably be a Mimic.

Major points for the bit where you open a chest with a potion in it and just immediately use the potion if your inventory is too full to pick up more potions.

More rarely, you’ll run into a merchant who will sell you gear you can’t get in town and offer you the option to buy healing items at exaggerated prices.  You can’t exactly complain that this isn’t made very clear by the merchant’s name, however.

There’s no way to spend just one coin, and I am sad to lose out on the meme potential here.

While there is some post-game content that unlocks after you defeat the Demon King – oh, right, that’s your goal, defeat the Demon King, not a whole lot more to say there, I don’t think I’ll dive into it.  It seems mostly there to make for a few very grindy trophies and I am playing this on the Switch which has no trophy support.  Kind of glad about that.

The game’s credits came with one final surprise…

…and this is how I learned that there is a Kenichi Sonoda who is a game producer in addition to the legendary character designer.

This isn’t the first time I’ve played a game where the combat was… quite this unusual.  Puzzle Quest had you playing Bejeweled against giant rats, and I vaguely remember a PC Engine RPG where all of the fights were mahjong battles.  I didn’t wind up enjoying either of those, though, because the fights were just very long and tedious affairs.  It turns out that, at least for me, having to do very simple mental math with a timer ticking down is just the right sort of thing to tickle my brain.