Phantom Brave

Written by John Scalzo  on August 13, 2004

Final Glimpse: Ma, ma, ma, ma, My Marona!

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Nippon Ichi is on quite a roll. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was hailed as one of the best games of 2003. The next year, Mastiff brought La Pucelle: Tactics, a 2002 release in Japan, to America. And now, in less than a month, Nippon Ichi has plans to release Phantom Brave, the newest strategy RPG via their new American publishing arm Nippon Ichi America.

Phantom Brave tells the story of Marona and her ghostly companion Ash. Ash was killed years ago, alongside Marona's parents, in an epic battle against the forces of evil. But Ash hung around this mortal coil and has vowed to protect Marona because you see, she's possessed. Not only that, but Marona is shunned by the rest of the inhabitants of Phantom Isle for her ability to see and talk to ghosts. You'd think people living in a place called "Phantom Isle" would be more understanding.

Rather than live her life moody and depressed, Marona does what any good RPG heroine would do. She becomes a hero-for-hire and offers her services to anyone willing to pay the big bucks for her and her squad of super spooks. If there's one way to stop the slings and arrows of the townspeople, it's to buy the island out from under them. Which just so happens to be Marona's first, but definitely not last, goal.

If you've played Disgaea or La Pucelle, you'll know what to expect out of Phantom Brave. 2D characters that would look at home in any Super NES RPG move around a 3D battlefield attacking, defending or casting a spell when their turn comes up. And at its core, that's what Phantom Brave is like as well. But it's also a true evolutionary step in the way Nippon Ichi (and everybody) creates strategy RPGs.

The biggest change is that Phantom Brave will not include a grid system like is so common in strategy RPGs. Instead each character will be surrounded by a circle that shows their movement range and they can be placed anywhere inside this circle. From there characters can fight enemies like normal, provided that enemy is within their attacking range.

But before a battle takes place, Phantom Brave throws another curveball into the mix. Because the phantoms that Marona travels with are just vapor, she has to make them more solid. So after summoning a phantom, Marona must confine them to an object on the battlefield, whether it's a tree or a rock or a piece of wood or anything. And each phantom will gain different attributes depending on what type of object they are bound too. Further, after binding a phantom, they are only given a certain number of turns before the bond between them and the real world fades and they go back to being incorporeal. Although word from Nipon Ichi is that Marona will be able to travel with 50 phantoms at a time, so it might taker a while before she's short on companions.

Phantom Brave also features a Hold system to create all sorts of battlefield chaos. Characters can hold objects they find and use those objects as a weapon or soak in their magical essence if they have any. All objects have an HP gauge, just like the characters. When the HP drops to zero, the object breaks and is no longer useful on the battlefield. Objects with low HP can be healed just like characters with low HP and other objects can be held to give protection to another object or character. It's even possible for characters to hold other characters to combine attacks and items.

On top of all of this is the standard compliment of learning special attacks, skills and spells and managing items, weapons and armor if you have any hope of winning. Phantom Brave is supposed to be the biggest story Nippon Ichi has ever done with loads of different characters (including several from La Pucelle and Disgaea). It will also feature twenty episodes covering what Nippon Ichi promises is over 100 hours of gameplay. Realistically, we'll just have to wait for the game to come out before we can say exactly how large Marona's quest truly is.

Stylistically, Phantom Brave is a very obvious member of the Nippon Ichi-verse. All of the characters feature the bright, colorful anime-style palette that fits well with the quirky and (let's face it) sometimes inane dialogue. The environments are also pretty standard looking, but they've gotten a facelift from game's past, which is always a nice step in the right direction.