When Phantom Brave originally came out, I was thrilled: having spent 300+ hours on Disgaea the idea of a gridless battle system was intriguing, just like the idea of having your characters on map only for an handful of turns, forcing you to use more than one character and vary tactics to beat a map.
In the end PB didn't drawn me in like Disgaea did (in fact, no other Nippon Ichi strategy game did), but it was a pleasant ride while it lasted. To be completely honest I never finished the game either, it required far more dedication than Disgaea with all of its item-titles-fusions-dungeons mechanics...it surely was a treat for anyone willing to create a character able to dish 999k damage on a single hit but it proved too much for me.
So, what is the rationale in buying this game?
"Rationale" and "buying game" do not fit well together, so here I am playing once again with Phantom Brave, except it's on the Wii.
Right from the start you can chose "Another Marona", an extra chapter not linked with the main game; the game recommends to start this chapter after finishing the main game, but I started it anyway.
Essentially, Another Marona doesn't include any kind of tutorial and most tools exploited in the main game to make money and gain high stats are given much later or not given at all. Just like Etna's chapters in the PSP port of the first Disgaea, Another Marona is relatively short-lived, but it's a nice extra for those crawing for more Phantom Brave action.
For those not willing to search for the original PB post, here's a quick recap of the main game mechanics.
Marona is a 13 years old girl able to summon phantoms within objects scattered across the map. Each object gives bonuses or maluses to the phantom trapped within (for example rocks improve health and defense but lower speed, grass improves intelligence and speed but lowers defense and so on) and each phantom can be trapped within said object for a limited number of turns, after which he/she will disappear and won't be useable till the next mission.
Anything on the map can be picked up: rocks, trees, corpses, starfishes, fruits, enemies, allies...anything; each object will give the carrying character a set of normal and special attacks that the character will slowly learn and make its own, further increasing the phantom usefulness.
Stages are won by defeating all enemies and like Disgaea you can visit random dungeons, but not by entering items, but by creating a phantom that will create them for a price.
Other peculiar jobs include the titlist, able to boost or nerf stats by giving a title (useless, normal, wonderful, etc etc) to, again, anything in the game; blacksmiths can upgrade items by using the mana stored in them (gained by defeating enemies with them or not used for a mission); fusionist can merge together items or phantoms to create a better version of something.
The system is deep and complex and if you're playing the main game there's a short tutorial when something new is introduced, but it won't be easy to master...sometimes I've found it almost frustrating, with all those numbers and possibilities.
The Wii port features Japanese and American voices, a series of controller options (Wiimote, Wiimote+nunchuk, classic controller, GC pad) and tha ability to set sprites as blurry (PS2 like) or vivid, which is essentially a 1:1 display of all sprites - they appear blocky but I think they are better in vivid mode.
All phantoms now have a couple of random sentences when summoned, but I don't remember it from the PS2 version.
The game theorically supports 16:9: theorically because there are black borders on the sides of the screen whenever the game shows menus, cutscenes or stages; but custscenes, fonts and boxes have been optimized for widescreens; stages are a little mystery as the sprites appear to be on the fat side.
According to a GameFAQs thread, sprites are always rendered in 4:3 proportions like stages but background art has been modified to 16:9...it's not something you can't exactly point out, but visuals do put you off a little if you played the original, it's not as straigthforward as Disgaea's PSP port, for example.
As for control options, I went for the classic controller, using the d-pad; there are a couple of interesting shortcuts linked to Zl and Zr buttons and the game automatically recognized the pad, but strangely enough it doesn't show up in the controller options.
The game comes in the standard Wii box, encased by a nice light cardboard slider; illustrations on said slider and standard case are different from the PS2 original, plus you get a digital artwork disc, a CD-ROM with a simple HTML interface linking to skecthes, wallpapers and other random media linked to Phantom Brave; if I'm not mistaken it's exaclty the same disc first distributed with the original PS2 release; there are no BGMs on this disc but it's much better than the partial soundtrack released with the US edition of the PS2 version.
In the end PB didn't drawn me in like Disgaea did (in fact, no other Nippon Ichi strategy game did), but it was a pleasant ride while it lasted. To be completely honest I never finished the game either, it required far more dedication than Disgaea with all of its item-titles-fusions-dungeons mechanics...it surely was a treat for anyone willing to create a character able to dish 999k damage on a single hit but it proved too much for me.
So, what is the rationale in buying this game?
"Rationale" and "buying game" do not fit well together, so here I am playing once again with Phantom Brave, except it's on the Wii.
Right from the start you can chose "Another Marona", an extra chapter not linked with the main game; the game recommends to start this chapter after finishing the main game, but I started it anyway.
Essentially, Another Marona doesn't include any kind of tutorial and most tools exploited in the main game to make money and gain high stats are given much later or not given at all. Just like Etna's chapters in the PSP port of the first Disgaea, Another Marona is relatively short-lived, but it's a nice extra for those crawing for more Phantom Brave action.
For those not willing to search for the original PB post, here's a quick recap of the main game mechanics.
Marona is a 13 years old girl able to summon phantoms within objects scattered across the map. Each object gives bonuses or maluses to the phantom trapped within (for example rocks improve health and defense but lower speed, grass improves intelligence and speed but lowers defense and so on) and each phantom can be trapped within said object for a limited number of turns, after which he/she will disappear and won't be useable till the next mission.
Anything on the map can be picked up: rocks, trees, corpses, starfishes, fruits, enemies, allies...anything; each object will give the carrying character a set of normal and special attacks that the character will slowly learn and make its own, further increasing the phantom usefulness.
Stages are won by defeating all enemies and like Disgaea you can visit random dungeons, but not by entering items, but by creating a phantom that will create them for a price.
Other peculiar jobs include the titlist, able to boost or nerf stats by giving a title (useless, normal, wonderful, etc etc) to, again, anything in the game; blacksmiths can upgrade items by using the mana stored in them (gained by defeating enemies with them or not used for a mission); fusionist can merge together items or phantoms to create a better version of something.
The system is deep and complex and if you're playing the main game there's a short tutorial when something new is introduced, but it won't be easy to master...sometimes I've found it almost frustrating, with all those numbers and possibilities.
The Wii port features Japanese and American voices, a series of controller options (Wiimote, Wiimote+nunchuk, classic controller, GC pad) and tha ability to set sprites as blurry (PS2 like) or vivid, which is essentially a 1:1 display of all sprites - they appear blocky but I think they are better in vivid mode.
All phantoms now have a couple of random sentences when summoned, but I don't remember it from the PS2 version.
The game theorically supports 16:9: theorically because there are black borders on the sides of the screen whenever the game shows menus, cutscenes or stages; but custscenes, fonts and boxes have been optimized for widescreens; stages are a little mystery as the sprites appear to be on the fat side.
According to a GameFAQs thread, sprites are always rendered in 4:3 proportions like stages but background art has been modified to 16:9...it's not something you can't exactly point out, but visuals do put you off a little if you played the original, it's not as straigthforward as Disgaea's PSP port, for example.
As for control options, I went for the classic controller, using the d-pad; there are a couple of interesting shortcuts linked to Zl and Zr buttons and the game automatically recognized the pad, but strangely enough it doesn't show up in the controller options.
The game comes in the standard Wii box, encased by a nice light cardboard slider; illustrations on said slider and standard case are different from the PS2 original, plus you get a digital artwork disc, a CD-ROM with a simple HTML interface linking to skecthes, wallpapers and other random media linked to Phantom Brave; if I'm not mistaken it's exaclty the same disc first distributed with the original PS2 release; there are no BGMs on this disc but it's much better than the partial soundtrack released with the US edition of the PS2 version.