Game: Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero
Genre: Strategy, RPG
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on iOS and Android, coming soon to Steam)
Developer | Publisher: NIS America
Age Rating: US Teen | EU 12+
Price: US $59.99 | UK £ 53.99 | EU € 59,99
Release Date: January 30th, 2025
A review code was used, and many thanks to Reef Entertainment.
Not the First Phantom Game
Even though I have never played a Phantom Brave game before, the tactical RPG has been around for a while. Even though you can just jump into The Lost Hero with no problem, there’s a bit of background story based on the first game 20 years ago, which is nice to know. Phantom Brave revolves around Marona, a young girl living on Phantom Isle in the oceanic world of Ivoire. Marona shares her home with Ash, a phantom who has been her guardian since she was a baby. Ash wasn’t always a phantom, though. When he was alive, he worked as a Chroma, a sort of adventurer or bounty hunter for hire, alongside Marona’s parents, Jasmine and Haze.

Tragedy struck when the group faced a fragment of Sulphur, a malevolent being, on the Isle of Evil. The battle left them mortally wounded. With his last bit of energy, Haze tried to revive his comrades, but there was only enough life left to bring Ash back as a phantom. Haze and Jasmine’s dying wish was for Ash to protect their infant daughter, a promise he has kept ever since.
In Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, we meet up with Marona and Ash again, but when ghostly foes attack their ship with overwhelming force at the start of the game, Ash saves Marona by putting her overboard in a magic bubble, and she becomes stranded on an island. There, she meets a new phantom friend named Apricot, setting the stage for a brand-new adventure. Togethe,r they set out to find Captain Argento, Apricot’s father, and Ash.
Play It Your Way
Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is described by NIS as a “play-it-your-way RPG,” and it does live up to that claim as it has a wide range of gameplay options. From the start, you can choose your preferred difficulty level. You can go for a more relaxing journey by going for “Easy” and enjoy the story with battles that won’t be too punishing. If you crave a tough tactical challenge, you can go for “Hard”, and of course, there’s “Normal” as well. You don’t battle on a traditional grid-based movement, like in many tactical RPGs. Instead, you’re given free movement within a range circle.

Through the Facility ability in your menu, you can make Phantoms join you in your Pirate Crew, based on lots of Phantom classes with loads of variety. There’s a witch, a healer and the more usual classes like a fighter, but there’s also a sniper, an old man and a musician. Some of them have unique abilities like the angler class, which can reel teammates back onto the map to save them from falling and salvage treasures, the chef’s Juice Bar system, which lets you distribute unused experience points to other characters and the engineer who can make gadgets.

Because of this, there’s always something to do when you’re not battling. Like tweaking the Marina and the Ship you use and doing some quests to make more money.
Marona’s Special Abilities
There are a ton of skills to unlock for your phantoms, depending on their experience levels and the items they equip. But of course, Marona is key. Her signature “Confine” ability allows you to summon phantoms into objects on the battlefield, such as trees, rocks, or flowers, which influence the stats of your allies. Marona also has the “Confire” ability, letting you bind phantoms to weapons, and the “Confriend” mechanic, which lets Marona combine with her teammates to unlock powerful new forms.

Up to 14 phantoms, depending on what kind of equipment they carry, can be summoned in a single battle, but each has a limited number of turns they can remain on the field, determined by their class. While this mechanic encourages careful planning, it also offers tactical benefits—shorter durations allow you to reuse the same object for another summon or even take the item back to Phantom Isle.
Phantoms can also bring the items they’re confined in back with them after a battle, depending on their class. This adds an extra layer of strategy as you decide whether to use an object for combat or save it for your collection.

A Ton of Possibilites
I love it when a game has a deep system of statistics of the characters and effects from equipment, where the combat is influenced by the battlefield and the kind of Phantoms you employ. I never shy away from diving in and learning, but I tell you, the gameplay of Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is very, very deep. From the start, instructions come your way at an alarming pace. I had to backtrack by starting a new game to see the instructions once again and get to grips with them.

There is so much to tweak and change that it’s really hard to keep track of everything. It also makes every battle unique, as you can choose the way you want to go about winning. You can equip weapons and other items. Never before have I bested an enemy by beating it with a palm tree, but it worked pretty well.
Chibi Graphics and a Nice Story
The game looks lovely; the chibi look and colourful screens work for me. The fact that you don’t battle on a grid feels nice, too, and it’s less confined. The story is interesting, immersing yourself in the way of pirates. At times, it does feel a bit too bubbly, but it fits the gameplay of Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero.
A slight annoyancy for me is how the equipment, outside of battle, is just scattered around on Skullrock Island, where your temporary home is. And when an enemy or ally dies, they lie there on the battlefield. Making it a truly cluttered board to play on, which I don’t particularly like.

You eventually can collect the different tracks of background music, so even if the soundtrack at first feels monotonous, you can adjust it to your liking. The voice acting is okay, though there is a discrepancy between the male voice acting and the voices you hear during battle. The voices during the story are light and young. And then, during battles, you hear grunts and exclamations that feel much more coarse and out of place.

Conclusion for Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero
This is truly a tactical RPG that you can play any way you like. You decide which Phantoms to take into battle, how to deploy them, which equipment to use and more. Now, that is true for more games like this, but the sheer number of possibilities is quite something. Add the gridless battlefield to that and the special abilities Marona has, and you’ll have many hours of gaming fun with Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot
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