Phantom Brave offers some interesting and enjoyable tweaks to the Disgaea formula but also offers a very weak story.
The setup for Phantom Brave is remarkably interesting and had a great deal of potential. It centers around a young girl named Marona who has the unique ability to communicate with the dead. Years earlier her parents died fighting monsters and bound their companion Ash to Marona in death so he might act as her guardian and finish raising her for them. Unfortunately this ability leaves her with a reputation as being possessed and most people want nothing to do with her as a result. Not only can Marona communicate with the dead but she also has the ability to temporarily make them appear in the physical world. With this ability she works as a mercenary in order to pay the bills. Despite the potential of this setup the story not a good reason to play Phantom Brave. Marona is eternally chipper despite the grim situations she finds herself in and has no real motivation to be as disgustingly sweet, honest, and kind as she is. Furthermore there is no character growth, she is the same naive stupid girl for the entire game despite the experiences she has. This lack of character development is pretty much the same across the board up until and including the abrupt ending. The story is further diminished by the fact that Marona and Ash are the only two playable NPCs in the main portion of the game with the rest of your team being made up of generic phantoms. There are a number of side characters that you interact with as you move through twenty chapters that make up the core story but dialog is generally kept to a minimum.
The meat of the game lies in turn based tactical battles and in this regard Phantom Brave delivers Disgaea style combat with a number of significant and unique tweaks to the formula. For starters the only character that stays in a given battle from beginning to end is Marona and it is only with her that you are able to bring in other characters to fight. All other controllable characters must be confined to an object on the battlefield and even then they only have a set number of turns before they disappear to wherever they came from. Any given item scattered on a battlefield offers various bonuses and penalties to the phantom confined to it which can be used to enhance character strengths or offset weaknesses. For example a weed or flower usually offers a bonus to intelligence and magical resistance while negatively impacting attack and defense; with this in mind you would generally confine a mage class character to it in order to enhance their magical powers. Another unique feature to the game is that each character can equip only one item at any given time. Every item offers their own stat bonuses and penalties as well as skills tied to the item rather then to the character equipping it. Items all have their own separate level and they gain experience in battle with use just like your party. Once an item has outlived it's usefulness you can combine it with superior equipment to buff stats or even with characters to permanently transfer skills. There is also a random dungeon feature and a wealth of character classes to explore. Those playing Phantom Brave for it's combat will find that it offers plenty of reasons to keep playing as you raise your party levels into the thousands while powering up skills and equipment to obscenely powerful levels. After completing the final chapter a number of punishingly hard secret bonus maps open up. Those that love the combat and character building systems will find these bonus maps (and the grinding required to actually beat them) add several hours onto the experience. Those that don't want or need to do everything will likely finish the game somewhere in the forty to sixty hour range.
Phantom Brave runs on a similar if not the same game engine as Disgaea and as a result looks exactly the same with it's 2d sprites fighting on 3d battlefields In terms of music the score could be swapped out with the Disgaea soundtrack and your wouldn't notice, they're that similar. Voice acting is mostly well done considering the poor material the actors were given. Unfortunately while Marona is reasonably well acted most players will likely find that not only is her script horrible but her voice is very grating. This is doubly annoying since Marona is the main character and does more talking then anybody else in the game. Unlike Disgaea most of the story scenes feature wonderfully animated sprites which is much more enjoyable then still portraits or battle sprites.
Die hard fans of tactical RPGs will likely find a lot to enjoy here, especially fans of similar games like Disgaea, La Pucelle, or the excellent Soul Nomad & The World Eaters. If your new to strategy RPGs you'll have to put up with the steep learning curve pretty much every game in the genre has. Veteran players of games like Disgaea and Final Fantasy Tactics will likely be disappointed by it's poor story and it's close resemblance to other (better) NIS games. That said if your new to Strategy RPGs or want another game to scratch your strategy RPG itch your better off playing Disgaea or NIS's 2007 Soul Nomad and the World Eaters which is superior to Phantom Brave in literally every way.