I have a deep love for anything that ends up at Gamecell with KOEI's logo franked on the outside. The games rarely sport absolutely cutting edge graphics or slick presentation, and where there is voice acting, there's a good chance it will be poor. But they invariably do have is unbelievably addictive gameplay – usually a little repetitive, but completely absorbing for hours upon hours. Phantom Brave is not a KOEI developed game, but it's being published in Europe by them, and sports the same aforementioned traits as many of the other titles in their lineup.
Phantom Brave actually comes from the same studio as the Gamecell 9/10-rated Disgaea Hour of Darkness, Nippon Ichi, and it boy does show. A lot. In fact, to anything other than the strategy RPG fan, it's kind of like distinguishing different breeds of apple – they all have their own nuances, but at the end of the day, apples is apples.
Still, it won't hurt for the uninitiated to get a brief on what Phantom Brave is and does, so here goes... Phantom Brave is a turn-based strategy RPG – you guide your characters through adventures, building up an army of supporting characters as you go to bash increasingly powerful enemies. The meat of the game is the battles, wherein you use your created characters to fight enemies, with each character taking turns. The order and frequency of each character's turn, as well as how much damage they can deal or take is decided by several stats, and as you progress through the game your characters gain experience, which increases those stats. Characters can be equipped with items to use as a weapon (anything in fact, even another character!) that will alter their stats, and the attacks available to that character. That's par for the course for a turn-based strategy game, what's different about Phantom Brave is that you only start with one character on the field of battle, and that character then summons other characters into the battle by attaching them to objects within the battle area (or items that you have brought into the area). The object that they are attached to makes further modification to the character's stats. Confused yet? - Well, I was, even after reading the manual (which didn't really explain the game very well at all, ditto for the in game tutorials), and although I could go on describing some of the other features of the battle system, I don't think it would help...
The main characters that you play in Phantom Brave are called Marona and Ash. Marona is a young girl who gets rid of monsters for other people. Her parents were killed when she was very young, and she has the ability to see 'Phantoms', people stuck between life and death. Ash is a Phantom that fought along side Marona's parents until their (and his) death, after which he became Marona's bodyguard. Unfortunately, Marona is an outcast, and often suffers from other people's fear of her abilities. It's genuinely touching stuff, thanks to the excellent voice acting, and cute graphics. I say cute, because you do form an attachment to the characters, but the fact is that Phantom Brave sports graphics that could have appeared on the SNES. It's all sprite-based, even in the cut-scenes, and quite low resolution too, and I think they could have done something stunning in 2D if they were to take their cues regarding 2D art from Sammy's recent Guilty Gear games. Come to think of it, 'quaint' is probably a better description of the graphics than 'cute'. The music is also pretty good, and the game comes with a CD of the sound track too.
If you can look past the graphics, then there is a very good game there, but I can't see it persuading anyone that didn't like Disgaea and its ilk to play it. I do admire the fact that the game lets you set your own difficulty by the way you play. For instance; if you're unable to beat a level, just go and play some of the previous levels or random dungeons until your characters are powerful enough to win. It means that there's as much strategic challenge in there as you want, but you're never going to have to wave the white flag and admit that the game has beaten you. Having said that, I can't say that I found the stat-levelling side of things particularly enjoyable. When I had to do it, it wasn't on a side quest, or something with some plot to it to hold my interest, it was in a random dungeon, where you will go out to crush the opposition in slightly tedious and meaningless battles. Still, if you're really into this genre then I guess that is more a treat than an annoyance, but I would prefer the game to have let you work on your strategy a bit more than pummel your way through dungeons. The main game maps and battles are very good though, and will stretch most players to their limit tactically.
Overall, Phantom Brave is a good game, but it is something you are going to love or find exceedingly tedious, and at 60+ hours long, that's either a lot of love or a lot of tedium.
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