Phantom Brave

"I can attack with a tree?"

I was flicking through a magazine one day when I saw this game reviewed. It had gotten a rating of 'A' which piqued my interest. I did some research on the Internet and saw some really awesome looking screen shots of the game. I continued on this thread of happiness reading reviews by other people who rated it really, really high. I had some money so I went out and bought this game. It even came with a free soundtrack CD thing! It wasn't necessary but it's good to get free stuff every now and again don't you think? Anyway, bought the game, took it home, loaded it up in the old faithful PlayStation 2 and was ready for some fun. It didn't stay for dinner.

Story 8/10

The story centres around a young, green haired girl called Marona. But Marona isn't like all those other heroes in the world who fight with swords and magic. She can literally call forth phantoms to help her. That would be the coolest thing ever. Phantoms are basically things that exist in another dimension and most people can't see them. Marona has had a tough life as her parents died when she was young along with a man called Ash. Ash came back to Marona's island home and became her protector. They do jobs for people and earn money in order to make a living for themselves. However, sometimes it is hard to find jobs as people treat Marona as if she is cursed for being able to converse with phantoms.

The story is told well. Sometimes a woman narrator will tell the player how Marona is feeling. I just found it annoying. I mean, Marona is sitting on the bed looking sad and the Narrator says that Marona is feeling sad. I can SEE that.
The characters, however, are awesome. The voice acting is really good and some of the stories told are pretty touching and really bring out emotions.

Graphics 8/10

Wow. After playing games like Final Fantasy X a lot it's good to come back to a sprite based game. The animation is simple, yet somehow beautiful to behold. You can see a lot of work went into the still frames and backgrounds though. Marona's Island is so awesome.

Music and Sound 10/10

I'll give the game this, it certainly knows how to make music. It probably should seeing how a CD with all the music comes with the game. I really just found the hacking and slashing sounds standard. I mean, you can't really have an EXCELLENT sword clanging sound can you? However it's entirely passable. But the MUSIC man the MUSIC! It is quite simply really, really good. You'll listen to the CD for sure.

Game play 3/10

Good gravy, holy moly and gee willickers. I don't understand. What happened to the game? The music, the graphics...Everything was going great...This is a joke right? Nope, no joke. The game play of this game is shocking. More shocking then a Pikachu Thunderbolt. Right let's get started on what makes this so appalling.

Let's start with the battles as they are the most important things in the game. (It's what the game is basically made up of after all) The battles are turn-based, when you start a battle, instead of having all of your awesome phantom allies by your side there's only Marona. And a huge mother load of monsters. What Marona has to do is confine a phantom to an object somewhere on the map the battle is taking place at. When someone moves they can move within a huge circle. I don't really know why they chose a circle. Maybe because squares would take too long on a PS2. Anyway, so you confine a phantom to an object. The object can be almost anything. A bush, a tree, rocks, swords...you see it, and you can probably confine a phantom to it. This is a passable system so far. It makes no sense but let's carry on anyway. So once you've confined your phantom to the object the phantom's stats will change depending on what you confined them to. So let's say you confine a phantom to a rock. They're speed will go down but they're defence will rise. See? This is, once again, passable but making some sense this time. Okay awesome; now let's get our phantom to attack when it's his/her turn. Your phantom attacks and now it's Marona's turn again. (It's worth mentioning that you can confine as many phantoms as you want in one turn) This goes on for a while until, unexpectedly (for me anyway) the phantom I first summoned attacks his monster and then disappears.

WHAT. THE. HELL. For some unexplained reason, phantoms you summon to the battlefield can only stay there for a certain number of turns before they disappear into thin air never to be seen until the next battle. This makes NO SENSE. So, if the battle takes too long all of your phantoms will disappear and leave Marona there to fight the monsters (usually a boss) by herself. It's necessary to mention that Marona is weak. Really weak. She can do minimal damage to the boss and enemies and this makes it hard to complete battles without yelling at the screen in frustration. In short. They messed up the battle system while it could have been really well done, I liked where they were going with the whole confine to rocks and trees thing, they messed it up by putting in a turn limit. There's also a thing where you can throw your enemies out of bounds (of the map) and they disappear. Unfortunately all the other monsters increase a level. The enemies can do that to your phantoms too. If they do you lose that phantom for the rest of the battle. But does your team level up? Noooooo. The whole system just doesn't FLOW like it should. And if it did then it would be a really awesome system.

Right battles aside to other issues.

You can summon almost any kind of phantom to Marona's Island where they will live for a while. You can summon soldiers, healers, dungeon creators and merchants to name a few. You can buy items from merchants and get healed by healers obviously. For some reason though, your healer demands to be paid for healing your group. This didn't make much sense to me but ah well. As you level up your merchant better stuff will become accessible for purchasing which is kinda cool. Dungeon creators are used for exactly that, creating dungeons which you can explore if you want. The dungeon is created by the game; it's not like a map editor. That would have been cool though. As you progress through the game new phantoms are unlocked and you can summon them to your island so you can use them in battle. Unfortunately they all start out on level 1 which is annoying if you're far into the game and just don't want to have to level them up all the way to where your characters are.

You can beat up your phantoms, jump on them, pick them up and throw them around. These are just here for fun. When I got frustrated my poor phantoms became my punching bag. There is a use for throwing around characters on your island but you can figure that out for yourself! All in all these things will just serve to frustrate you.

Replay Value 2/10

I don't understand why you would put yourself through playing this game again. I couldn't go through this game even ONCE without almost crying and switching to a better game. I suppose some people must be getting SOMETHING out of it however or they wouldn't be giving it such good reviews. Good on them I guess?

Buy or Rent: Rent

I recommend you rent this game just in case you are like me and don't enjoy this game so much. However, if you like it, go ahead and buy it. I'm sure you'll get something out of it that I didn't.

I just think it was a bad game that had potential to be a real smash-hit. Oh well, it might be just me. Give it a whirl and see if you like it.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/06