Gameplay

This is where the game really went in a different direction than older NIS games. This time around, they ditched the whole grid-based strategy game style and introduced a completely new way of playing turn-based strategy games. This time, movement is done almost completely freely, and attacks as well. In this game, the turns happen depending on the speed stat of the characters, so it’s not alternating between player’s turn aned opponent’s turn like in disgaea and la pucelle anymore. Each time it’s one of your character’s turn, he has a limit to how far he can move, but this time he can move anywhere he wants in a certain radius, displayed by a glowing circle shape on the ground. As for attacking, instead of just being able to attack in 4 directions (although there were exceptions in Disgaea and La Pucelle), you can attack around you in a full 360 degree radius. Different attacks have different ranges, and some can hit more than one enemy as long as more than 1 is in range. The gameplay here is a breath of fresh air, something that was never seen before. And it works really well.

Now that’s not all that’s new in the game. There’s also a new system to bring your units to the field. They decided to get rid of the base panel system from disgaea and la pucelle and introduce something completely new. Now all you have on the field when you start a battle is Marona and the enemies fighting her. And some trees, rocks and other random stuff. Although the odds seem a bit hopeless, you don’t have to fear. The trees and rocks and such are there to help you. You use them to summon phantoms such as Ash to the world of the living. Each phantom has base stats, but when they are summoned to the field their stats change a bit according to what you summoned your phantom with. For example, if he is summoned in a rock, Ash will have a lot of defense, but he’ll be quite slow. Or a mage summoned in a flower will have higher intelligence. There is one feature that some people might not like though. Phantoms, being dead, can’t stay in the living world for too long. Each phantom has a Remove stat, which changes depending on the class of the phantom. That is the number of turns your phantom can stay on the field before disappearing, and when a phantom disappeared he can’t come back on the field during the same mission. When he disappears, the equipment he had stays on the field (although he recovers it after the mission), and there is a chance you might win the item your phantom was summoned with. So with the new summoning system and the remove stat, battles in phantom brave seem to need much more strategy than disgaea and la pucelle, since you can’t just bring all your strong characters to the field at once.

Now, again, something new. Equipment in this game is again completely different from what was seen in older NIS game. Now, this time, instead of being able to equip at least 4 pieces of equipment, you are allowed to have just 1. Not really the greatest thing IMO, but still it works well. The thing is that now you can equip anything. You have a tree? You can equip it, and chances are it has its unique attack skills when it’s equipped. There are obviously normal equipments like swords, axes and books that tend to be much better than rocks, but that equipment will be hard to access at first. Now, about equipment, here is more you can do. You have something good to summon a phantom? Equip it to Marona, and when you get in the field, throw it and summon whoever you want in it. And to add to that, you can equip anything you find on the field, and you can steal equipment from anyone on the field, although it’s possible to “miss” the stealing. And by anything, I mean you can even pick up your dead (or alive) comrades and swing them at your opponents. So the equipment system is rather limited, but you can equip anything so it can be fun.

Finally there is one last element that makes Phantom Brave different than other NIS strategy games: the main character’s “base”. All the phantoms you created live inside you village. You can talk to them, and some offer different services. For example, a priestess will offer her healing services, the blacksmith will upgrade your items, the merchant will sell stuff, the fusionist will fuse items/characters together and the titlist will change the title of your equipment/characters (changing their stats in the progress). There are more, but I don’t want to name them all. By using their services, your phantoms gain experience, so sometimes when you’ll be buying equipment your merchant will level up. One little parenthesis about the fusionist. It is on of the most important classes to have in your village. She (obviously) fuses equipment and characters together, and doing so is very important in the development of your characters an items. At first, your characters and equipment have a relatively low maximum level, sometimes not even over 50, so by fusing you will raise that maximum level. Also, for items, you get the option to raise the stat change when you summon a character with that particular item. Also, you can place the phantoms where you want by picking them up and throwing them where you want them, and you can even attack them if you want to, by pressing the R2 button, and I think that this levels up Ash. Anyways, there is a lot of personalization to do in your main base.