Following close on the heels of La Pucelle and Disgaea, Phantom Brave continues the Nippon-Ichi tradition of building upon a previous title by adding some new elements and tweaking existing elements. The result is, once again, a superb RPG with loads to do and never a dull moment. The story is certainly not an original one: a social outcast decides to help people, eventually wins their hearts, and only had to save the world to do so. But that doesn't stop you from enjoying the story of Marona, a young girl with the power to summom phantoms, and her protector, Ash. Split into 20 episodes of varying lengths, each stage sees Marona "confine" phantoms to ordinary objects: trees, rocks, carts, weapons, flowers, and more. The goal always is the same: defeat all the enemies, by either killing them or throwing/repelling them off the board. Once you're done, you can return to your home base to power up weapons, buy new weapons, combine characters and/or weapons to each other, and assign new titles to people/weapons. The amount of things to do certainly is a huge plus to the game. Even minute details seem fun as you go through trial and error to see what will work best, and seeing the results of your work before commiting to it helps. The concept of taking a "Strong Rock", removing its title of Strong, and reassigning it to your "Weakling Fighter" adds a whole new dimension to battles, as you're not just figuring out who can best help you win, but figuring how you can best get items with beneficial titles. Like Disgaea, there are optional random dungeons to be made for levelling your characters, ways to significantly upgrade your weapons, and a tremendous amount of skills that one can learn. Pretty much every good end-result of that game is included here; you just go about achieving it in a new way. The complexity level is very high, so its rating of "T" should be listened to, not so much for content but the fact that a 10-year-old would probably be overwhelmed. The story is a bit cheesy, and some of the "twists" are telegraphed well ahead of time, so don't look for many surprises. It's a typical story that won't be winning any Pulitzers. The menu system runs well for the most part, though can get frustrating when you've got two dozen skills to choose from and you're looking for one you don't use that often. Moving/fighting is also pretty simple and easy, though a personal gripe is that some attack moves let you select a target and the game will move for you, others make you move first, while still others show the area of attack and let you "pre-move" with it in place to see if it will get who you want it to. A little consistency would have been nicer. Certainly the outdated graphics and sound may irk some, but there really is no need to upgrade them, as they suffice. At $20 for a new copy, you'd be hard pressed to get better value out of a non-online game, as you can easily get 80+ hours for your investement. This is a game that any strategy RPG fan simply cannot miss!
Other Helpful Reviews for Phantom Brave (Limited Edition)
Following the surprise success of the North American release of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness for the Playstation 2 software developer Nippon Ichi established a North American branch in order to publish their titles. The fir... Read Full Review
Nippon Ichi tried to do something new when they released Phantom Brave for the ps2. The mechanics in the gameplay are highly improved from Disgaea and La Pucelle. Don't get me wrong, Disgaea is really good, and addicting... Read Full Review
