Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero Review (PS5) – Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a surprising sequel to a PS2 and PSP tactical RPG that fans never thought we’d get. Nippon Ichi Software and NIS America have given their fans another great tactical RPG set in a wonderful world with a unique take on characters and mechanics.
Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero Review PS5 Review
An Exciting and Carefree Adventure
The Lost Hero is a direct sequel to Phantom Brave and takes place six months after the first game’s events. Once again, you take on the role of Marona, a young girl who can see and talk to ghosts or phantoms, as they are referred to in this game. Not only can she interact with them, but she can also have them possess objects in the environment to give themselves a physical form.
Marona and her Phantom protector, Ash, are attacked on a ship by a mysterious Phantom pirate crew. Their leader can somehow drain Marona’s powers, but Ash rescues her. Ordering her to jump ship and swim to a nearby island, Ash remains on board the vessel to hold off the Phantom Pirate crew.
Washing up on shore, Marona makes friends with Phantoms on the island and a small human crew of pirates. She plans to rescue Ash and stop the Phantom pirate crew. It’s a simple story and doesn’t do much to stand out from the growing list of strategy RPGs on the market.
A World Inhabited By A Vast Cast
The world of The Lost Hero takes place across a large string of islands, each with its unique landscapes, monsters, and citizens. However, most of the time, these islands don’t make much sense. For example, one island has zombies and werewolves, while knights inhabit another.
Marona has a unique ability to infuse Phantoms into objects and give them a corporeal form. On her base island called Skull Rock Island, Phantoms hears of her exceptional ability and comes to help her on her quest. On Skull Rock Island, Marona can create new heroes from various classes by customizing their looks and providing them with unique stats.
Each Phantom is unique to a specific class, such as Witch, Thief, Warrior, or Healer, among many others. Although they are unique in class, their abilities aren’t that unique. The only thing that sets them apart is their restrictions on the weapons they can wield.
A Vast Cast Of Characters But Not Much To Separate Them
Weapons are just as important as the character you are recruiting. Weapons are how you learn new skills; each skill is unique to a weapon type. These skills are learned as a character levels up and the weapon they wields levels up. You’ll also unlock passive abilities and can use scrolls you find to give characters unique abilities and skills.
It’s not my favorite system because it takes away much of the uniqueness of a traditional party with unique characters. Instead, it feels like the majority of tactical titles have you requiring dozens of characters, but none of which have a story or connection to Marona or her objectives.
As you progress, you can require an engine that allows you to build tanks and cannons you can summon on the battlefield. You can recruit a fisherman to fish for objects and weapons in the ocean and even a musician who will allow you to listen to the game’s various tracks.
Fun Combat With Unique Mechanics
Combat in Phantom Brave has many rules you must follow and learn quickly; otherwise, you could be left with no party and have to restart many battles. That’s not to say the game is challenging. It’s one of the easier SRPGs on the market.
When you begin combat, you start with Marona, who can “Confine” a Phantom from your party to an object on the map. That object can be a box, a tree, a rock, a sword, and other objects. Each of these objects also gives a bonus stat like Speed or Attack, so it’s beneficial to summon a character on that object who benefits from an increase of that stat.
Once summoned, that Phantom can only exist briefly before they leave the battle, and you can summon them again for the remainder of the fight. Each Phantom has about four or five turns before they leave. Though it sounds short, most battles will be over before you reach that turn limit.
Highly Detailed Environments And Maps
EXP is shared between party members during combat. If you defeat an enemy, all party members on the field earn the same EXP, making it much easier to level up your vast party without constantly replicating missions over and over to level up party members you may not even feel like you enjoy playing with.
Combat isn’t like other tactical RPGs like Disgaea. Movement is free range, and you can move around the map as much as you want based on how much movement your character moves based on a circular radius. The circle gets smaller as you move to indicate how much movement you can still make.
Each character has one action: attack or provide a support skill. They can also throw their weapon at enemies or pick up objects in the environment and throw them.
Gorgeous Visuals With Plenty Of Voice Work
Visually, the game is quite charming. The Chibi character models are adorable, and the characters are distinct enough that you can tell them apart.
The maps where the battles occur are also highly detailed and unique, with plenty of terrain to traverse and layers to place your long-range fighters on to position them on. Attack animations and effects are also well done, with many unique and ambitious flash attacks for you to look at.
The sound design is equally solid, with plenty of voice acting and some fun tracks to listen to, even though none are very memorable. During story conversations, you’ll treated to delightful character portraits as well.
Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a fun and, at times, addicting game with plenty of fun characters, entertaining combat, and delightful themes. It’s also perfect for people who aren’t into tactical RPGs, as the game isn’t challenging and doesn’t have a big learning curve. The Lost Hero isn’t going to change the genre, but it sure is making it accessible.
Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero releases on January 30, 2025 for PS5 and PS4.
Review Code kindly provided by publisher.