Nippon Ichi seems to be on a tear lately with their marathon release of rpg games on the Playstation 2. Phantom Brave represents the third installment of games from Nippon Ichi. How will Phantom Brave appeal to the cult followers of Nippon Ichi? Not a lot base on our impression of the game. Read below for the good and bad points of this game and decide for yourself if this is a game you want to skip out on.
STORY
Great, more junk mail.
We'll fight with you, Raphael.
In the world of Ivoire is an island called Phantom Island. On this island lived a 13 year old girl named Marona. Marona lost her parents when she was 5 years old. Since that time, Marona has been working as a Chroma, a freelance adventurer, so she can earn enough money to buy Phantom Island for herself. Marona has an unusual ability to summon phantoms, beings that exist between the world of the living and the world of the dead. One of these phantoms that Marona can summon is Ash. Ash is a friend of Marona parents and died by Marona's parents'side 8 years ago at the hands of a monster called Wraith. But just before Ash's death, Marona father used his last power to transform Ash into a phantom so Ash can look after Marona. Ash has since been doing exactly that. With Ash's help, Marona has been traveling around the world of Ivoire doing Chroma jobs to earn money. But soon her paths will lead her to a confrontation with Wraith, the being that killed her parents. Who is Wraith and what does his re-emergence in Ivoire mean for the people of Ivoire? That's something that Marona and you must find out as you journey your way through 20 episodes of Phantom Brave.
I find the story to be quite uninteresting overall. The story really takes a long time to develop into any kind of plot to save the world or at the very least develop into anything that would interest the gamers. There are 20 story episodes in this entire story. The first 14 episodes is base mostly on Marona taking on various jobs as a Chroma and completing them. It also serves as a back drop in giving us insights on how Marona is treated as a Chroma. This is all fine but wasting 14 episodes out of 20 possible episodes to do it is too much. Gamers will just get bored from the meaningless Chroma job adventures from one episode after another. I know I did. By the 10th episode, I was wondering if there was anything at all to the story. Fortunately for you I stuck around. When episode 15 rolled around the corner, things started to get a bit interesting as the story slowly started to focus on some key characters, the history of Ivoire, and the re-emergence of the Wraith that killed Marona parents, its connection to Sulphur, an evil being that wreaked havoc on Ivoire 30 years ago. At this point you pretty much know that the Marona is headed straight for a confrontation with Sulphur. With only 5 episodes to go before the story ends, the story doesn't waste too much time with in-between details before you have Marona going face to face with Sulphur for the end game boss fight. That's the problem with this story, waste too much time to get to the heart of what the story is about and when it finally does get there, it rushed to the end of the story too quickly instead of developing the story more fully. The presentation of the story was just too plain and rush for my liking. Strong in-depth rpg stories was never a strong point in Nippon Ichi's rpgs and Phantom Brave is no different. You should look elsewhere if you're looking for an rpg story that has a lot of meat in it as this one doesn't. This is more of a story for the casual gamer that don't want to get engross in a long and in-depth rpg epic story. That's me putting a positive spin on what I find to be a very disappointing rpg story overall.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
I have so many friends now.
Ok, I hate to say this but this game hardly has any real cast of characters. The entire cast is really just Marona and Ash. They are the main characters in the game. The rest of the characters in the game are basically story characters that Marona interact with when they hire her for a job, third supporting characters if you will. Not important enough to be secondary support characters since the game doesn't have any other party members beside Ash and Marona. This is quite sad really as every game should have some type of secondary characters. In terms of the development of both Ash and Marona characters, well there's not much to it. For one, Marona is very young as a character and we do know that she is an orphan since the death of her parents and have been living and working as a Chroma since that time with the help of Ash. The narration of the story does do a decent job in giving us the sense of what it's like for Marona growing up without parents and having no friends at all beside her phantom, Ash. From Ash's stand point, he's stuck in a world that is between living and dead since the incident with a monster that killed Marona parents. Since that time, he's been guarding Marona and watching her. Maron is too young to have a past history but in terms of Ash, I believe the game could've done a better job in shedding some light on what Ash did before he became a phantom. In terms of the third supporting cast of characters, there could've been 2 or 3 characters that might be develop a little bit better to the point where they could've been secondary characters but none of these characters interact enough with Ash and Marona to have a strong support role. The game just lacks a cast of characters outside of Ash and Marona. That is what hurt this game the most. Characters are lacking and uninteresting. A score of 5 is being nice right now.
Score: 5/10
GRAPHICS
The world of Ivoire
Like with previous Nippon Ichi's titles, Phantom Brave ports the old school 16 bit rpg graphic look even though the game isn't really 16 bit graphic. The story cut scenes and world map is done in a 2-D rich drawn artwork background. The character designs are hand drawn sprites done to perfection with its cartoony look. The use of colors in the game is exceptionally first class. Clearly by comparison to previous Nippon Ichi's titles such as Disgaea and La Pucelle, this is the best looking game from them despite its old school look. Battle maps are design in a 3-D rotating environment. The animation of the skills and magic spells used in battles are enhanced even more this time compare to the previous titles as you get to witness more awesome skills and spells being unleashed onto your enemies. In terms of graphical power, Phanton Brave isn't going to stun anyone with its 16 bit style looking graphics but it should be beautiful enough for gamers to enjoy and appreciate. The theme of the look is clearly old school tradition with a bit of new age charm to it. It's still not enough to get that 8 out of 10 score but Nippon Ichi's games were never about graphical achievement.
Score: 7/10
MUSIC
My heart burns for the music.
The one thing you can safely say about Phantom Brave is that the music is constantly good. The quality of it is just as good if not better than the previous Nippon Ichi's games. The collection of musical scores consists of battle tunes, dramatic story tunes, town tunes, character tunes, and battle map tunes. Some of the tunes are actually small J-Pop tunes song by Japanese musical artists. The qualities of the tunes remain in their original Japanese form as oppose to being translated into English version for the North American market. What makes the tunes stand out is the effectiveness of when it's been played during the game. Most noticeably are the two composed tunes called Friends and Sorrow. Friends alone is a nice guitar solo theme tune sung in Japanese. But its effectiveness really shines during sad moments in the story as a background musical during the narration of the story. It really gives you a sense of such sadness within Marona and her life. Sorrow is just that, a solo guitar theme that really define the word Sorrow. This is the one tune that is my very favorite and reminds me a lot of Suikoden McDholh home theme. The voice acting is also done nicely. But the most credit when it comes to the voice acting is the narrator of the story. The game doesn't give any or list any credit to the American voice actors behind the game but I have to give a big thumbs up to the female voice actress that provided the story overall narration. And if you're a fan of the Dot Hack series, you'll recognize her voice as the one behind Helba. This is the one game where I clearly notice the music as the best thing that stands out. I can't tell whether or not this is due to the music being just that good or the fact that the other parts of the game aren't just as good which makes the music stand out. It's a good thing the game came with a Limited Edition which consist of a CD Soundtrack. Spend some time on the Soundtrack to fully appreciate the music of this game.
Score: 9/10
GAMEPLAY
The power of Rising Dragon
Grid free battle maps
Game Information
Genre: Strategy Rpg
Publisher: NIS America
Disc:1 DVD Disc
Memory:303 KB
Players: 1 Player
Mode
Analog Control:Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: August 2004
Phantom Brave like with other Nippon Ichi's titles is a strategy rpg game. The gameplay consist of the traditional turn base strategy elements that you normally would see in such a game. Create and summon your fighters on battle maps, take turn moving them and attacking your enemies using magic or special skills, once the objective or goal is achieve, the battle map fight is over. The battle maps uses a grid free system similar to Arc the Lad PS2. The game is very linear so you shouldn't have any problem figuring out where to go next or what to do next. Game difficulty is pretty medium. If you're having problems then chances are you need to spend some time leveling up. Here are some noticeable key features to be aware of:
Jobs:This game boast up to 55 different job classes or phantom classes for Marona to summon. Each job is unique in its own way and provides its own skills that will come in handy. Some of the must jobs to have are Dungeon Monk, Healer, Merchant, Blacksmith, Fusionist, and Titlist. So there are plenty of different types of jobs for you to try out and work with. Once you kill a job class monster in a random dungeon or story maps, you can then create that or summon that job class on Phantom Island after. Confinement:The main feature of this game is confinement. In order for you to summon your fighters in battle, you'll need to confine them first to an object, weapon, or item on the battlefield. Confining a phantom to an object isn't that straight forward as you want to be able to work toward a phantom strength. Each object in the battle map has their own stats and those stats will affect the phantom that is confine to it. For example let's say you want to confine a phantom to a rock in order to summon it. The rock has a stats boost of Attack and Defense and weak on INT. Now you don't want to confine a mage phantom to it as that rock will work against that mage's strength which is INT. So the best kind of phantom to confine to that rock is a pure fighter who will get the benefit of the Attack and Defense boost from that rock. This is where the strategy of confinement comes in. You'll need to scan the entire battle map and check out each object and decide accordingly on whom to summon in battle to ensure your victory. Another part of the strategy is deciding who to send out first. You see confinement doesn't last forever. Each job class has a set number of limited turns before they return to Phantom Island. Once that happen, you have to summon another phantom to replace it. So on hard battle maps, you don't want to be sending out all your strong fighters first then having them remove from the battle once their confinement time runs out and you're left with only weak fighters to fight with. There's also another purpose of confining which is to confine certain phantoms to objects for the pure purpose of trying to steal that object. In the beginning confining phantom to objects can be a bit annoying but once you get the hang of it, it can also be very fun. Titles: Titles are important in this game as having different titles effect your stats boost. Everything from items, equipments, dungeons, and fighters all have a title. There are 7 different ranking of titles. A rank 7 title of course is the best. The best part about this game is the ability to customize your titles on your equipment and characters to get the best stats result. When you have a Titlist job on Phantom Island, you can begin customizing your character and equipping them with various different titles. A Titlist is able to take a title out of a particular item, character, and dungeon and apply a new title to them. Titles are also very important in Fushion as you want to be able to maximize your item or character first before combining them. Fusion: Fusion is the main bulk of customization in this game. You are able to fuse any phantom and item together. The purpose of fusion is simple, create and boost the stats of either your fighter or your equipment. Not to mention that in order to break the level 100 limit, you'll need to fuse fighters and equipment together. Example of this is simple, a level 100 fighter fuse with a level 20 item will result in the fighter level restriction being raised to level 120. The level 20 item will disappear upon the success of the fusion though. Fusion is the only way to go if you wish to build your fighters up to level 9999. It does take quite a bit to understand how fusion work. You'll be balancing fusing your fighters and weapons to ensure each are at the maximum levels during the game. O.B:One of the unique thing about this game is the ability to throw items, phantoms, and monsters out of bound. The purpose of this is very simple, to get rid of things on the map quicker without having to actually kill them. O.B is mostly best used in Random Dungeons, especially in dungeons where you have to climb a lot of floors. Picking up your opponents and throwing them out of bound is the best way to get rid of many opponents faster than having to fight and kill all your enemies on a floor. The drawback is the remaining monsters that are still left on the floor will begin to level up from each monster that gets thrown out of bound. But it's not too bad as the end result will be your entire team just ganging up and beating the last remaining monster. Monsters can also O.B your fighters as well so watch out. Random Dungeons:Once you have a Dungeon Monk on Phantom Island, you can start creating random dungeons. The purpose of random dungeon is very simple, it's the best place to level up your fighters, get rare items, as well as rare jobs that you can't get in the story battle maps. Creating the type of dungeon that you want is base randomly so you may have to keep trying until you get the dungeon that you want. If you want your fighter to go anywhere beyond level 1000 then you're gonna have to spend some major time in random dungeons. A note about entering random dungeons, once you're inside, the only way to leave is either by completing the dungeon or by using the Return skill. Skills & Magic: It's not a lie when this game boost over 400 different skills and magic spells. Every character, item, and equipment have default skills in them. In addition to the default skills, there are skills that you can unlock once you have enough Mana. With fusion, you can also transfer skills to other items or onto a character. Using skills or magic does require SP. The game really does give you the ability to customize any type of skills onto any character or item. Stealing:Every single fighter or character have a stealing ratio stats to them. You can steal things in two ways. The first way is a temporary solution. If you see a monster carrying an item or weapon you like to use on a battle map, you can try and steal that from them by using the Lift command and hope your chance of success is high. But this is only temporary as once the battle map is over, you won't be able to keep the item. The permanent way to steal and keep something is by confining a phantom to that item. Once their confinement time runs out and the phantom is removed, they have a chance of taking that item with them to Phantom Island if their steal ratio is high enough. Those are the only two ways to steal items. Mana:Mana is very important in this game. This magical energy is used to level up an item or weapon, used to unlock new hidden skills, and used in fusion to transfer skills to another item. Acquiring a lot of mana can be quite difficult. The best and shortest way to earn an item a lot of mana is by fusing. When you fuse one item onto another item, the mana of that item is transfer over to the mana of the item that it is being fused to. This is a good way to farm for a lot of mana and it's quite time consuming.
I thought the gameplay was decent overall. Confinement, Out of Bounds, and Titles were the 3 really unique features of this game. Out of Bounds didn't play too much of a role in the gameplay overall as oppose to the other 2 features. The rest of the gameplay were elements that you should be familiar with from playing previous Nippon Ichi's rpgs and other outside strategy rpg games.
The game can be a fast pace rpg game where you can rush through the story battle maps but at times it can also be a grueling grind of having to spend some time leveling up in random dungeons just to get ahead in the story battle maps. You can't simply play the story battle maps just straight through and level up that way due to the fact that the difficulty and the level of the enemies on each map are inconsistent with one another. One minute the difficulty of each map are within range of one another where you can progress smoothly and the next minute the difficulty of the next story map is 10 or 20 levels ahead of the one you just finish stopping you in your tracks from making any further progress. It's an on and off switch when it comes to playing this game. At times I think it's fun while at other times I just find it lacking to hold my interest. The gameplay by itself isn't strong enough to hold gamers attention for long. It needs a good story and other key elements in an rpg game to help keep gamers glue to the game. Unfortunately Phantom Brave doesn't have such strong elements so the gameplay is left to stand on it's own 2 feet to draw gamers in and keep gamers in. And I don't think it'll be able to do that.
Score: 7/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
You still haven't beaten me yet.
Now in addition to the regular story battle maps and of course the usual random dungeon maps, the game boast 10 extra battle maps for you to play in once you finish the game. Within these battle maps are extra special bosses and the ability to recruit these bosses if you are able to defeat them. So to sum it up, you have 10 extra maps and 7 special characters from previous Nippon Ichi's titles to recruit. This isn't too bad however there is a downside. First is that in order for you to complete all 10 extra battle maps, you need to level your fighters or at least your main strong fighters to an ungodly 9999 level. That in itself is a distraction for gamers. One of the things about previous titles like La Pucelle Tactic and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is that all their extra battle maps much like Phantom Brave require you to level your characters to near the maximum of level 9999. Now that just takes way too long to do. I was never able to finish any of the major extra maps from the previous games of Nippon Ichi and it looks like I won't be able to finish the extra maps for Phantom Brave. Extra battle maps are fun for gamers to do, it's not suppose to be a chore where you have to spend endless hours of leveling trying to reach level 9999 just to finish off the last extra battle map. Your time is spent much better on starting another rpg game than wasting it here on leveling over and over. Nippon Ichi needs to re-think this kind of strategy if they want more gamers to get a full gaming experience from their games. The last negative is that there's no New Game+ mode. Without a New Game+, the purpose of recruiting special characters becomes pointless because you can't use them anywhere else since these extra battle maps take place after finishing the game story line. Not to mention the fact that these new characters start at level 1. A New Game+ mode with the option to bring in these special extra characters as regular fighters might be that incentive to replay the game again. But with no New Game+ mode, there's really no purpose in replaying this game again. It's a shame too.
Score: 7/10
When compare to Disgaea and La Pucelle, Phantom Brave is a disappointment. The problem with Phantom Brave is that it has a problem holding onto a gamer's attention span once he or she start playing the game. This is very much due to the slow pace of the story and an uninteresting cast of characters in the story. The gameplay is a bit unique and does require a bit of time to get used to which also works as a double negative when playing this game in the beginning. If the story is flat in the beginning, you hope the gameplay would keep things interesting for the player. This also applies if the gameplay is flat in the beginning; you hope the story would keep things interesting. However with both story and gameplay flat in the beginning, things don't look good for this game at all. For the first 20+ hours, I struggle to continue to play this game as my interest in it has really dropped to an all time low, however near the end of the game, my interest did peak up with the story becoming a bit more interesting and the gameplay mechanic became easier for me due to my understanding of it. However by then the game was pretty much over and I was looking to just finishing it up so I can look forward to playing another game. That in a nutshell is what most of you will be experiencing when you play Phantom Brave. Phantom Brave isn't entirely bad; it's just that there are so many more rpgs that can hold your interest better. The downfall of this strategy rpg game is the lack of a good story and cast of characters.
