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I decided to take a break from Tales of Destiny (and RPGs in general) for a while, as I've really played little else in the last year or so, and I've whittled down my enormous backlog to about 5 games now anyway. Instead, I've decided to bring you my favorite game in Nippon Ichi's strategy series, Phantom Brave.

Phantom Brave seems to be the black sheep of the series, as the plotline is more serious (and tragic) in tone than Disgaea and La Pucelle Tactics, and the character management isn't quite as complex. Still, it does contain its share of humor, and there's plenty of depth to be found in its mechanics (much of which isn't apparent at just a glance), so I say that most of its criticism is unwarranted.

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The beautiful, scenic Island of Evil.



Here we meet Haze, Jasmine and Ash, who find themselves surrounded by demons. Ash tells Haze and Jasmine to run for it as he holds off a couple of them.



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Here's where the game gives a short briefing on the combat system. Unlike its predecessors, Phantom Brave isn't bound to a grid; you can literally move anywhere on the map, and even multiple times in one turn, limited by "Distance Points" (DP) that decrease as you move. This does make it easier to get at most enemies (not having to crowd through a one-tile straight where they can snipe you one by one, for instance), but it also makes it harder to work defensively; you can't really form a barrier to prevent enemies from slipping past your fighters to attack your healers, for example.

The characters' upcoming turns are listed in order on the right, similar to Final Fantasy X or Mega Man X: Command Mission, which is helpful when planning your strategy.



Attacks are also based upon regions of space, rather than tiles. The basic punch can hit anyone within the wireframe radius here, but can only target one person at a time. Each attack has its own properties; things like Fire and Ice spells have a cone-shaped region and will hit all enemies within that space, for instance.

Don't worry about all those icons yet, I'll explain them a bit later. For now we're just punching some generic demons for an easy win.

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Guess not.



This one proves a bit too much for Ash to handle, and before they know it they're all struck dead with one enormous blast.



With his last breath, Haze manages to cast a spell, though its effect isn't revealed just yet.



Then this dude shows up, dispatching the demon with a sword swing...



Followed up with a spell of his own called "Dark Eboreus."



It looks like he's not finished off for good, though, as the guy comments that he'll need even more dark power to finish the job.

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Fast forward eight years, and now we meet Marona, who happens to be the daughter of Haze and Jasmine.



Thanks to Haze's spell, Ash is still around too, although in the form of a phantom.



Ash has served as Marona's protector for the last eight years, as she is feared and hated by most of the populace due to the abilities she inherited from her parents.



Marona takes it all in stride, though.



Mail arrives on Phantom Isle via "Bottlemails", which are actually living bottles with arms and legs. They're mean swimmers, to boot! Ash decides to spare her from a few more hate letters.



Marona's taken up work as a Chroma (a bounty hunter, basically) in order to pay the rent. Looks like Terra Firma is our first stop.



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Alright, before we head out, I'll explain a bit more of the game's mechanics.



Right away, three phantoms have decided to join us, so we get a Healer, a Merchant, and a Soldier at no cost.



Merchants are weak in fights, but have an attack skill that gives money when used, and a skill called "Made of Money" that gives you more money after battles. They'll also buy and sell items on Phantom Isle; each time you buy items from them they earn more experience, so you can level them up without bringing them to the battlefield. The higher their level, the better the items you can buy from them.



Healers are pretty self-explanatory, having some basic attack magic and a healing skill to start off.



Soldiers have pretty mediocre stats all-around, but they have the Energy Saver skill, which lets them stay confined for longer periods of time than other phantoms. They're decent in the early game, but later on they're little more than fusion fodder.

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There's also a few more classes available at the start via the "Create Phantom" option, so let's take a look at those.



Witch - Magic users. Physically weak, poor movement range and can only stay confined for 3 turns, but they can dish out a lot of damage. Starts off with the basic Shock and Ice spells.



Valkyrie - Your basic physical fighter, toting good HP, Attack and Speed. Adept with physical attacks, lousy at everything else.



Fighter - Similar to Valkyries, slower but toting higher Defense.



Dungeon Monk - Definitely won't win any awards for stats, but they have the ability to create randomly-generated dungeons, which are the game's single best source of level grinding (and successful completion will cause them to gain experience and levels). Their skills include Escape, which lets your party leave a random dungeon early (but costs money to use) and Exp. Riser, which grants more experience from fights. The latter also makes them good fusion fodder.

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Alright, now we'll take a look at the stats screen in greater detail.



Your five basic stats are Attack, Defense, Intelligence, Resistance, and Speed. All of these are pretty self-explanatory.

Steal is your chance of stealing a weapon from an enemy when you use the Lift command on them.

Guard is your chance of blocking an attack with your currently equipped weapon, splitting the damage between the character and the weapon. As you'll see in a bit, weapons have stats and even skills of their own, and can level up, take damage, and be "killed" like characters.



Listed at the top are your character's resistances to the Fire, Wind and Ice elements. When in the positive totals these will block a percent of any damage of that element you sustain; when in the negatives you'll actually take more damage from them. Ash and Marona's resistances all default to 0%.

Mana, as in other NIS games, is your character's basic means of advancement. In this case, it is principally used to earn skills by fusing characters and weapons. Your characters earn more mana by defeating enemies, winning battles and fusing with items and characters.

Remove is the number of turns that character can stay on the field after being confined to something. After that many turns have passed, the character will vanish from the battlefield, and cannot be summoned again until the next battle. All phantom characters (i.e. everyone but Marona) are bound by this limitation, which comprises a large part of the game's strategy.

As explained earlier, Mv is the character's movement range, and affects how far they can move each turn.

Below the Level, Experience and HP gauges are the character's Title and name. Titles actually add benefits and penalties to a character's base statistics (and change their color palettes), and can be swapped around between characters and objects later on when you recruit a Titlist. For now, Marona just has a "Plain" title, which doesn't grant any bonuses or penalties whatsoever.

The "Equip" stats at the bottom are the stats that another character will gain if they wield that character as a weapon.



A bunch of icons, each with their own SP total, a letter grade, and an experience bar. First, let's explain what each of these means.

Basic physical attacks.
Special physical attacks.
Elemental attacks.
Plant-based attacks.
Abilities that alter time and space.
Stat-altering abilities.
Healing abilities.

These are general guidelines - you'll see the occasional damaging technique in the Healing category, for example, so your healers can fight back when they need to.

As you use skills of a particular type, the experience gauge will fill. Each time it fills you will earn more SP - points used to perform most skills in that category. The letter grades indicate how quickly each type of skill will level up for that character, with F being the slowest and S being the fastest.

As you can see, Marona's pretty weak in the combat department, so she's pretty much reliant on phantoms to do her fighting for her. However, she does make a competent healer, and can cast various buffer spells quite well.



Finally, this list contains all of the skills that particular character has learned and their SP costs. Skills also have experience bars and levels, becoming more effective with repeated use.

Being the beginning of the game, Marona doesn't have much to work with yet - just a few basic attack skills that everyone starts off with, Chartreuse (representing her ability to communicate with phantoms) and Confine (representing her ability to bind phantoms to objects).

Ash also has two nifty skills: "Quick Attack" grants him a turn immediately after he's been confined to something, and "Solemn Vow", which doubles his ATK and INT stats when he's on his last turn. Both are handy for getting out of a jam.

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Before we start, there are a few hidden goodies on Phantom Isle that we can put to good use. I'll list them off here.

Try to ignore the numbers, I accidentally toggled them on in Virtualdub. I'm not sure what they're called or how to disable or enable them (except to shut down Virtualdub entirely and then restart). Of course since I already captured the video and saved my game, it's a little too late for that.



Jump around a bit in the circle of stones to find 100 Bordeaux.



Jumping around in the corner of the map near the beach holds another 100 Bordeaux.



Jumping on this small, raised portion of land on the hill behind Marona's house holds another 100 Bordeaux.



Jumping in the small indentation behind Marona's house holds - you guessed it - another 100 Bordeaux.



Climbing onto the roof of the house results in the message "New High Score" and yet another 100 Bor.



Using someone as a stepping stone, we can climb onto the large tree to get another High Score message and a Changebook, a spellbook that holds the Fire and Mega Fire skills. It also has the unique ability to let you swap the character you control on Phantom Island by picking up the book, walking to the character you wish to switch to, and pressing the R2 button. Not terribly useful, but fun.



Now here's where things get tricky. You'll have to carry at least four people onto the roof, toss them onto the large tree, then stack them up. Now climb atop the highest person and jump to earn another High Score message and a free Bottlemail character!



Bottlemails are possibly the weakest monsters in the entire game, but they do have one redeeming feature, which I'll go into detail about a bit later.

Reportedly, you can earn even more money by reaching even greater heights, so if you want to pull an IT-HE and create a ridiculous stack of rocks, phantoms and swords stretching into the sky, be my guest. I'm just going to move on from here, as it's far more efficient (and less tedious) to earn it from battles.

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Well what do you know, we've doubled our starting stake, found a neat item and recruited a useful new party member with only a few minutes' work. Not too shabby. Now let's proceed to the game proper.



Off to the overworld map, and the only other available island at the moment, Terra Firma.



Title card, complete with pretty music.



Terra Firma's no exception to the general distrust of Marona, it seems.



Being hired to stop a thief.



Ash makes a blunder and shouts in surprise, which freaks out everyone present since nobody but Marona can actually see him.



Ash apparently knows of the guys, and advises Marona not to take the job.



But she does anyway.



Yep, they're totally afraid of us.



More tutorials! We'll go ahead and do this one, since it'll make it easier to explain some more of the mechancis and it'll grant us an opportunity to snag a neat sword.



Like I mentioned earlier, Marona's pretty much reliant on phantoms to dish out damage, and to summon them requires them to be "confined" to objects on the field. These can be nearly anything - rocks, bushes, trees, weapons, and so on. Depending upon what you confine them to, their stats will get bonuses or penalties - confining to a rock will grant more Attack and Defense but will lower Speed, for example. As seen in the above screenshot, confining to a flower bed increases Intelligence and Resistance but lowers HP, Attack and Defense. Of course, the best idea is to confine characters to objects that benefit their innate skills.

Marona can summon up to 16 characters in one battle. However, weapons count toward this limit as well, so if you call in someone carrying one it counts as summoning two characters. Something to keep in mind.



Lifting and throwing is another essential skill. When you lift an object (or character), it basically amounts to "equipping" that object/character as a weapon, which will increase your stats and allow you to use any skills that object/character may have. You can even lift and wield enemies, though they will automatically attack you when their turn comes up, causing you to take damage.

Throwing lets you manipulate the field to your advantage - you can pick up and throw an ally toward a distant enemy, toss an enemy out of the way so he doesn't attack a weakened character, and so on. You can even throw items and characters out of the board entirely! There is a downside to this, though - if you throw an enemy out, all of the other enemies on the board will gain levels, making them harder to defeat.

Some particularly annoying enemies also like to throw your party members and items out of the field, so be careful of that.

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As you can see, here Ash now has access to a few skills via the Snakish Sword - Angle Slash, Snake Beater, and Ice.

Angle Slash is a basic sword attack. Nothing special.
Ice is exactly the same thing as the basic Witch spell, also not really of note.
Snake Beater is pretty neat, though - ice-element damage, a large arc of attack, and hits multiple enemies, all for the cost of one Special Physical point.

Normally you'd never see this sword again once the Tutorial was over, but we're going to put Kyle the Bottlemail to use so we can keep this nifty little item.



See that "Obtain rate" stat? That's the chance you have of keeping the item that phantom is Confined to once their last turn is up and they're removed from the field; generally this is in the 30-50% range. If you make the check, the object will vanish as well, and will appear back on Phantom Isle the next time you stop by. If not, the item will simply drop back onto the field where that character stood.

The neat thing about Bottlemails, though, is that they have a 100% Obtain Rate with almost every item. So as long as you can keep him alive until his last turn ends (not too hard with their high Speed and movement range), you can basically snag any item you want! They're not too shabby at stealing items from enemies, either.



So Confine him to the Snakish Sword...



And move him well out of the way of the enemies so he doesn't get picked off. Now just wait a few turns and...



Bingo!



Our Merchant helpfully shows off the auto-attack after being lifted and wielded by a Scrabbit.



Likewise, another Scrabbit wields his buddy and uses him to perform an attack called "Cooperation" on our hapless Soldier.



Finally, there's Protections. Some objects on the field beam out "Protections" to other objects and enemies, which basically give them stat bonuses or other benefits. You can see what items are projecting Protections and what items are receiving them by moving your cursor over them. In this case, the tree in the corner of the board is transmitting a Heal 30% HP protection to another tree.

These are frequently used to grant bonuses to your enemies (thus making the boards harder), but you can also utilize them to your advantage. By Confining a phantom to an object receiving a Protection, that Phantom will receive that protection as well!



Now Ash gets to recover 30% of his HP each turn. Should the object emitting the Protection be destroyed, though, the recipient will lose the effect, so you'll want to defend that tree.

Also note that the tree emitting the Protection does not get its benefits; only the object or character on the receiving end does. So if you bind someone to that tree, they will send out the Protection, but they will not get the effect themselves.

These can get pretty wild, especially in random dungeons. Sometimes you'll see things like "Damage 300%" or "Strength x5", which dish out 300% damage each turn and make your enemies 5x more damaging, respectively. Fortunately, they're usually more reasonable in the main quest.



You'll want to stop back by Phantom Isle between fights to recover HP and SP, as well as revive characters and fix broken items. Our Healer can take care of both of these tasks.



Ah yes, and each time you return to your island after completing a map, you'll get little updates on what your phantoms have been up to. As you can see, items produce Mana, Merchants make a bit of money, and Soldiers basically slack off. You can only get these bonuses from "Summoned" phantoms and items - ones being "Stored" don't generate any bonuses.

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Alright, now for a brief explanation of all these skill-related icons.



These just list what stat the skill is reliant upon to deal damage - HP, ATK, DEF, INT, RES or SPD. The Defense stat guards against HP, ATK, DEF and SPD based attacks, while Resistance defends against INT, RES and SPD based attacks.



The next icon just indicates the number of targets that skill can hit. The one on the left indicates that it hits only a single target (regardless of the size of the attack's radius) and the other indicates an attack that can hit all enemies within its radius.

The next icon indicates the elemental property, if any.

Fire Element
Wind Element
Water/Ice Element

These icons indicate status effects, usually with the text "(Icon) effect" in the descriptor.

- Amnesia. The character can only perform basic skills.
- Daze. The character gets no experience.
- Gamble. The next attack will either kill the character or miss entirely.
- Paralysis. The character's speed and movement range decrease.
- Poison. The character takes damage every turn.
- Sleep. The character skips their turn.

Additional effects

- Absorb. The user absorbs HP from the target.
- Knockback. The target flies backward a short distance when hit.
- Transport. The user moves somewhere else while using this skill.
- Unequip. The user drops their equipped weapon while using this skill.
- Unequip target. The target drops their equipped weapon when hit by this skill.

Finally, some skills have this:

- This skill can't be transferred via Fusion. This icon is usually only seen on basic skills like Shock and Thwap.



As an example, the skill Acid Rain has damage based on INT, can hit multiple targets, is Water element, and adds Poison status.



For another example, here's the Changebook's Thwap skill, which is INT based, hits a single target, and has Knockback. It also cannot be transferred, being a basic skill.

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Alright, I've rambled on for quite a while, it's time for some input from YOU, the reader! I'll let you pick out a few Phantoms to create and even let you name them! We're restricted to the classes listed above for now, though.

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Thanks to a few requests from Syd and Rattar, we've got our first few recruits:

* Lithium the Merchant (named in tribute to Rattar's merchant in Makai Kingdom)
* Red Arremer the Fighter (named after Capcom's badass demon character, perhaps better known as "Firebrand")
* Ms. Knuckles the Valkyrie (shortened because "Ms. Knucklesgood" wouldn't fit)
* I also added Naomi the Witch, since I still have No More Heroes fresh in my mind.

I held off on making a Dungeon Monk for now, because A) they're spendy and B) we're too low-level to go parading around in areas that might randomly have enemies double or triple the dungeon's recommended level anyway.



As with Disgaea, the more money you spend on creating a character, the more points you can add to their starting stats, which will make them significantly more powerful in the long run. I just stuck to one-point characters for now, since we're still pretty light on cash.



Witches have the ability to rearrange your skill lists when you speak to them, which is handy in the late-game when everyone has an overabundance of skills and only a few useful ones.



Phantoms that don't do anything outside of battle just dispense random lines of dialog when spoken to. Occasionally they'll give you bonus experience, Bor or Mana, as well, so be sure to talk to them each chapter.



Our first few purchased weapons, courtesy of our merchant Lithium. As you can see, weapons also have Titles that affect their stats.

As stated before, anyone can equip any type of weapon, but the skills and stats they grant definitely work better with characters suited for them. So we've got everyone equipped as follows:

Marona - Saintly SteelStaff
Ash - Snakish
Red Arremer - Novice WideSword
Ms. Knuckles - Common Spear
Malcom - Clumsy Knife
Naomi - Normal Wood Cane
Flora - Saintly SteelStaff



Finally, we'll do a little arrangement. If you toss a weapon to a character, they'll follow behind you. Tossing another weapon to another person will cause them to follow the person behind you, and so on. Once you take a weapon from someone, they'll stop where they are. You can use this to arrange your characters.

Generally I just use this to line up the characters that see frequent use on the island (Merchants, Healers, Fusionists, etc) and let the others just loiter around wherever they appear. Weapons I generally just leave in a neat stack so I can use them for later rearranging.

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Now that I've finally gotten all of those icons out of the way, let's get into some battles!



If you're getting the impression that most everyone in the game has a flashy animation and a catch phrase for whenever they're about to battle, you're right.



The first real battle of the game's against a few weak slime enemies. However, it's made even easier by this tree casting a Heal 30% HP and Strengthen 30% on five objects surrounding your starting point. So you basically have a 0% chance of losing this fight.



This also marks the first appearance of a "Neutral" unit on the field, indicated by the yellow health bar. Depending on the map, these characters may help you fight against enemies, do nothing, simply fight against both you and your enemies. Oftentimes, you don't need to defeat them to clear the map. Defeating this guy helps, though:



Because he's of a character class we haven't encountered yet, and after defeating a new character class we can create them back on Phantom Isle.

Mystics are basically a combination of a Fighter and a Healer, though not quite as good at either of those classes' specialties. Still, versatility is always a good thing to have when you can only summon a limited number of Phantoms in each battle. They also have the "Healing Birth" skill, which restores some of thier HP when they're confined to something, which isn't a bad thing to have in random dungeons.

Alright, now on to the next battle at Terra Firma.



Here we have a single brown Slime transmitting an Experience x2 Protection to all the other enemies on the board, which actually works in our advantage since we get double points for defeating them!



Meanwhile, the blue Slimes behind him are transmitting various protections to this guy, making his Attack, Defense, and damage double their normal totals.

The strategy for this board is pretty self-evident, so let's just skip back to our return trip to Phantom Isle.



Our foe on the last map was a new class, so we now have access to Blacksmith phantoms! This one was helpfully named "HeartCrafter" by Aquas' suggestion.

These guys are essential to unlocking new skills on items, as well as leveling up your weapons you accomplish both of these via the weapons' Mana totals, which build up in battle and as they lay summoned on Phantom Isle. Blacksmiths also have the useful "Mana Monger" skill, which allows them to earn Mana at a greater rate than other characters.

Their also make them decent physical fighters.



All weapons have quite a few more skills available, though to access the rest you'll have to pay some Mana.

While your weapons can gain "experience" through fights, they cannot level up without spending some Mana at a Blacksmith. The best idea with this is to fill up the experience gauge, at which point you need only spend 1 Mana to level up that weapon. You can level them up before this, but it will cost more Mana to do so, which means less for you to spend on learning skills and transferring around to other items or characters.

Several sword weapons have a "Burst" skill, a basic Special Physical skill which costs 0 Mana to learn. I'm not sure why they didn't just make it available from the start, but regardless, if your character is going to be using Special Physicals be sure to learn that one right away on each weapon you buy.

Now that that's taken care of, it's time for our last stop on Terra Firma, and our first boss fight.



A goofy-voiced werewolf who uses rolling Rs as much as he possibly can. Not quite befitting of a White Wolf Army leader.



Ash suspects that he's not who he claims to be.



He has a good point.



Marona decides to believe him anyway though.



Yep, more Slimes that can barely nick off 1-2 HP at a time on your characters. The only real threat here is Raphael himself, and even he shouldn't be too problematic if you have an average party level of 3 or 4.



Ash can apparently become visible to other people if he chooses to, as he does here. Once again, Marona's reputation precedes her, though, and Raphael runs off in fear.



For all of our work, we get our danger pay of 200 Bordeaux.



Ash is less than impressed by this miniscule sum, though.



Marona brushes him off as the elder chuckles at short-charging her.



At least the owl kid from before appreciates their hard work.



The same cannot be said of the protective mother, however.



Guess she's used to it by now.



Another job offer already.



Oh snap. Ash and Marona wisely decide not to clue in this client on Marona's abilities.



Next stop: Vapor Island!



Ah yes, once you defeat twenty of a monster type, you can create them as Phantoms.



Slimes have meager stats all-around. However, they do have one useful trait - they have an "SSS" fusion compatibility when anything is fused to them, and an "A" when they fuse to anything. If the item/character you want to fuse has a low compatibility rating, you can use them to conserve Mana by first fusing the item you want to fuse to the Slime, then fusing the Slime to the character/object you want to fuse.
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Next time: Chapter 2, where we meet one of the game's main antagonists, a mysterious character named Walnut.

Continue to Part 2!

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- Spoony Spoonicus <- 3:03:05 pm, wednesday, march 5th, 2008 pst <- (updated 3:23:33 pm, wed, mar 5th, 2008 pst)