I've finished playing
No Gold for Brigands and here's my take on the experience: It's a cute, silly, quirky puzzle game surrounding a cat-girl who wants to sail the seven seas, and sets on a ridiculous quest to sneak aboard a pirate ship.
The whole game revolves around puzzles, as the only way to move the plot forward is to complete them (or, in some cases, talk to everyone to get things moving forward between puzzles). The puzzles vary in quality and difficulty, but there's a decent variety.
I originally thought the game was more open-world, as at the first town, you're free to wander around, and you can play a maze mini-game and sell the prizes to buy... more games. There's a fighting game, a fishing game, a shooter game and a pong game.
These games are fun, but really have nothing to do with the rest of the game. The game is full of puzzles, and I feel like these mini-games could have been integrated into the game rather than just being bought and then put in your menu.
Overall, for what this is (which is, a game with a silly plot as an excuse to put in puzzles) I think its pretty good, has some charm to it and a lot of fun. It's a bit on the short side, so I wouldn't say no to more content, but I enjoyed what I played. Some of the jokes were hit or miss, but I always appreciate quirky characters.
And here are some notes I took while I played:
-A cute, tongue-in-cheek opening.
-Very catchy music! Love it! :D
-It may be nitpicking, but I found it odd that, in the menu, "save" isn't capitalized, but "Items" and "Game End" are.
http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/39936/locker/brigands_01.png
-The GOLD counter covers up dialog. I'd suggest either moving it to the top of the screen or making sure that text is never in the bottom right corner.
-The jumping puzzles were slightly tedious, but the Hook Shot is a lot of fun.
-That last puzzle under the ship took me a while to figure out.
-I seem to have a flamethrower out of nowhere. And the torches I light aren't animated.
http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/39936/locker/brigands_02.png
-Again, a nitpick, but there are several typos in the game. Usually they're a their/they're mistake, but I thought I'd point out this typo in the ending.