There is a plethora of tactical RPGs on mobile devices and that can sometimes make it difficult to find which one to sink your time into. While all of these games are free, that doesn’t mean you’re going to want to just download a dozen games and fill your phone up with possibly horrible RPG titles. Thankfully, we here at Honey’s Anime have the time and phone space—lots of phone space—to download these games and tell you how they are. Today we’re looking at Brown Dust, which was originally a popular tactic-based RPG that wasn’t available internationally until recently. How is Brown Dust and was it deserving of an international release? If you want to find out, read below our full review as we dig into this intriguing anime themed RPG.

Brown Dust tasks players with hiring various mercenaries to defeat opposing armies they have been contracted to defeat. You control an up-and-coming tactician who has the charisma and skill to lead a band of mercs towards victory. Choose your warriors and place them on a tactical field to best suit their abilities and skills. Watch your placement tactics allow your team to defeat various armies with either supreme ease or suffer terrible defeat. Defeat bosses to recruit them to your team and play—or pay—for chances at other mercenaries just waiting for the right leader!

After a terrible event led to an empire being razed, the world suffered in a multitude of ways. An odd eclipse took over the land allowing beasts to arise and scare the populous. Armies under various leaders began to form a war seemed to be on the verge of breaking out. You are a leader who might be the only means of bringing an end to this terrible cataclysm. Gather the strongest mercenaries across the globe and harness their powers and skills. With your tactical abilities, you will show that no army big or small can stand against your might!

A lot of times we here at Honey’s Anime will see an ad for a mobile game and be semi-intrigued but not curious enough to download it. One of our readers out there—we do read comments—commented on a review and told us they enjoyed a mobile game called Brown Dust. We had seen Brown Dust numerous times as in-game ads for other titles, but only when we heard it might be good did we decide to take a chance and download it. Was Brown Dust worthy of a download? Find out with us in our review of Brown Dust for Android devices!

First off, Brown Dust is a free tactics-based RPG for both Android and iOS. Players must take control of bunch of mercenaries and place them into battle to fight off various enemies. Right off the bat, you’ll notice Brown Dust isn’t trying to be a Final Fantasy Tactics game or even a Fire Emblem Heroes title. Instead, Brown Dust aims to deliver a bite sized tactics title and that both works and also hurts it at the same time. Let’s first talk about the pros and then we’ll move into the cons.

Brown Dust works best when it allows players to basically just watch as their make-shift army unleashes attacks on their enemies in a turn-based affair. After players choose their units and place them down, the game goes on its own with very little control in the player’s hands. Though you’d be wrong to think that means every battle will be a simple one. Brown Dust incorporates some intriguing RPG elements by having mercenaries use team attacks if their compatible with one another and even allows players to create unique skills by choosing the right classes on the field. For example, choosing shield warriors and placing them up front means they will protect the warriors behind them as well as attack enemies with their shield strikes. Having multiple mages on a team allows them to combo their magic together and unleash stronger spells or even bolster each other’s abilities. As you get further into Brown Dust and unlock more units, you’ll quickly see there are an absurd amount of combat settings you can tweak all by having the right units on the field at any given time.

Now you might be asking, how do you unlock new units for your growing army? The answer to that comes in two forms. One way you can unlock new mercenaries is by advancing the story and gathering troops from story events like some boss fights. For better units though you’ll utilize Brown Dust’s gatcha themes. Gathering scrolls via in-game events and/or using real world currency will allow you to summon new units in either singular affairs or mass summons, just like Fate/ Grand Order. The gatcha elements in Brown Dust aren’t too bad thankfully. Often, we got some high 5 star ranked heroes just by using scrolls we obtained via events and that was a nice surprise in comparison to the usually harder gatcha games that favor real world currency. After the first few hours we had several high ranked mercenaries and had a team of strong warriors that kicked butt and gave us units we could rely on in some of the harder battles.

Our last positive of Brown Dust comes in the form of the amazing art. We adore the character models/portraits in Brown Dust as they have a strong amount of detail. Even the small battle sprites—which are the main focus of battle—explode with detail and art. When combat begins, it’s amazing to see your little troops unleash hell on your enemy with spear strikes, magic and a multitude of various weapons. We only wish the battles themselves with a bit more zoomed in for maximum enjoyment. Yet, even with that minor gripe we tip our hats to the amazing illustrators that clearly were inspired by anime and other video games alike.

While Brown Dust is a solid experience overall, there are some elements that we felt hurt it a bit. Gameplay wise, the simple combat means often you’re just watching battles unfold and are left to barely ever hit any buttons to do anything. This doesn’t mean you can’t control combat at all, but basically, you’re just watching your placed units unleash their abilities and hope your set up works in the end. Another con to Brown Dust can be seen in the story. Brown Dust has an okay story, but it wasn’t anything that propelled us forward while playing. We often didn’t care about interactions with other characters and just wanted to dive into the next battle. That’s a bit unfortunate seeing as how some characters are genuinely interesting but written in a way that just feels formulaic.

Brown Dust isn’t a very deep tactical-RPG but it has just enough complexity to be engaging and quite enjoyable in bursts. We loved the sprite art as well as the detail in the various character portraits. The gatcha elements were also well-done offering players a ton of ways to earn new mercenaries without always having to pay for them. Brown Dust in long sessions can be a bit repetitive and the story doesn’t really excite us as much as we’d like, but overall, this is a solid tactics title with enough pros than cons. Plus, for a free tactics RPG, Brown Dust offers those who love mobile games enough of a reason to warrant the download.

Brown Dust might be easily missed by many android or iOS users out there and that is a bit of a shame. While it’s not as deep as other tactics-based titles, Brown Dust offers a simple gameplay design that can be fun and engaging when the battles begin to toughen up. The fact that we didn’t need to spend tons of money to get some high-ranking mercenaries too means the gatcha elements don’t rely on just using a credit card to unlock the higher mercenaries and that is something we really appreciate. We’re looking forward to seeing even more from Brown Dust but are curious what you guys and girls are thinking about it. Have you played Brown Dust yet or plan to? Let us know in the comments below! If you liked this review, be sure to keep stuck to our hive for even more game reviews done by us here at Honey’s Anime!