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Nippon Ichi’s third game is released stateside. The company has found itself a nice, comfortable niche inside the USA. Looking for proof? They have released three strategy RPGs within a year; a considerable feat considering how (relatively) small that particular market it. Phantom Brave features quite a few gameplay changes but keeps that same, quirky Nippon Ichi charm.
In Phantom Brave, you play as thirteen year old girl, Marona who is shunned by the other citizens of Ivoire because she is “possessed.” This isn’t entirely untrue as Marona travels with a rather invisible guardian named Ash. The story in the game is a rather typical affair, the fate of Ivoire is threatened and it is up to Marona to save it. Marona has the ability to summon ghosts, phantoms if you will, to help her out such as Ash (hence the game’s title). The story is told through anime style cut scenes and is quite interesting as you want to find out what happens with the characters.
The summoning of phantoms is how most of the gameplay will take place since Marona isn’t powerful enough to take on these enemies by herself. To summon a phantom, you’ll need to confine it to a certain item since in their ghost form they are quite useless. The game’s interactivity is very high though and you can confine a phantom to any item, like a rock, for example. Each item also has its own features including strength and resistance. Moreover, there are many, many phantoms once again with different abilities.
The tactical portion of the game is shown since you’ll need a strong stable as opposed to simply maximizing one phantom to its best abilities and then defeating everyone else with it. The game also limits your dependence on a particular attack by penalizing for increased use. Each attack in the game requires some sort of points, and as you continually use a move, more points will be required. But the most tactical, and from reading message boards, controversial addition to Phantom Brave is that the game doesn’t allow you use the same phantom repeatedly as after a certain amount of attacks, they won’t be able to be used for the remainder of the battle.
Fighting enables your characters to get stronger and as they do, they’ll gain new abilities. You can also enter random dungeons a la Disgaea to help you level up, as having a higher level phantom will make up for questionable tactics. The game also places much emphasis on items since you can pick up any of the game’s many items from shrubs to books and use them as a weapon. In addition, you can combine phantoms and other items in the game to get a much more powerful unit with the help of a particular type of phantom. Fighting also differs since Phantom Brave doesn’t use the typical grid-based system of previous games. While this adds much more control to the battles, it takes some getting used to, particularly if you were used to the confinement and reliability of the grid-based system.
One of the easiest ways to tell apart a Nippon Ichi game apart from the rest is the visuals. Much like Disgaea and La Pucelle Tactics before it, Phantom Brave features brilliant, cute and very carefully designed characters in equally engaging cut-scenes. But then, these are placed by very simple, low-resolution 3D environments. If you’ve played a Nippon Ichi game before, expect the same from the visuals here.
The game’s background music is fitting, although a bit repetitive at times. The sound effects are appropriate, as well, but they sound awfully similar to those in Nippon Ichi’s previous games. The voice over work is excellent, though. NIS America did a great job localizing the game and it shows in the voice over. For the really diehard fans, the game also includes the original Japanese voice overs.
When it is all said and done, Phantom Brave is a very solid tactical RPG. The game’s gameplay mechanics will surely please fans of the genre and particularly fans of Nippon Ichi but may frustrate newer players. If you haven’t played a tactical RPG before, you’re better off starting off with Nippon Ichi’s earlier games and then move on to this one. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Sep 20, 2004
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