The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante Review: How Evil Can You Actually Be?
- Niels Gys
- Jul 24
- 7 min read
Quick Verdict
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is a choice-heavy narrative RPG where your greatest enemy is often something you did ten hours ago.
You live through Brante’s entire life inside the oppressive Blessed Arknian Empire, shaping his relationships, beliefs, statistics and eventual career. He can become a noble judge, enter the Inquisition or join the Lotless revolutionary movement.
That last route gets especially ugly.
Brante can conspire against the authorities, join an illegal resistance, betray people, participate in lethal decisions and eventually rise to leadership within the rebellion.
There are no heists, open-world crime systems or sandbox robberies. The dirty work here is political: influence, secrets, ideology, betrayal and occasionally murder.
The game’s best trick is simple: a harmless-looking decision from Brante’s youth can return years later carrying consequences and an invoice.
Before Brante ruins an empire with paperwork and questionable morals, there’s actual money to steal. The GTA Online Weekly Grind has this week’s best payouts, bonuses and criminal opportunities without making you read seventeen menus written by Rockstar’s Department of Administrative Suffering.
What Is The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante?
Developed by Sever and published by 101XP, Sir Brante is an interactive narrative RPG presented through an illustrated journal.
You follow Brante from childhood into adulthood inside a society governed by rigid social classes known as the Lots.
Moment to moment, you read events, choose responses and watch those decisions alter Brante’s statistics, relationships and future opportunities.
There is little conventional action.
No wandering through villages collecting pelts.
No combat system waiting to suddenly appear after six hours.
You read, decide and live with the consequences.
Expect a first complete playthrough to last more than 15 hours, with replay value coming from major branching paths.
In most RPGs, your past is lore.
Here, your past is security clearance.
How The Choices Actually Work
Brante’s attributes, relationships and Willpower determine which decisions become available later.
That is where most of the actual gameplay lives.
You are not simply choosing dialogue.
You are building eligibility.
A ruthless Brante may gain options a compassionate one cannot take. A damaged family relationship can remove later opportunities. A compromise made years earlier may suddenly matter during the political crisis.
This makes choices feel genuinely dangerous.
It also means the game sometimes presents the exact response you want, then locks it because the Brante you created is not capable of making it.
The game does not ask what you would do.
It asks what this particular damaged aristocratic disaster you have been manufacturing for fifteen years would do.
That distinction is excellent.
Can You Be Evil?
Yes.
Sir Brante does not have a giant red EVIL button, but it gives you plenty of room to become cruel, selfish, authoritarian or murderous.
You can support oppressive institutions.
You can betray people.
You can prioritise status or survival over relationships.
Certain routes contain lethal choices.
You can also become an insurgent and help lead a violent revolution.
The most interesting decisions rarely feel evil when they arrive.
They feel practical.
Protect your family.
Preserve your position.
Remove a threat.
Compromise once.
Then again.
Sir Brante understands that evil rarely enters through the front door wearing armour. Usually it arrives carrying paperwork and a perfectly reasonable justification.
For more games built around genuinely ugly decisions rather than decorative morality meters, CRIMENET’s Best Evil Choice Games is the obvious next stop. Sir Brante belongs there because its worst choices often make perfect sense right up until you examine the trail of bodies and compromises behind them.
The Lotless Rebel Path
The Lotless route is the most politically dangerous path in the game.
Brante can join a secret revolutionary movement opposing the Empire, become an insurgent and eventually rise to leadership within the rebel forces.
That brings conspiracy, secret alliances, political violence, betrayal and revolution directly into the story.
The rebels are not portrayed as simple villains. The Empire itself is deeply oppressive, so rebellion can be morally justified while still producing horrific consequences.
That makes the conflict much stronger.
There is no clean heroic uprising where everybody sings afterwards and the economy politely repairs itself.
Every faction wants something.
Every compromise costs somebody.
Politics has therefore been simulated accurately.
What Works
Choices Have Real Consequences
Sir Brante remembers things.
Relationships, statistics and earlier decisions alter later scenes, sometimes dramatically.
A seemingly small decision can close off future options or unlock an entirely different path.
Many narrative games offer three responses and quietly funnel all three back into the same corridor.
Sir Brante occasionally removes the corridor.
The Worldbuilding Affects Gameplay
The Empire’s class system, religion and political hierarchy constantly influence what Brante can become.
The setting is not an encyclopedia glued beside the story.
You live inside its rules.
That gives the world weight because social structures directly restrict opportunities, relationships and careers.
Different Lives Feel Different
The noble, religious and Lotless routes give substantially different perspectives on the same collapsing society.
Replay value comes from discovering what happens when Brante becomes another person entirely.
You are not replaying to find a sword with 4% better fire damage.
You are replaying because you want to see what happens when the child you raised badly becomes politically important.
What Does Not Work
Stat Gating Can Be Frustrating
The same system that creates meaningful consequences can also feel restrictive.
Some decisions require particular attributes or enough Willpower.
Miss the requirement and the choice stays locked.
Sometimes that feels perfectly logical.
Sometimes it feels like your preferred decision has been placed behind bulletproof glass while a clerk calmly explains you filled in childhood incorrectly.
Willpower in particular has drawn criticism from players who feel it can restrict agency too aggressively.
There Is A Lot Of Reading
Sir Brante is extremely text-heavy.
The illustrated presentation helps, but this is fundamentally an interactive novel with RPG systems.
There is no sudden shift into action combat.
No exploration layer appears later.
The reading is the game.
Anyone who needs constant physical interaction will bounce off it hard.
Replays Require Re-reading
Different paths justify multiple runs, but reaching fresh material often means revisiting familiar childhood and early-life scenes.
That can become repetitive.
Replay value and repetition live in the same house.
They rarely speak at dinner.
Community Feedback
Steam reception remains strongly positive years after release.
Praise consistently focuses on the writing, worldbuilding, branching paths and consequences.
The recurring complaints concern stat restrictions, Willpower, the volume of reading and repeated material during later playthroughs.
One criticism is especially interesting: sometimes you know exactly what you want Brante to do, but your previous choices make it impossible.
That frustration is also the game working exactly as designed.
Most RPG protagonists obey whatever personality the player suddenly invents for them.
Brante occasionally looks back and effectively says:
“You raised me like this.”
Fair enough.
Bugs And Performance
The game received several updates after its 2021 release, and early reviews documented some serious bugs.
Those problems do not appear to define the current version.
Steam reception remains very strong, and the game is Steam Deck Verified.
The bigger arguments around Sir Brante today concern design rather than technical stability.
The software has improved.
The consequences remain merciless.
Who Should Play It?
Play Sir Brante if you enjoy:
choice-heavy narrative RPGs, political intrigue, morally uncomfortable decisions, branching stories and games where character statistics genuinely change what you can do.
It is especially good for anyone who likes stories where being “good” does not magically solve everything.
For readers interested in protagonists who can slowly become the problem rather than simply fight one, CRIMENET’s Best Games Where You Play as the Villain goes much further down that rabbit hole. Sir Brante earns a place nearby because villainy here rarely means joining Team Evil. It means discovering how many principles become negotiable when power finally arrives.
Who Should Skip It?
Skip it if you need action, open-world exploration or combat-heavy progression.
Skip it if stat-gated choices annoy you.
Skip it if replaying familiar scenes sounds exhausting.
And definitely skip it if your fantasy RPG requirements begin with:
“Can I rob the merchant?”
You cannot.
The merchant is safe.
Civil society is considerably less fortunate.
Final Verdict
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante works because consequence is not decoration.
It is the entire machine.
Your childhood shapes your adulthood.
Your relationships alter your politics.
Your statistics determine your options.
Your compromises become your personality.
Then the Empire starts collapsing and asks what kind of person you spent fifteen hours creating.
Sometimes that person becomes a judge.
Sometimes a religious authority.
Sometimes an insurgent.
Sometimes something worse.
There are games where morality is a meter.
Sir Brante turns it into a paper trail.
This Week in CRIME is our underworld briefing on good money methods, bad updates, villain games and whatever fresh administrative offence the games industry committed this week. If CRIMENET saves you from wasting money or several hours of your mortal life, Ko-fi keeps the investigation running.
FAQ
Can you be evil in The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante?
Yes. Brante can make cruel, selfish, murderous and authoritarian choices. The game does not have a single conventional "evil route," but several paths allow morally reprehensible decisions.
Can you become a criminal in The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante?
Yes, in a political sense. Brante can join an illegal revolutionary movement and become an insurgent opposing the Empire. This is narrative role-playing rather than a dedicated criminal simulation.
Can you become a rebel in Sir Brante?
Yes. The Lotless path allows Brante to become involved in the revolutionary movement, and he can potentially become leader of the rebel forces in Anizotte.
Is Sir Brante an open-world RPG?
No. It is a text-heavy, choice-driven narrative RPG presented through an illustrated journal.
How long is The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante?
The official Steam page says a first complete playthrough can take upwards of 15 hours. Multiple major paths provide additional replay value.
Do choices actually matter?
Yes. Decisions change statistics, relationships and later available choices, and the game contains substantially different career paths and outcomes.
Is The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante worth playing?
Yes, if you enjoy interactive fiction and consequence-heavy RPGs. Steam user reception remains Very Positive. Players looking for action, conventional crime gameplay or unrestricted sandbox freedom should look elsewhere.
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