- Features new story chapters, characters, items, better graphics, and a revamped UI
- New characters and hidden secrets will be revealed with newly recorded voice overs
- Turn based strategy RPG that incorporates unique battle styles and a hardcore character customization system
- Players can create units from a number of monster/ghost categories and power them up to an exponential number
- Contains free roaming style battlefields and randomly generated dungeons giving incredible replay value
Product Description
Released in 2004 Phantom Brave revolutionized the strategy RPG genre with its unique free roaming battle fields and a unit summoning system called “CONFINE”. Now Phantom Brave returns to a new console with added features and extra chapter stories. Everything from the original game will be carried over, so gamers who haven’t played Phantom Brave can fully enjoy this title. The Story: A world of vast seas and small island continents, Ivoire existed in peace and harmony. Ancient mystic forces with forgotten powers now threaten the existence of man kind. Islands, once flourishing with life, now lie as empty waste lands. Remaining decadent cities are corrupted by unnatural events and violence. The shadow of darkness is slowly, but surely, engulfing the world of Ivoir. In the year of 921, in a world called Ivoire, lives Marona, a 13 year old orphaned girl with a special ability to communicate with phantoms. Her ability brings resentment from others, but c… More >>
If you like tactical strategy games this is a must have for your collection. Like all NIS games it is very deep if you want to put the time and effort into it. Or you can just go through the main story if you don’t want to delve to deeply into it. Highly recommended!!
Phantom Brave: We Meet Again is a strategic role-playing game whose gently melancholic storyline hides a staggering depth of play. The story itself isn’t groundbreaking. 13-year-old Marona has been left orphaned by the death of her parents who worked as Chromas (essentially, mercenaries who fight monsters). At their death at the hands of a demon named Sulfur, their final spell left Ash, their apprentice, stuck between life and death as a phantom. Ash now serves as Marona’s guardian, which is a mixed blessing – the locals for whom Marona works fear her spectral connections and revile her as “The Possessed Chroma”, frequently insulting her or cheating her of her pay. Still, Marona’s innocent faith and affection seem to be seeing her through the hard times with Ash. But now, Sulfur’s minions are reappearing, and things are getting dangerous….
The gameplay, of course, involves Ash, Marona and her phantom friends fighting said minions on the way to a showdown with Sulfur. But the real fun comes in more than just leveling up. Each character not only levels, but has a level for each move they learn. Then, their weapons level up as well, as well as each of *their* skills and moves. And to top it off, you can “fuse” weapons to other weapons to form even stronger ones, fuse characters together to, for example, give a fighter healing abilities as well, or even fuse weapons to characters (handy if they get disarmed during a fight and lose the skills from their main weapon). There’s great fun in trying to figure out if combining your character’s sword with, say, a fish will be a step forward or back. (Yes, some of the weapons are, shall we say, unusual.)
If there’s any complaint about the Wii version of Phantom Brave, it’s certainly not that you don’t get your money’s worth. In the port from the PS2, there’s an entirely new scenario added, as well as additonal maps where you can fight other NIS characters such as Laharl.
Those who enjoy strategic RPGs should find Phantom Brave: We Meet Again an addictive game, and a great addition to a Wii collection.
I’ve played several tactical (or strategy) RPG’s in the past: Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT Advance, FFT A2: Grimoire of the Rift, an Onimusha strategy game (briefly), and two different Tactics Ogre games. All of those games I just listed are grid-based, but Phantom Brave: We Meet Again (Wii) goes against convention in that and several other ways.
First of all, moving your characters around on a battlefield isn’t done in an exact way like in grid-based strategy games; you can move your characters anywhere within a projected circle, and you can often move them several times in the same turn. You can even hop on top of other characters (including enemies), items on the field, etc. Under slippery terrain conditions your characters could go sliding across the field – and off of ledges – if you aren’t especially careful. Fortunately in most you cases you can press the cancel button and try placing your character any number of times, and placement is KEY since attacks are performed within a three dimensional area whose effectiveness is determined by width as well as height.
Secondly, characters aren’t simply placed where you want (with some limitations) before the start of a battle; all of the “warriors” at your disposal are “phantoms,” and – as such – have to be “confined” to objects on the battlefield. It’s this particular quirk that REALLY sets Phantom Brave apart. Let’s say that there’s a rock and a weed nearby; confining a phantom to the rock would replace it with the selected character (ready for battle) and change their stats according to the benefits and drawbacks of said object. One benefit of confining a phantom to a rock (and stat-changes vary from rock to rock) would usually be a decent increase in total defense, and a drawback would usually be a notable decrease in speed. If you, instead, confine that SAME character to the nearby weed, that character would normally see an increase in the intelligence and resistance stats, while suffering a decrease in attack; so you have to choose your phantoms AND the objects you confine them to with care.
And here’s where the game gets a little crazy: you can pick up – and then throw – pretty much anything and anybody. Not like the look of that particular enemy? Well, you can just pick them up (under most circumstances) and throw them off the side of the field map. Like the weapon that one enemy’s holding? Well, assuming you have a phantom with a decent “steal” stat, you might be able to walk right up to that enemy and snatch the weapon from them. Admittedly, I get my weapon’s taken from me more often than I steal them from enemies, and sometimes the thief simply tosses my cherished item out of bounds so that no one can use it. That’s the sort of game this is; it’s often difficult to predict exactly what an enemy will do or even what strategy will be most effective. I’ve defeated higher level enemies with much lower level phantoms thanks to a quick grab and a toss. However, you can’t always be certain where thrown items (and enemies) will land – especially on fields with a slippery surface.
There’s plenty more to tell about the gameplay of Phantom Brave: different phantom classes and abilities, leveling up weapons and objects, combining characters and items, generating random dungeons… But instead of writing a game manual, I’m going to describe what it’s like to play the game with the Wii’s unique controls. I (briefly) attempted to play the game with just the Wii-mote, but it was somewhat difficult to use the directional pad to select points and targets on the map. The Wii-mote/Nunchuk scheme works much better for me, and I have little trouble commanding my troops with the precise analog stick. I believe that the classic controller can also be used to play the game, but I haven’t tried using it. There’s no use of the pointer and motion controls, but I think that was to be expected since this release of Phantom Brave is essentially a Playstation 2 port with some added content. Overall, the game is fairly easy to control if you look for on-screen icons that indicate which buttons should be pressed and just spend a little time messing around, and if I remember correctly, the initial stages of the game serve as a sort of tutorial to help you learn the basic ins-and-outs of gameplay (an opportune time for the aforementioned messing around).
In conclusion, I’ll say that Phantom Brave: We Meet Again is one of the most (if not THE most) unique, creative, endearingly quirky, and FUN tactical/strategy RPG’s I’ve ever played. It’s sure to provide me with oh-so-many hours of continued gameplay, and I can certainly see myself going back for more and more.