Phantom Brave PC

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I've been playing this game on and off for years. I plan on playing it for many more. It's fairly unique (in my eyes) due to the system it uses for making characters (phantoms) and the level of customization you can do is immense. There's also a game after the main game if you haven't gotten enough yet.

Good game

If you want to try one of the NIS SRPGs other than Disgaea, either play this or Soul Nomad. Maybe La Pucelle as well, although that's a harder recommend.

I actually did not like this game at first. It did not make a good first impression for me, and I dropped it, only to come back to it a few years later. Most of my playtime has since been on the Switch version, which I recommend over this one, same as with every other NIS SRPG. I'll get into some of the problems I had with the game at first later.

Phantom Brave is certainly a unique SRPG, even compared to the other NIS games. The game it's most similar to is Makai Kingdom, but it doesn't actually play much like Makai Kingdom other than superficial similarities like both being gridless turn based games. The general gameplay involves Marona summoning phantoms by confining them into objects. The phantoms last a few turns before disappearing, which means Marona is the only player character who doesn't have a turn limit. Phantoms are effectively player units, spread into different classes whose stats are further modified by the object you confine them to. This, combined with the gridless gameplay, leads to a lot of strategic implications the player needs to consider. On top of that, everything can be used as a weapon. This includes the objects you can confine phantoms to, as well as the phantoms themselves if they are unarmed. Nothing stops you from using a crate as a weapon, or grabbing an enemy and using them to hit another enemy.

That said... There are downsides to this system. Since every item is usable as a weapon, every character can only have one item equipped. There is no equipable armor in this game, nor are there consumable items. You also sometimes take home a confined item if a phantom runs out of turns, which means you'll have to go through your inventory to occasionally prune out unwanted items before you hit the rather low inventory cap.

Phantom Brave did start a few trends that spread to a few other NIS games. For example, all the "out of battle" utility services such as shops and healing are actually done by the same phantoms you can use, and their skills with these services improve as they level. So you might want to actually level up your blacksmith, merchant, fusionist, etc even if you have better units. Phantom Brave is also the first game to feature the Saber Kitty/Slumber cat/Deathsaber monster which inexplicably appears in almost every NIS game after this came out, including the re-release of Disgaea 2.

This is a pretty cool game, but there's some issues with it. Every one of the main stats is occasionally used to calculate damage for certain attacks, which sounds neat at first as you can have high defense characters use their defense stat to attack when equipped with rocks. However since the speed stat also dictates how quick your next turn is, having that stat high and using attacks based on that stat is vastly better than trying to raise both speed and another stat to use to attack. There's also the issue in that there's surprisingly no "ranged" weapons in this game, in spite of the fact that the Archer class from Disgaea is here. There's no bow, no gun, and even spells have fairly low range limits compared to other NIS games. There's also the same high level issue every NIS game before Disgaea 5 has, in that damage calculations tend to result in defensive stats not being able to keep up, making high level combat a oneshotfest. Granted you WANT combat in Phantom Brave to be quick due to the turn limit on phantoms, so it's not as big of a deal in this game.

Anyway, problems aside, this is a cool game. It's the only non-Disgaea NIS SRPG I'd consider better than some of the Disgaea games. There's a bunch of tinkering mechanics to it such as "titles" which give stat boosts to items, characters and dungeons. There's fusion, which lets you combine 2 characters/items to adjust their stats.

Looking forward to getting the sequel on Switch soon.

It's amazing

I dropped this game because the battle system and it's too hard

I stopped playing because I didn't care about it, and came back 2 years later, and while I'm going to finish it, I still don't care much about it.

3rd rate Disgaea clone. A bit of a different take because it's not as gridlocked. This results in some of the worst enemy targeting I've ever seen in a game. It's the type of game that is repetitive, grindy, and at it's worst redundant. You gotta level a really weak Merchant character to get better weapons in the shop. The characters are annoying. Weapons are kind of annoying having to relearn the same skills on each new weapon.

It's FINE. 6.2/10. There are better tactical RPGs out there by a longshot, including Disgaea itself.

Decent port, love the game. Played it on psp and the nastolgia just hits. Excited for the second but im sceptical about the art style change. Great price on sale and a lot of fun if you can deal with the older style graphics.

It's a great strategy jrpg game it have similar combat system to Final Fantasy Tactics
One of my favorite Childhood games, played it back when there was PS2 Version.
Currently making playthrough series. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs3hVwfU-n3H3kzEIq2cMzaR5pH7jrY32

the battle system aint for me

I bought this game when the sequel was announced and started playing on a whim but it really hooked me immediately. Great for scratching that Disgaea itch but also has very original gameplay systems that make it stand on its own, namely the grid-less movement and the confine system which puts a turn limit on your units so you have to consider carefully where and when to deploy each unit during the battle. As usual for NIS games, there's a lot of farming to do, which makes the game longer, but it's not only mindless grinding, since you're motivated to look for more and more efficient grinding methods. I imagine it could get boring by the end of the ordeal, but by that point you will be probably satisfied by the game.

Fun game. Interesting meta, on multiple facets. Characters are fun (don't skip story, it is fun and makes the game more immersive). I enjoy the dungeon system as well as title usage. My only gripe is, I wish the names of the dungeon were more creative as opposed to the strange randomly generated numbers and letters that look like how people used to message each other on myspace. (eg. hEy D0oD! WheRE YoU aT?)

The dungeon thing isn't enough to have me tossing a star, so I'll give it 5/5.

You'll go no further. For her sake, I will not fail.

ash is sexy

Best of all Disgaea games. Can't wait for the sequel.

Fun tactics game.
Nice story telling.
Massive grinding optional :)

Does not work, controller keeps turning off randomly.

yes. just yes. you need to experience this classic if you love JRPGs

I've never played an SRPG before but I really like it so far. I really love the characters and the artstyle.

A tale of the cutest most deadly necromancer there ever was.

Phantom Brave is a unique game. It's got interesting gameplay, awesome characters, and endless random dungeons. If you like customizing a character's moveset (you can give any character or weapon most of the skills except for a unique few) and dungeon crawling (the max level of this game is 9999), you should try Phantom Brave! I love this game so much I have it on PS2, PSP, and now Steam.

I was really impressed when this 20-year-old game got a patch fix AND a QoL update on Steam recently. For a while the game was unplayable for certain AMD users including myself due to graphics issues but it's been fixed on my old machine, fingers crossed it runs fine on yours too. There's an active dev team trying to get this game working still in 2024 and I think that says a lot about the game. <3

Absolutely amazed we finally got an update that allows me to see the sprites and text after such a long time. I can finally recommend an excellent game, the nostalgia is strong.

Very nice, the story is pretty good. The characters are well written (Marona actually acts like a little girl, emotional and irrational) and the recent 1.21 update fixed and improved a bunch of old details that left a lot to be desired. Totally recommend it, a classic Nippon Ichi game. The confine mechanics are different from the other disgaea games but if you are used to the grind of disgaea games you should be able to 100% solo the game and post game with marona and maybe only use the phantoms for a thing or two. With enough will and a properly leveled weapon the challenge is totally doable.

One of the most unique and interesting battle system N1 did.
A light hearted dramatic story with an ost that is perfect for it.
A complete version of the game with quality nice addition to the original that goes unnoticed but makes it far more confortable to play like the removal of 128 items limit.

Finaly a non disgaea game with a direct sequel too. Even though Soul Nomad is an inderect one due to the presence of one character in it.

Fun as any of the NIS games and I love the game mechanics but still a bit unstable at times. Hard to recommend running long random dungeons just to have a crash happen and lose your progress.

This game received an update and a sequel 20 years later

Has a lot of charm, mechanics are unique and fun to master. Good music, compelling story, gorgeous art.

Some reason the game stop playing on my system 😭😔😭

I played Phantom Brave over a decade ago on the Wii. I'm surprised that I love it just as much as I did back then. I'm probably going to put 200+ hours into this game to do all the completionist criteria. It's a really great game with a decent story that still manages to pull my heart strings! It's a great game to play in long bouts or short spurts. Grinding for the main story is relatively unnecessary, but for the post-game content grinding and guides are almost required.

Game's good.

season 2 please don't suck

be warned the sub is horrendous

Good game :)

Story: childish but cute and funny.
Gameplay: very unique and fun.
Music: nice.
This is one of my favorite games of all time worth the full price if you are a fan of turn based strategy RPGs.

Disgaea but without the grid. Good story, worth playing.

So far, I am enjoying this. Another great strategy RPG but it has unique gameplay features that makes it stand out from the crowd. The story is an emotional one. I kept thinking "For (Redacted)'s sake, Leave Marona alone!"

This game was my childhood on the Wii console. I have a deep connection to the whole aesthetic and gameplay. The characters are great, I like them all.

The combat moves being 3D style set it apart from the Disgaea series of Nippon Ichi. The mechanics are engaging for a strategy RPG, and rather unique too.

The bond between the different casts of characters is wholesome and endearing, and the story is very compelling with many exciting personalities.

10/10, the game holds up and the nostalgia factor goes hard.