Phantom Brave

released on Jan 22, 2004

Phantom Brave is a strategy RPG which takes place in the world of Ivoire. Ivoire consists of vast seas and numerous islands; it used to be a peaceful place, but an ancient (and powerful) force is now threatening life in the various lands. The character you control in the game is Marona, a 13 year old orphaned girl. Marona has the ability to communicate with phantoms, an ability that brings a lot of resentment from other people but will help her to head out into the world and solve the problems that are occurring. A phantom known as Ash acts as Marona's guardian; as the game progresses, other phantoms will join your party, each of which have different capabilities. The game features a turn based combat system. During battles, Marona is able to attack enemies by herself, and she can also summon phantoms in her party to help out. To summon phantoms, you will need to confine them to an object on the screen (such as a rock or tree). Once confined to an object, you will then be able to control the phantom in battle, though phantoms only remain controllable for a limited number of turns. The object you confine a phantom to will affect it's abilities; for example, a rock may make a phantom stronger but move slower. By defeating enemies in battle you earn experience points allowing to level up and become more powerful.


Reviews View More

This review contains spoilers

Spoiler tagged, but another spoiler warning just in case!!

An enjoyable but very flawed game.

-Story and the villains feel extremely rushed? Underbaked? Not sure how to even describe it. It's not BAD, but there's so many plot points that aren't expanded on much, if at all. Walnut's motives past being jealous of Marona's money and spending it on herself are kinda confusing. The whole plotline with Castile, Walnut, and Bamboo Co. is kinda underbaked. There was some good commentary to be had here about big pharma, or some ethical issues with how Bamboo Co. was destroying the Putty's homes, but it just kinda….never gets addressed again. Similar problems with the plotlines of Mocha escaping from the circus. Sprout also just feels like he's just....there until the very end of the game.
-The game does a horrible job explaining it's mechanics past the first tutorial fights. I didn’t figure out how titles actually work until about 3/4 into the game.
-I know it’s silly to say this about a NIS SRPG but the difficulty scaling is so, so bad. Even by NIS standards. Which wouldn’t be an issue normally, but there’s not really a good place to grind like other NIS SPRGS, and randomized dungeons are a huge gamble.
-Some weird inconsistencies. Why can Putty Mages not reorganize specials on the island while normal mages can? Other Putty-versions of classes can do the same island functions that their human counterparts can.

Despite all this though, I don't think it's a bad game. I had a lot of fun once I got a good grasp of the mechanics and building my units.
I loved all the interactions between Ash and Marona. They play off each other really well in both personality and design. A lot of the chapter endings left me smiling. The game has probably some of the best art direction I've seen and I really like Ivoire as a world. It's also a very stark contrast from mostly all of NIS's other big SPRGS, which was nice.

I really enjoyed my time with this game! I can't recommend it though except to already-existing NIS fans or diehard SPRG fans because of the gameplay.

Phantom Brave was Nippon Ichi's lighter and less complex alternative to Disgaea, trading some of its silly humor (that began with Rhapsody) for more conventional fantasy storytelling while shrinking its tactical grids into pixels. Despite this change in movement, what really differentiates combat is the approach, revolving around a single leader who summons allies out of the environment, conjuring spirits with a turn limit but also with bonus stats and abilities depending on the host object. At the same time, returning mechanics like throwing play new roles thanks to new features, particularly via terrain effects and especially their ring out system, that removes from battle any ally, pickup, or enemy knocked past the map boundary (although living enemies will raise their party's level upon O.B.). These two are exceptions to what's basically a massive streamlining process of their trademark grindy tactics. Stripped-down versions of unit creation, upgrades and random dungeons (i.e. without the minigames attached) join equally scant adaptions (including their take on Suikoden's hub utilities) and the end result is a modest Disgaea-like, not as consistently rewarding (perhaps because of their proficiency-governed skill EXP) but still faithful to the concept of free-form teambuilding and increasingly-polished routine.

quando joguei esse jogo a primeira vez na infância, fiquei muito bravo porque tinha uma cutscene incrível(pra época) e eu achei que seria um JRPG foda e insano, mas era isso só que de estratégia. mas eu fiquei de castigo um mês e meu pai tirou todos os jogos do meu quarto, só que eu consegui esconder esse porque eu tinha jogado ele pra debaixo da minha cama. e eu casualmente achei ele e jogava escondido hahaha hahaha, aprendi a amar RPG de estratégia por causa desse jogo que sempre vai ficar na minha memória

One of the most needlessly complex games of all time, but that's kind of the appeal. I'd like Nippon Ichi to make another SRPG with this system, because Phantom/Makai Kingdom felt pretty damn rushed...