Forum - View topicGAME: Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero Game Review
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 572 Location: PA / USA |
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I'm probably the most interested in how new players are going to react to this title, and unfortunately it does sound like this might be a repeat of the original - Makai Kingdom (the followup after Phantom Brave on PS2) and the original Phantom Brave itself are not the strongest games in the Disgaea series library. The free movement system is sort of a part of that, because where Disgaea does this really neat thing where Geo Panels can lock out certain areas on a map, it's a lot harder to make a coherent Phantom Brave map that doesn't look like a mush of colors and character sprites. One of the governing aspects of organising everything visually (the grid) is gone, and now you have to trial-and-error a lot of your movent and casting to get the right angle on things sometimes. To me, it made maps either feel unnecessarily short/long and out-of-control on PS2.
The new NIS 3D Engine is interesting, because rather than rely on up&coming tech like DLSS and frame gen to cut corners and make the game run better, they're rendering everything pretty much raw and 1:1 to the asset. If you have a 4K system, this means everything looks insanely crisp and colorful, but also that in the same way the original Crysis game could melt systems, you have to know exactly which settings to turn on and off or you can legit melt your PC. The Switch will NEVER be able to run one of these 3D Disgaea games maxed out. NISA will be required to formulate better dynamic resolution scaling in an upcoming patch like they did for Disgaea 7 to get it to even run correctly. What sucks about the swap to 3D is that back on the PS2 games, NIS would meme and use the sprites to do little skits on the map and take advantage of the fact that they could animate them (similar to Paper Mario) with various quirks and scenes that could go ridiculous and over-the-top. I don't know if it's time or budget that has run low, but they don't really do that anymore. Similar to the 3DS Fire Emblem games, most of the story has always been conveyed through pictures and text boxes of talking characters, but a big part of the charm from the PS2 era was seeing 10+ sprites lift & stack on top of each other, then spin like a helicopter of death - something they don't really do or animate anymore. That said, I wonder if it may be time to drop the classic SRPG look & systems, and give 3D systems like what Valkyria Chronicles uses a try. I don't wanna poo on the folks that enjoyed the original, but I also notice an uptick in fans of the previous game saying Marona is maybe a bit of a flat character. To which I have to say YES - that was kind of always the problem with her. I don't doubt for the folks that picked Phantom Brave 1 up first on PS2, that it manifested as a charming & colorful adventure, but it was originally positioned as a "break from the darker/emo world-ending" that La Pucelle and Disgaea employed, a vacation from the sort of tone that Makai Kingdom picked right back up before NIS' landmark Disgaea 2 release. I'm still interested in throwing my hat in and giving this new one a fair shake since Disgaea 6 (eh) and 7 (better) were fun, but it sounds from this review and other things I'm hearing, like they definitely didn't recapture the old PS2 magic with this one either. James, I beg of you as a fellow Fire Emblem fan, go and grab a copy of Prinny Presents: La Pucelle Ragnarok. That is the Disgaea game I would suggest most new players start with. If you like it, you can then easily move along to one of the other Disgaea releases (Disgaea 1 Complete is a very solid followup, but I think without La Pucelle first, it's going to be too overwhelming/intimidating). I do not know if La Pucelle Ragnarok has a Playstation release, but it's the one I argue that a Fire Emblem player is going to make the most sense of right out of the gate with one of the strongest stories to open the whole series with. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 508 |
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I played Phantom Brave in an age long past and...Its probably my least favorite of the NISA srpg properties. I don't think anything here has convinced me that would change. That said, I think thats more a general weariness of the Disgaea style of game than anything- from the ps2 heyday til today, I played a lot of them so I think I'm a bit burn out. This is probably still a game that the grind inclined player can lose hundreds of hours to.
Now if I had my wish, I'd definitely have them do another thing like Soul Nomad (do it, you cowards!) But that one was weird even for NISA, so fat chance. |
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