Brown Dust 2 is a gacha love letter to classic JRPGs

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I'm totally unfamiliar with the original Brown Dust, but Brown Dust 2 has almost immediately and completely won me over as my favorite gacha game I've played since last year's Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent. Like that game, Brown Dust 2 uses absolutely gorgeous hi-res pixel art and storytelling that feels like it comes from the Super Nintendo era of classic Japanese role-playing games.

Brown Dust 2 presents itself as a series of seemingly disconnected stories (though I assume they may pull together eventually). Just how much does it lean into the old-school RPG inspiration? Well, each of those disparate plots are literally shown off as video game cartridges that your character pops into a system to play through.

Once I entered into those games within a game, I did everything I'd expect from the classic JRPG experience: exploring beautiful fields, chatting with townspeople, watching dramatic plots full of fantasy and magic play out, and of course, fighting enemies in strategic, turn-based combat. The world that's being built out in this game is definitely enticing, and I'm eager to learn more about it. And while the overall plot has felt fairly standard, it's at least very well translated, which is not always something I expect from mobile gacha titles.

What really impressed me, though, was the combat. Brown Dust 2's battles play out on a grid, and different abilities can shift enemies around, change the order that attacks play out, and so on. There's even environmental objects, like exploding barrels, that I was able to use for my benefit (or to my detriment if I was less careful). It's a seriously fun system that had me constantly engaged in battles, and one of the few times in this type of game where I didn't even really consider keeping auto-battle switched on.

As for monetization, it's still very early, but so far Brown Dust 2 seems extremely generous with handing out gacha pulls. It also genuinely feels like lower rarity characters aren't completely useless next to higher rarity pulls. As always, it's hard to know how things will shape up and how pay-to-win the game will feel in its endgame, or across months of live service, but if you're playing through to enjoy the old-school RPG vibes, you should be able to have a blast while spending very little (if any) cash.

All in all, Brown Dust 2 is genuinely one of the most impressive and charming gacha games I've played this year, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves JRPGs and isn't turned off by the gacha style as a whole.