Brave: The Search For Spirit Dancer is one the PlayStation 2’s many underrated games that unfortunately not many people picked up. It’s nowhere near the brilliance of Jak and Daxter or Ratchet & Clank, but it’s still a great platformer/action adventurer that I personally really got into.

The Graphics

I was impressed by the visuals, especially the way your surroundings look. Every few levels, the game takes you to another climate. The forests are nicely colourful, the winterlands look dreadfully cold, and the wastelands look awfully bare. So the atmosphere is set really well. I’m not very impressed with the way the characters are animated, though. But that may just be me. A friend of mine came over just as I was playing this game, and saw one of the characters on the screens, talking with their large heads, and saying that this looked really nice for a PlayStation 2 game. So it may just be my opinion that the people don’t look too good. But really, there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, I don’t think I ever noticed a visual bug! Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer is a very clean game in terms of glitches. No pop-in, no clipping, everything in your environment works. Yay!

The Sound

As far as the music goes, there’s not much special to be heard. While the little flute score at the main menu sounds pretty nice, this is really the only piece of music in the game worth mentioning. There aren’t a lot of memorable tunes in the game. The sound effects are good, though, in particular the animal cries. There are a lot of different animals in the game, and every animal can be mimicked, by calling out their cries. These cries sound very authentic.

The Addictiveness

I gotta say, for such a short game, I was quite hooked on Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer. It’s got a quite simple, but fluid combat system, and hunting down the animal footprints to find those secret totems was a joy. I wouldn’t say I was a mad fanboy who couldn’t stop talking about the game, because for that, the game was just too short. But there was a lot in this for me to like.

The Story

You’re Brave, a little injun boy who’s tribe has been attacked by Vendigo, a powerful demon spirit. You alone have escaped the attack, and set out to find Spirit Dancer, the most powerful shaman to have ever lived, to save the village. Sounds like a pretty basic package, but it could have been so much deeper. A lot of things that could have happened, didn’t happen. I won’t tell what, that’d be spoilers, but the story is unnecessarily shallow, even for a children’s game. It was also over a little too quickly. I really like Brave, though. He’s courageous, strong-willed, a little arrogant (as are most kids) Overall, he was just very likable for me.

The Depth

Aside from the somewhat short and shallow storyline, there’s not a lot you can do. You can hunt down animal footprints by going into first-person mode, and following the footprints you pick up. Completing the trail will reward you with a secret totem, which unlocks nifty artwork you can view. And there are 48 of them, so that might you busy for a good few hours. There’s also a decent variety in gameplay to be found in the story. There is of course the standard fighting of course, then you have certain sections where you control a canoe on dangerous waters, then you’ve got the hunting that involves following animals’ footprints, to taking control of that animal. So, the depth isn’t all that bad. If only the story was a little more fleshed out, this would’ve been quite a big game.

The Difficulty

It just very easy. Like I mentioned in the Addictiveness paragraph, the combat is very simple. The square button makes Brave swing his tomahawk to hit baddies. When you’ve mastered that, just button mash until everything around you has fallen. There’s also a help system which you can turn on an off, or somewhere in the middle. When it is fully on, it holds your hand through the entire game. No matter where you are in the game, a simple press on the SELECT button and your ‘Spirit Guide’ will tell you the solution to the problem you might be facing. Luckily, you can turn this off, but that doesn’t exactly make the game harder. There are some points in the game that proved small obstacles, but usually, they weren’t difficult to beat. This was just an easy game overall.

Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer is a bargain hunter’s dream. It’s not a great game, but it’s good overall. Consider it a snack or a tasty treat. It sure is no Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper or Jak and Daxter, but it’s still a very nice time-killer, and overall a joy to play through.

Pros:

-       Devoid of bugs and glitches

-       Brave is a likable character

Cons:

-       Short story that lacks memorable moments

-       It’s a little too easy for most people