Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero review

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I’ll never forget my initial experience with a Nippon Ichi tactics game. Upon witnessing my cousin play the original Disgaea, I embarked on an eager pursuit of unusual gaming content and made a beeline for my local video game store. Unfortunately, they didn’t carry a copy of their more famous NIS game, but I did stumble upon Makai Kingdom – a remarkable Nippon Ichi title, even if it was less straightforward to newcomers. It took me years to fully appreciate the brilliance of this game, but once I did, I started playing as many NIS games as I could find. Phantom Brave always eluded me, but now I’ve made up for that by diving headfirst into its highly anticipated sequel – Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, which has been in development for 21 years.

In the continuation of the initial adventure, I, Marona – a unique Chroma with the power to converse with and conjure phantoms (the deceased), find myself as the protagonist in The Lost Hero. Often misunderstood and shunned due to my kind’s rarity and differences, I managed to turn the tables in the first game by employing my powers for good and forging an alliance with my spectral companion, Ash. However, this time I find myself estranged from Ash, swept across the vast oceans into lands dominated by pirates. I form a bond with a young phantom girl hailing from a once powerful pirate clan, assemble a crew, and make new friends along the way. My quest to reunite with my buddy is filled with emotional depth and vibrant characters that will keep you engaged throughout the battles. It’s an enchanting narrative that propels you through the fray!

Strategy enthusiasts playing Tactics games will find themselves captivated by the combat mechanics rather than the storyline, and this remains true for The Lost Hero. In contrast to conventional grids, Phantom Brave allows characters to move freely within their movement range without adhering to any squares. Each battle commences with only one character, Marona, on the field. To engage allies in combat, she must first call upon them by confining ghostly companions into various items scattered across the battlefield. The type of item summoned will grant each ally a stat boost; for instance, summoning a warrior near a rock would increase their defense. Despite appearing unusual at first, quickly summoning allies using this method becomes second nature.

After summoning your ghostly troops, it’s time for the attack against the opposition. Each troop has unique abilities depending on the weapon they carry, with different ranges, impact areas, and elemental properties. To put it mildly, this is just the beginning. In a style characteristic of Nippon Ichi, your characters can pick up and throw each other, enemies, and objects, either to navigate the battlefield quicker or to harm adversaries by throwing them out of bounds. It takes some fine-tuning to pull off in Phantom Brave since troops can’t carry weapons if they want to perform these actions (except for Marona), but it can lead to a great deal of mayhem nonetheless.

In a more casual manner, one could say that this game offers unique and slightly less complex battle strategies. For instance, Marona can combine with other characters to form a powerful unit, enabling the use of strong special abilities and often additional effects such as healing or reviving the entire team. Moreover, you can craft gadgets on your island base, which come in handy during battles. The level of combat complexity in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero (as veterans might anticipate) is quite excessive, but if you enjoy that sort of thing, you’ll surely be smiling from ear to ear.

To triumph over wicked pirates and save the day in tactical combat, first, you’ll need to design the squad members who will carry out the task. In The Lost Hero, there are numerous unit types to select from, ranging from straightforward archers and mages to peculiar options like shopkeepers and anglers. Many of these character classes prove useful primarily in the hub world, as a shopkeeper opens a store, an angler fishes for loot between each fight, and so on. Enhancing these units will make them somewhat stronger in battle, but mainly, you’ll be doing it to improve your facilities at home.

Using unit types that aren’t effective in battles might be frustrating, but luckily for me, my favorite juice bar is there. This juice bar serves as a storage for a fixed amount of experience points earned in each fight, which you can then distribute to any character you prefer. By upgrading the juice bar, you increase the amount of XP it absorbs, and before long, it becomes your primary source for leveling up, transforming it into an essential hub for power-ups. This system is incredibly useful, whether you aim for a balanced team or to rapidly elevate a character to godlike status.

In this review, it’s clear that Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero has much more to explore beyond my initial glimpse. Features like custom dungeons, bonus currency-granting requests that lead to additional battles, character and dungeon titles for stat manipulation, and the option to reincarnate units to boost their power are just a few of its many offerings. This game has the potential to consume entire days of your time, but it requires effort to fully grasp all its intricate systems and mechanics.

The main problem with Phantom Brave lies in its intricacy, as there are numerous components to the game that can be challenging to comprehend (especially if you’re not familiar with similar strategy games like Disgaea), and new mechanics keep being introduced even when you think you’ve got a handle on things. Another concern is the performance of The Lost Hero on Switch; it’s somewhat unstable. Even when set to Performance mode, the game struggles to maintain a consistent 30fps frame rate, which may not be crucial for turn-based strategy games but can still be quite annoying.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a game that might completely consume your time or make you flee more swiftly than you’d expect. The intricacy of this NIS game is quite extraordinary, but once you grasp all its peculiar and delightful mechanisms, you’ll find it hard to stop playing.

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2025-01-23 17:16