Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero Review

Despite being a pretty big fan of the Disgaea franchise, I’ve never dabbled in the other strategy RPG releases that team has concocted over the years. Nippon Ichi Software has a massive catalogue of different titles to dig into, though, which also makes it so surprising that it took this long for the company to put out a sequel to something other than Disgaea. It’s been over twenty years since the original Phantom Brave came out, having been ported and remastered a few different times since that initial release. For a select group of dedicated fans, Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is the chance to finally experience a new adventure in this world. As someone who never played the original, though, I was equal parts excited and cautious to see how much this game would differentiate itself from that far-too-familiar Disgaea formula.

I was also definitely concerned that hopping into the sequel to a game I never played would leave me with more questions than answers, but Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is incredibly easy to dig into as a newcomer. For one thing, the game’s intro does a good job of quickly introducing you to series protagonists Marona and Ash – a young girl who has the special ability to see and communicate with phantoms – and a phantom named Ash who has sworn to protect her at all costs. Very soon after introducing them to you, though, Marona and Ash are separated due to a mysterious attack, with Marona waking up on an unfamiliar island all alone. She soon meets a lonely Phantom girl named Apricot, whose father was the leader of a massive pirate crew before going missing. Tangled up with Apricot and searching for Ash, Marona ends up involved in a web of swashbuckling adventures as she sets out to help her new friend and find her old one.

I appreciated the way Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero balances the tone of it’s writing. I’ve come to expect zany, fourth-wall-breaking anime shenanigans from Nippon Ichi Software, but there’s a somewhat softer and more heartfelt vibe to this game. There are still silly jokes and weird characters, and literally every time Apricot is on screen I can’t help but laugh at how anxious and overwhelmed her portrait art looks. The themes of loss and death and family run deep in this game, though, and I appreciated that the macabre of it all isn’t entirely ignored – there’s a constant clash with the fact that you’re going on silly fun adventures with ghosts and then being reminded that these fun new friends are ghosts and have died, and the game takes the time to explore and unpack all of that in a way I really appreciated.

Phantoms aren’t just a thing for the sake of silly ghost jokes, though. Their existence (or lack thereof) is a major element of the combat in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. Battles take place in small SRPG style maps, but with the familiar square-grid movement replaced with full dynamic movement around the map within a certain range. Protagonist Marona can’t do much by herself in any of these maps, though – but using her Phantom abilities, she can confine the ghostly friends in her party into any object on the map to give them a physical form. A Phantom who gets confined to an object will also get buffs or stat modifiers or new abilities depending on the object.

It’s a simple concept that quickly expands out in an overwhelming amount of ways. Some objects are linked thematically, and Phantoms confined to linked objects share those linked stats. Some characters can summon weapons and mechs called Gadgets that you can confine into to unlock extra attacks. Marona can even use Confriend to fuse with a Phantom on the field, changing her character model and giving her a few turns of ultra-powered action. The depth of the Phantom system is really impressive, and combined with the free movement it creates an entirely different battle flow and priority focus than in usual SRPGs. Positioning is key, but now so is environmental item awareness and managing your Phantoms time on the field efficiently.

It took a long time for the battles in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero to feel less overwhelming and more open-ended. In part, the way the game tutorializes and introduces you to the various mechanics at your disposal leaves a lot to be desired – the official English website for the game has a better on-boarding tutorial for the combat system than the game itself. Once things settled in and started to click though, it was so satisfying to almost stumble accidentally into really effective and surprising strategies. In one instance, I had a barehanded Phantom near a strong enemy, and thought to throw a powerful weapon from one of my allies to that unequipped Phantom – and it worked, letting me equip that thrown weapon onto them and deal with that enemy instantly.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero does an excellent job of differentiating itself from the vibe and mechanics that the Disgaea franchise has made so familiar. It asks a lot of you in the beginning, but once you wrap your mind around it all, this ends up being one of the most inventive and original strategy RPGs I’ve ever played.