| Developer: | Nippon Ichi | | | Release Date: | 2016 (2004 on PS2) | | | Systems: | PS2, Wii, PSP, Win |
This week on
Super Adventures I'm playing the relatively new PC port of classic PlayStation 2 game
Phantom Brave! Because trying to figure out and then explain a complicated turn-based tactics game from 2004 seemed like a smart use of my free time.
The trouble with these 'Phantom' games like
Phantom Brave,
Phantom Crash,
Phantom Dust etc. is that it always takes me a few seconds to remember which is the tactical RPG, which has the mechs and which is the one with the cards. In fact I ended up playing
The Phantom Pain for 142 hours before I realised I'd put the wrong game on. (That's totally the right game to put on by the way). To make things more confusing, the next year Nippon Ichi released a similar game with the Japanese title
Phantom Kingdom, which then got renamed to
Makai Kingdom in the West, despite 'phantom' being an English word already and 'makai' being a Japanese word. A word
that just happens to show up in the title of their earlier game
Makai Senki Disugaia, aka.
Disgaea.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, there's a game that gets it right; no one's going to mix that one up with
Phantom 2040. But someone might mix this game up with
Disgaea, so I intend to mention the game
constantly to point out the differences, and similarities.
Alright I'm going to play
Phantom Brave's main story for a couple of hours or until I beat a proper boss, whatever happens first. I've played it before on PS2 so I'm sure I'll all come back to me... though I've never seen that mysterious 'Another Marona' button before. It's tempting, but I'll leave it for now.
(Click the pictures to view them in an incredible 1280x720 resolution, though I'm sure it can do better). Read on �
