
Phantom Brave is a game that really stood out to me back in the day and it’s amazing to see a return happening. This remaster of the original adventure with added goodies is a great celebration! Way back in… what was it the dawn of time at this point? 2004?? I really thought it was earlier than that. Anyway, the PS2 original was my follow up to Disgaea. I’d just got into the awesomeness that was NIS games. After hunting down a copy of Disgaea, I fell in love. So of course when I heard about Phantom Brave, I preordered right away!
I played through the original with my girlfriend at the time, my wife these days. Clearly the game is good for a relationship! In all seriousness though, this is a heartfelt tale that we both enjoyed together.
Basically the plot of Phantom Brave follows Marona who functions like a summoner. She can call upon phantoms in battle by using a skill called confine. You choose an object on the battlefield and summon a phantom to replace it. That phantom remains for a set number of turns. The rest plays out similar to Disgaea and other turn based tactical games except the combat is slightly more like Neptunia. In that sense you basically have a movement circle to roam around in each round rather than tiles to traverse across.
The game also functions much like Disgaea having a home base, and you just kind of boop out into set piece battles. You level up your characters, set off to fight through the story or random dungeons. This is a game you get comfortable in and just enjoy building up your team, not to mention enjoying the story.
I really don’t want to give much away here. With seven titles under its belt, Disgaea is well known at this point, and the tactical nature of the gameplay really sticks with Phantom Brave as well. If anything, PB was a perfect next release back in the day. It was very fresh and original, not being a reskinned retread of Disgaea, but also packed with tons of narrative.
If you haven’t given it a go before, it’s like $20 on the PlayStation store. For a legendary classic NIS RPG, that’s a ridiculously low asking price for a remaster. Let alone, we do very much hope to cover the just released sequel Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero!