Phantom Brave: the Lost Hero

 A sequel to Phantom Brave over twenty years after the original's debut, as well as the first Nippon Ichi title in a long title that caught my eye.  But does it prove to be a worthy successor to a small cult favorite, or does it not confine interest?

Phantom Brave, while not as well-regarded as Nippon Ichi's Disgaea titles, is nevertheless a small cult classic for the company - enough to get several rereleases with added content over the years.  I do consider it one of my favorite NIS titles, though I also admit its gameplay is pretty basic and has quite a few prominent flaws.  Confining phantoms into objects on the battlefield doesn't add as much strategy as they clearly hoped it would, and the overall slow, grindy and somewhat buggy nature of its design keeps it from being fun beyond a point.  Still, its charming characters and having a more serious, often sad tone than NIS's usual irreverence made it something that appealed to me quite a bit.  So when a sequel to Phantom Brave was announced, I was quickly intrigued.  Would it improve upon its predecessor's shortcomings to deliver a more enjoyable experience and add to the strong character building and storytelling of the original?

Well, I can say right away that the gameplay has much more depth and nuance now, with numerous new mechanics to factor in and basically all the old mechanics given substantial improvement.  One aspect of this is in character building, which is given much more depth.  Every unit (both story-related and generic) gain new skills as they level up, giving them all distinct roles to play in a team; a sharp contrast to the original where speed was pretty much the god-stat that dominated the entire game.  The usual suspects appear (melee fighters, mages healers, etc) but many more appear too - Thieves to steal items and disrupt your enemies with status effects, Merchants fight and earn more money while doing it, and there are proper ranged attackers now rather than just ranged skills, wielding guns (whose strongest moves can only be used if a character has not moved in the same turn) and bows.  Of course, any character can still wield any weapon (and SP is no longer bound to particular skill types, so you can pick up anything off the field and use its skills in a pinch), but it's obviously to one's benefit to give a character something fitting their archetype as they'll gain proficiency and new skills with it much more quickly.  Another useful addition is Chefs, who require a specific weapon type (Chef's Knives) to use any of their skills, but gain the ability to restore allies' SP - an invaluable ability during long random dungeon runs.  Skill scrolls appear too, and can be given to characters to customized them with bonus passive skills, like extra damage with bows or restoring some SP when a Confined ally leaves the field (which Marona unfortunately cannot use).  Each battle you enter is given a semi-random "MVP" criteria (earning the most XP, dealing the most damage, defeating the most enemies etc), with the unit meeting that criteria getting a substantial bonus once the battle ends.

The gameplay once again revolves around Marona, with her summoning allies into battle by confining them to objects on the field.  Unlike the first game, said objects only seem to give bonuses now and no penalties, although it's obviously still to one's advantage to confine Phantoms that will benefit from a particular item - Flowers boost Intelligence (making them handy for casters) while rocks boost Attack, for example.  Seemingly as an effort to discourage the common tactic of ignoring the Confining mechanic entirely and just making Marona into a one-man army, she is now more firmly established as a support character - her skill proficiencies are all rather low, but she gains several useful new abilities to aid other phantoms in battle - granting extra Confine turns and even giving other phantoms a turn immediately, effectively trading her turn for theirs.  She also gets a unique ability called "Instant Throw" which allows her to reposition other units for free once per turn, and, after a certain point in the story can "Confriend" with another phantom, temporarily fusing them into a single unit that gets a major stat boost and the combined skills of both, as well as granting powerful bonuses to your team (like reviving all fallen allied Phantoms on the field).  This ability only lasts a couple of turns (increasing as Marona's affinity with that character increases) and makes the Confriended character unavailable for the rest of the battle, though, so it must be used wisely.

Pretty much every nit I had to pick with the mechanics is improved in Lost Hero. Single-target skills now work in a logical fashion, not being able to pass through units to hit ones behidn them, which makes sense (and makes positioning more of an important tactic for both offense and defense).  Fittingly, various monsters also have skills like reducing movement range, making ranged weapons and attacks an important component of strategy. Everything is now a proper 3D model instead of a sprite, making gauging distance for skills much simpler.  The camera is improved with a proper overhead view option which is quite useful as you can imagine.  All deployed units now gain experience from defeated enemies too, which helps various "non combatants" like healers, shopkeepers and Chefs power up instead of falling behind, and all characters are automatically revived to full HP after a battle concludes unless they've been rendered "soulless", at which point you must pay SP to revive them.  Battles have considerably more interactive elements now, from something as similar as openable treasure chests to more interactive elements like cannons that can damage enemies and destroy barriers.  Characters are controlled directly and can move and jump freely within their radius of movement on their turn, allowing for much more precise positioning - a godsend to anyone familiar with the first game's very spotty pathfinding, though you can of course free the cursor up by pressing L2 to examine enemy stats and other items on the field.  Being knocked out of bounds no longer instantly removes a character from the fight, instead causing them to take some damage before putting them back in-bounds.

As in the first game, there is quite a bit of a home-building aspect to Lost Hero, with a lot of teammate interaction on your home island.  Obvious things like shops, healers and talking to Phantoms to build affinity return, though several new elements are added.  One is the Juice Bar, unlocked once you have a Chef; this allows you to set aside a percentage of experience points earned from each battle and store them in a pool.  Experience in this pool can then be allocated among any of your characters however you wish, letting you quickly power up units that are lagging behind (or freshly created).  As you invest money you can even start to allocate experience gain above 100%, effectively granting you bonus experience for every fight you complete.  Another is the ability to Salvage random items by having an Angler in your party - basically, you pick out a square on a map to search for items, and after completing a battle (or 30 minutes pass) you'll get a random item.  Being diligent by choosing a new site to salvage will earn you a lot of extra items over the course of the game, some of which are quite hard to come by otherwise, so it's definitely a worthwhile thing to do.

All told, I found myself quite impressed with Phantom Brave: the Lost Hero, even as someone who's become pretty bored with the Nippon Ichi formula.  It's a better game than its predecessor in basically every way, keeping the core gameplay and charm intact while improving on all of its prominent shortcomings, and adding numerous new avenues of gaining items, experience and customizing characters makes it a much more engaging experience than its predecessor.  It's also nice to see an older Marona in more of a mentor role this time around as she joins forces with the phantom pirate Apricot and helps her on her own journey, and the rest of the cast is surprisingly well-written too - Nippon Ichi games are known for their jokey and tone, but they also add a lot of nuance and humanity to their characters and some surprisingly strong emotional beats.  It's easily my first favorite game of 2025, and if you're on the fence, fear not - there's a free-to-download demo that covers the first two chapters of the game and even allows you to carry over save data to the full version so you don't lose any progress.  Well worth a purchase in my book.

 

Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher: Nippon Ichi Software
Released: 2025
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC

Recommended Version: The Switch version of the game is functional, albeit very laggy; it doesn't seem to have been optimized very well for the hardware.  By contrast, the PS5 version has a much more stable framerate and is generally much more enjoyable to play.  The PC version has not yet been released as of this writing.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Recettear is certainly an odd case when you step back and look at it.  It was released at a time when western RPGs were becoming highly popular and JRPGs were in decline (for comparison, the biggest name in the genre that came out the same year was Final Fantasy XIII... blech), and was the first game of its type to appear on Steam, with little promotion and a localization by a two-man team who met on the Something Awful forums.  Yet somehow this tiny indie RPG was a surprise success, paving the way for other Japanese RPGs and indies to get Steam releases, and ensuring the genre would become a pretty large presence on the platform and not just get relegated to increasingly-niche releases on handhelds.

As the title implies, rather than playing as another RPG hero, you play as that hero's daughter, saddled with his debt and trying to keep up on escalating payments by running an item shop.  While you can simply buy items at wholesale and sell them at a markup, or take advantage of fluctuating market prices to turn a profit, this is a rather slow and not particularly exciting process (and probably won't be enough to meet your quota on its own).   Dungeon crawling thus becomes a key component of the game; gathering items and then selling them in your shop becoming your primary way to rack up cash.  You're not combat-capable yourself, though, so you have to hire an adventurer and outfit them to fight for you.  The action's pretty basic - just move around and attack with special powers that run off an SP meter, avoid traps, collecting treasure chests and fight the occasional boss battle.  Selling items at a profit increases your "Merchant level", which gradually unlocks benefits like being able to expand your store, take custom orders that have big payoffs, and even unlock the ability to fuse items together to create new goods that sell for high prices.  Hirable adventurers also show up at your shop occasionally and will use equipment you sell them from then on, letting you dive deeper into dungeons and score bigger hauls.

Recettear isn't a particularly deep game by any measuring stick, but it's well designed and surprisingly fun.  The gameplay loop from turning profits, upgrading your shop, outfitting adventurers, acquiring new stock and making your way through the game's dungeons is satisfying and addictive enough to keep you invested, and the brisk runtime (roughly 15 hours for a playthrough) ensures it doesn't wear out its welcome.  The game's dialog is also surprisingly  strong, with a lot of sly references and jabs at RPG clichés (including a very prominent Dragon Quest 3 shout-out) and plenty of absurd but funny dialog as Recette and Tear play off one another in their day-to-day interactions.  For those seeking a relatively novel twist on the dungeon crawler format, Recettear is one you should give a try.

There's also a remaster of the game slated to release in 2025 if you want to wait for that!

Developer: EasyGameStation
Publisher: Carpe Fulgur
Released: 2007, 2010
Platforms: PC

Into the Breach

 A clever blend of a roguelike and a turn-based strategic board game.  The object on each map is to have your squad survive for a set number of turns, using your units' unique attack ranges and abilities to defeat enemies while protecting civilian buildings and completing other random objectives such as defending particular structures or guest units.  Buildings serve as a secondary life meter in the form of the "power grid" that persists between each set of missions, so avoiding collateral damage as much as possible is a major priority.  Should all three of your mechs be disabled in a single mission or the grid lose all power across a set, you fail and travel back in time to try again.  While enemy moves are telegraphed, you have too few resources to completely stop them from doing damage, so you'll have to carefully weigh your options and make calculated sacrifices to successfully complete levels and complete long-term goals.  However, you'll gradually unlock new units and upgrades by completing various objectives (called "achievements") and can optionally carry over one surviving pilot's earned experience from a failed attempt, allowing you to refine your team and unlock new equipment and pilot abilities.  Basically, the more you play the better-equipped you become for later challenges, giving it that good old addictive quality.

 The game is a perfect fit for mobile platforms for its short play sessions and pick-up-and-play design, but frustratingly you can't just get it as a one-time purchase on iOS or Android; you need an active Netflix subscription to play it there.  At least the Switch version has no such restrictions, and the PC version also works perfectly on the Steam Deck and similar devices.  You can also stream the PC version on a mobile device via Steam Link, though you'll need a pretty solid internet connection for that.

Developer: Subset Games
Publisher: Subset Games, Netflix (iOS/Android versions)
Released: 2018, 2020, 2022
Platforms: PC, macOS, Switch, Linux, Stadia, iOS, Android