Reviewed: October 22, 2004
Reviewed by: Jason Porter

Publisher
NIS America

Developer
Nippon Ichi Software

Released: August 31, 2004
Genre: Tactical RPG
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

8
6
7
9
7.5

Supported Features:

2003's La Pucelle: Tactics, while not the highest-scored game I've ever reviewed, was one of my personal favorites and the game that really got me anticipating the next release. That game is Phantom Brave, perhaps the most expansive and complex series of interlocking gameplay subsystems in any tactics title to date. It also has a sweeter-than-usual storyline and a whole new cast of cutesy-cool characters to fall for.

New features of Phantom Brave include:

• truly 3-D, fully rotatable environments, including some outside of battle as well
• a Future Tactics-style free movement system - no more movement squares
• destructible, usable and throwable items scattered about the battlefield
• a system that lets players throw nearly anything out of bounds
• -"confining" - a new and strange concept regarding character placement and resource management in battle

In Disgaea, the mood of the tale was humorous and light (Laharl would prefer the word "dark," I suppose). In La Pucelle, the story was somber, character-driven and even intense at times. Phantom Brave, filling yet another niche, is sentimental, innocent and sweet, the kind of story most parents wouldn't mind letting their four-year-olds watch.

Ash, a demon fighter, has become a phantom, trapped between life and death, only able to materialize briefly. He ended up that way thanks to the assistance of a companion as they lay dying together with the man's wife on the battlefield, the victims of a powerful enemy. His friend used every bit of life force he had in an attempt to grant Ash life again, but it only worked halfway. Out of a deep blood debt, he befriended Marona, their daughter, and has vowed to guard her with all his energy and help her any way he can.

Marona, for her part, is a young girl who has taken up the occupation of her parents: she is a Chroma, gifted with the ability to see and contain phantoms. However, Marona is different than most Chromas. She actually recruits phantoms to fight with her, using her powers to materialize them in battle. Chief among her army of phantoms is, of course, Ash. But Marona's reputation is that she is possessed by the phantoms she uses, and that she is a disaster waiting to happen for anyone who unknowingly hires her services. Ash must look on in anger, dematerialized, as the citizens of Ivoire (the archipelago where the game takes place) belittle and take advantage of the innocent, trusting girl.

Due to the game's archipelago setting and episodic storyline, I found that it was harder to connect to the characters emotionally than in past releases. This didn't hurt the story itself, but the characters in Phantom Brave never rise much beyond the level of standard RPG cliché, which is too bad.

However, the case with the majority of your army is different, at least somewhat. After a fashion, Phantom brave allows players to create their own characters! This is the first time I can recall a tactical RPG affording players such freedom. The way it works is like this: players start out with a small number of different character types (fighter, witch and merchant, to name a few), and may pay money earned in combat to create new warriors of these classes to swell their ranks. There's no rule that says a player couldn't have 30 Valkyries and no magic users, allowing for any conceivable type of gameplay. The ability to tailor a game's style to suit one's own is one that cannot be over appreciated.

However, the system has its limitations. Though new, more powerful types of characters can be unlocked throughout the game, the fact remains that players have no say over how their fighters look. There's only one graphic for each type - not even a palette switcher or sprite pool from which to draw. Considering the graphical quality, or lack thereof, of this game, it seems like the least they could have done was give us some choices about the appearance of our legions. Also, some characters are infinitely more useful than others. The Valkyrie and Witch classes, near the beginning, are the only really effective ones in battle. Besides, who will ever really need five or six merchants on the battlefield?

In fair consideration, the character creator is more open ended than any other party recruitment system I've encountered. However, that doesn't mean it couldn't be a lot better. And "creation" is only at the most basic level - stats are mostly randomized within parameters, and graphics for the various classes are unalterable. While I can't exactly call the system a bad thing, it was nonetheless something of a disappointment.

Regarding the actual elements of play, however, Nippon Ichi has created yet another masterwork. Phantom Brave is entirely too Byzantine to explain it all here, but the basic way it works is pretty standard: Place characters, move them around in a turn-based environment, engage the enemy a little bit at a time until the objective is completed. However, where this game really shines is in the tweaks, details and new takes on tradition that the company has infused it with.

Starting with the very simplest things, note for instance the lack of a gridded battle area. As in Future Tactics: The Uprising, Phantom Brave uses a true 3-D field and rings off the distance a character may move. The farther you move a character, the smaller the ring gets until, at its edge, the character can go no farther. This was one of the coolest things about Future Tactics, and it holds up well here, too.

Items can be picked up off of the battlefield and used as weapons - not an entirely unique feature, but certainly a rare one. Characters can also lift, throw and jump on top of each other, an expansion of Disgaea's similar system. Perhaps weirdest of all, the game implements a tongue-in-cheek take on the blank space beyond the edge of the map. The result is a system whereby a non-major enemy, or any item can be picked up and thrown out of bounds, where it remains gone for good.

There are also lots of deeper, more fundamental changes. The easiest one to recognize is in character placement. Marona herself is pre-placed on the map - so far, nothing weird. Then, as many times per turn as she wishes, she may Confine a phantom to an object within range. As with all range measurements in Phantom Brave, this is determined by a ring that appears when the command is selected (though it doesn't shrink with movement like the others do).

Confining is the art of binding a phantom (i.e., a character) to an object such as a rock, spear or flowerpot. The nod to ancient Japanese animist beliefs is obvious, and cool. Depending on the object, different stats of the bound character may be positively or negatively impacted. For example, binding a character to a flowery plant might raise its intelligence 25% for the battle, but lower its HP and attack rating by 10% each. Obviously, it's important not only to find the objects in each map with the best deals percentage-wise, but also to carefully choose the type of phantom bound to each object. A warrior-type doesn't have much use for the spell bonus offered by increased intelligence, after all.

Once bound, a phantom has a remove rate - the number of turns they may take before the confinement weakens and they dematerialize. It's very important to pace the placement of phantoms. Using up all your strong phantoms, like Ash, at the beginning of battle means that they'll disappear by the time you've worked your way over to the map boss. It's this sort of subtle strategy that has always set Nippon Ichi's games apart from the pack, and the confine-remove system is quite a piece of work.

Items that are not used for confining can be picked up and used as weapons. In fact, anything not bolted to the ground with an iron rod can be picked up and used as a weapon, including friends, enemies and (morbidly enough) the carcasses of defeated friends and enemies. The trade-off for not binding someone into a sword, then, is that the sword is available to use as a weapon, and may grant a better stat bonus that way than as binding material. Of course, weapons can also be bought, and there's an extremely complex power-up system that can be used to level up items and teach them new techniques, techniques that an equipped character may then use. If you ever hear someone talking about a level 14 starfish, chances are they've been playing Phantom Brave.

The item thing goes on and on. There are items that grant bonuses or handicaps to certain other items or characters. The items can all be destroyed and have HP just like the characters. There are ways to meld two items into one more powerful one. If the mere concept of all this leaves your head reeling, you're starting to get an idea of how overwhelming it is to play this game at first.

Luckily, Nippon Ichi didn't expect everyone to pick up on so many things at once (I didn't even get into the random dungeon generator or the use of Titles to increase stats!), and the game's difficulty curve is such that players can ease themselves into its complexities gradually. After a few maps, a technique that seemed to work fine before might suddenly start to fail - time to brush up on remove rates or synth some new items. Or maybe the monsters just outclass you - play through a small, 8 or 10-level random dungeon to gain a couple of levels before trying it again.

There's no question that the dev geeks at Nippon Ichi have made one hell of a game to play. Customization options are nearly endless (and I'm rarely comfortable saying that), the battle system has an entirely different focus than any of its predecessors and the slew of seemingly small extras (like the out-of-bounds attack and the ability to skip most event scenes) often have a hidden depth to them and may open up entirely new facets of the game for players to experiment with.

Ridiculously enough, this company still insists on using sprites for all of its character models. Sprites! Sprites were the animation of choice for shareware programmers back in the mid-90s. They're done with, plain and simple. And while I love retro gaming as much as anyone, Nippon Ichi isn't helping its cause by sticking with outdated technology. To Phantom Brave's credit, the sprite designs are lush and clear, and the number of different animations is truly impressive. However, nothing I can think of should have prevented this game from being cel-shaded. It looks a lot cooler, the animations are smoother and the whole game just looks crisper when cel-shading is used.

The backgrounds are fully 3D, but less than inspiring. I'd like to see another move in the direction of Future Tactics with the creation of a more complete battle area, including backgrounds and realistic borders (though the out-of-bounds gameplay mechanic is pure, zany genius) instead of floating blocks of ground. I can't say that the landscapes even approach the not-so-lofty heights of games like Dragon Warrior VII, a title similarly remembered for its nearly-endless replay value marred by hideously outdated graphics.

As was the case with past releases from this company, Phantom Brave is a game with great character designs that are poorly implemented. The obvious care that went into the characters is swallowed up by the low graphical production values of the game as a whole. Once again, Phantom Brave continues Nippon Ichi's disappointing tradition of lackluster graphics.

Sound effects are the standard fare, cartoony and somewhat detached from the game's world, nothing worth writing much about. As usual, Nippon Ichi had the smarts to offer English or Japanese dialogue during gameplay, a treat for Japanophiles or game purists. However, I noticed that the battle, the voice work is all in English, which means one of two things. Either it was in English in the Japanese version as well (which makes no sense, as the voices are obviously different from the Japanese dialog actors outside of battle) or, for whatever reason, the Japanese battle voices were cut out. Either way, it's a negative mark for an otherwise solid category.

In my opinion, a game like Phantom Brave will be replayable nearly forever. It really does have a random dungeon generator in addition to twenty episodes filled with story levels, which alone makes it replayable for as long as you want to keep going. A character creator, however limited, doesn't hurt. Neither does the dearth of weapons and techniques that can be obtained - it is a simple matter to go through the main game without ever seeing most of them, and searching for them all is a challenge gamer's dream.

However, this game takes a lot of patience and dedication. It's not nearly as accessible to the casual gamer as, say, Disgaea. While the basics are simple, getting through the game is not, and as each new subsystem is revealed, gamers used to the linear nature of less complex games may feel stifled or sidetracked by all there is to do and learn.

Phantom Brave should take between 25 and 40 hours to play straight through, depending on how much time is spent toying with the random dungeon runs and item systems. However, for the fan, the number of hours of rewarding gameplay to be had should be at least ten times that.

There's nothing wrong with this title, and yet so much of it could have been better. It's great to have another deep, challenging, delightful tactical RPG to play through, but I can't help but be frustrated when I think about the game it could be - what all of Nippon Ichi's games could be - if they were just a bit more polished. If you're a fan, don't miss out on this game. If you aren't, don't bother. And if you're not sure, by all means go out and pick up Disgaea: Hour of Darkness or La Pucelle, both of which are much more suited to tactics newcomers. Whatever its failings, gamers should support a company that consistently does the important things right and makes some damn good games.