You'll Go No Further. For Her Sake, Let's Play Phantom Brave Wii!

Welcome, one and all!


Nippon Ichi Software presents...

A Nippon Ichi Production
In association with Nippon Ichi Software
Directed by Yoshitsuna Kobayashi

♫Angel Breath♫



Welcome, one and all to Phantom Brave! Originally, this game was released in August, 2004 as the first software release by Nippon Ichi Software's American branch, called Nippon Ichi Software America. This ain't rocket science, people. To talk about how NISA came about is to talk about several other game localization companies. First, there was probably the most easily identifiable Nippon Ichi title, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, published by Atlus in March of 2000. Then came Disgaea: Hour of Darkness in 2003, and was an incredible sleeper hit. So much so that it became part of the Playstation Greatest Hits library.

After that, Nippon Ichi switched publishers to little-known Mastiff Games for La Pucelle: Tactics. This game was noteworthy for several big-name voice actors lending their talents, such as Quinton Flynn and Jennifer Hale.

Nippon Ichi realized with Disgaea and La Pucelle that they had carved out a niche for themselves, and decided to open an American branch. Phantom Brave was their inaugural title, back in 2004. Their offices are still open to this day, so mission accomplished?

Flash forward to 2009, well after the Wii's release, and Nippon Ichi released a remake of Phantom Brave for the console, adding in new content, including an all-new "what if" side story that's kinda bonkers. But we'll get in to that later!

Phantom Brave is the story of a very special little girl and her pseudo-dead companion and guardian. Despite being 13 years old, she has taken a job as a Chroma, or mercenary, in the world of Ivoire. Ivoire is more like an archipelago, with very few large landmasses. The little girl, Marona, is feared, and sometimes, hated for her affinity with Phantoms, spirits of the dead who remain in the mortal realm. She can summon these spirts and temporarily bind them in to mundane objects, bringing them fully in to the physical realm. Marona is a bubbly, cheerful girl, to the point of extreme naivete. Ash, having vowed to protect her from those who would hurt her because of their prejudice, borders on over-protective. But we'll see this as the game goes on!



The game's settings are pretty self-explanatory. Audio levels, etc. Blurred character image can be toggled on and off for an anti-aliasing effect on the sprites. For control purposes, you can use any of the control options that you can use in Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Wii Remote, Wii Remote + Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and Gamecube Controller. I personally prefer the Gamecube Controller, but even it's not perfect because of the lack of four shoulder buttons. Anyway, that's all for settings. NEW GAME START!!


Prologue





♫All At Once♫

Oh, I bet this place is a great summer vacation spot!


Ash takes down the ghost-looking thing with his bare fists, which is pretty impressive. By the way, these things are called Summons, as we'll figure out soon.

: "Something's not right. We should get out of here!"


The green-haired bloke, by the name of Haze, isn't looking so hot, sporting a nasty shoulder wound.

"Come on, guys! This way!"

The lady with the long blue hair and the idiot-cowlick the Japanese call "ahoge", calls for them to retreat.

However, they're stopped by another group of Summons.



: "Just one... Get Jasmine somewhere safe. I'll handle these guys!"

Ash assumes his fighting stance.



Get used to seeing this line. Given what we'll see later, I think that this is an incantation of some kind to release his power. A few other characters have similar battle auras that are activated by some kind of incantation.

♫Crown of Thorns Starfish♫

Basic Battle Tutorial

Alright! Time for some nuts and bolts right off the bat!

The first thing this game tells you is this:

"Faster characters have priority."

No. Freakin'. Kidding.

In this game, a character lives and dies by their SPD stat.



On the upper right side of the screen, like Final Fantasy X, you can see the next few turns of the battle, and who's coming up on their actions. here, we can see that Ash gets a turn immediately after this one, followed by a Summon, and then Ash once again. The "60 dm" indicator next to his portrait tells us how far he can walk for this turn. Unlike other tactical RPGs, the loose and free-form nature of the terrain in Phantom Brave allows a character to split their movement and take a move before and after an action. So, if you wanted, you could totally have a character run up, swing, and retreat to safety. Not that we're going to do that very often.

The game addresses movement next. On a character's turn, a red circular aura appears around them. This represents the space the character can walk to.

Ash moves, and we can see that he still has some movement left, and as a result, the circle is much smaller than when we started. If you don't like where a character has moved, and haven't either attacked or fallen Out of Bounds (More on that later), you can cancel the movement with B.

The next phase of the tutorial covers attacking, which is pretty simple. Point at a target with the cursor and press A to designate it. This also pops up the menu. Select "Attack" to bring up the character's Skill list.



On the left is the skill list. To break it down, the icon is the type of SP it uses, the name, the proficiency level of the skill, and how much SP it costs. Right now, we only have one skill, Strike, which would take Physical SP if it cost anything. Why does it matter? The character's Max SP will increase as they use a particular type of skill.

The window on the right side displays the character's current SP, as well as "Talent", or the affinity toward a skill. Ash here is pretty good at Physical and Energy Skills, but kinda sucks at Healing, for example. While you can brute-force train Ash to heal really slowly, there's another way, one that we will get in to down the road.

Incidentally, the skill types, from top to bottom, are Physical [Phy], Energy [Eng], Elemental Magic [E-M], Physical Magic [P-M] (or Nature), Space-Time Magic [STM], Stat-Altering Magic [SAM], and Healing [HEL].

Anyway, enough of this tutorial nonsense! Let's beat some dudes up!



♫All At Once♫

: "Is it over?"

Probably not, Buckwheat. Interesting thing to note is that Haze's injured arm is still the right shoulder. It doesn't switch like Eye-gor's hump in Young Frankenstein or Baiken from Guilty Gear.

: "N-no, there's still--"



...Oh balls. This doesn't look good. This guy is called Wraith.

: "...damn!"

...Crap. No getting out of this one.



Ash bravely steps forward to hold the giant bloody chunk thing off while Haze and Jasmine flee.



...That's not good.

: "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"

...Uh, ow.

So, it looks like all three of them got bodied like scrubs. Just as well. Haze calls out for Marona, Haze and Jasmine's daughter.



: "Oh God, just once more...! Lend me power one last time."



And the voice-acting is just as cheesy as you might expect.

Meanwhile...



Oh boy, who's this guy? He seems to be a fun-loving sort.



Bodies? Oh, he must mean the earlier trio who got corpsified.

Wraith tries the same trick to kill the guy in armor, but he just shrugs it off, as is the RPG trope.

: "Ha! Is that all? Now it's my turn..."

He swings his enormous sword, smacking Wraith, and goes in to his own power-up incantation.



...Okay, I take it back. He's a bad man. He sucks Wraith in to his sword.

: "Not yet... It's still not enough. I'll need far more dark power if I'm to exact my revenge."

Revenge? Maybe he's a tortured soul, then. In any case, this guy's still alive. Is he my character? I mean, he's just tucked in the corner of the cover box art, but maybe...





♫Angel Breath♫

Oh, it looks like this girl is the 'Marona' that Haze called for. Someone seems to have soiled those clothes in her hands.

We hear a familiar voice call her name.

"Marona."

: "What is it, Ash?"

Ash?!



HOLY BALLS. ASH IS STILL THERE? But he's all bluuuuuuuuue. </ScottPilgrim>

: "Huh? Those clothes... She had no right to do that, I don't care if she was the client's granddaughter."

Marona sighs.

: "Don't worry...Those clothes were too small for me, anyway. This outfit's much cuter."



: "They didn't even pay you the full amount. Why didn't you say anything? Sometimes you have to speak up."

Marona approaches Ash.

: "How can you say that, Ash?"

: "Marona...Even that little girl called you 'The Possessed One.'"

: "There's something Mom and Dad used to say, when I was little..."



: "...but don't hate them... You were blessed with that power so you could help people. Grow up compassionate and kind; help even those who hurt you. Then, one day..."

Ash finishes her parents' words.

: "...one day, everyone will come to like you. ...right?"

Marona's agreement is succinct and to the point.



: "So, you don't think it's more important for me to make people happy than to make money?"

Ash is doubtful.

: "Well, they weren't exactly happy, either..."

Marona's enthusiasm is difficult, no, impossible to curb. She smiles.

: "Don't worry, Ash. It's like my parents said... One day..."

The scene fades to narration.



So Ash was, in fact, killed that day, but the miracle that Haze prayed for kept Ash's existence around as a Phantom to protect Marona.

Later, Ash and Marona head down to the beach of their home, Phantom Isle, to check the...mail?

♫Flower Blossom Guide♫



...my, how setting appropriate! Letters and information are sent about by sentient glass bottles called "Sea Mails". Oh...ouch. The pun hurts. Marona reaches down to open them, but Ash stops her.

: "Wait, Marona! --er, Let me check."



: "What do they say, Ash?"

: "Ummm, they were both the wrong address."

Ash lies to shield Marona from the harsh truths of reality, that people hate her for the power she has.

: "Again!? Why do so many Sea Mails end up here by mistake?"

And she's sort of oblivious to it all.

: "Looks like this one's the only job offer."



: "Hm... We're going to [Terra Firma]."

: "Just make sure they pay us in full. Once we have enough money, we can make an offer on this island to Sienna."

Sienna is Marona's landlord, and OHHHHH BOY are we going to shatter the illusion that Bordeaux, the currency of this world, means a damn thing. And also, I hate this type of exposition. By all rights, Marona knows that they need money to buy the island from Sienna.

: "Yup. No more worrying about higher rent, or being evicted... It will probably be awhile <sic> before we can afford to buy the island. But right now, we need to help the people of Terra Firma."

NO IT WON'T, LITTLE GIRL. I WILL HAVE ALL OF THE BORDEAUXS IN THIS WORLD, AND SEVERAL OTHERS, BEFORE IT BECOMES PLOT RELEVANT.

: "But we're Chromas, Marona. There's nothing wrong with expecting our fair share. Your parents worked as Chromas to raise you."

Chromas are mercenaries, either flying solo like Marona, or organized in to guilds that we'll meet later. How a 13-year-old can be a mercenary is anyone's guess. And again, stilted exposition.

Marona isn't really paying attention, though.

:"Thanks very much. Would you mind taking this rent money to Sienna for me?"



See! Told you they're sentient.

The Sea Mail jumps in to the sea and heads off.

: "Alright, are you ready? I can't wait to find out what people in Terra Firma are like!"

Ash is less than enthusiastic as the narrator takes over.



This vow actually is a Passive Skill Ash picked up when he became a Phantom, and probably what his glowy effect incantation thing is referring to, Sacred Vow.



♫My Little Garden♫

Before Marona and Ash head off, a ghost appears!



"I wonder what kind of people they are..."

They appear!



"I don't fight all that well, but you can purchase items from me--for a fee, of course."

How an incorporeal saleswoman can conduct commerce is anyone's guess.

"I'm a 'Healer', and you can probably guess that I heal. Physical attacks aren't my forte, so let me treat your wounds. I can heal outside of battle, too. I do ask for donations, though..."

The Healer is one you'll wanna keep around at least on Phantom Isle at all times.

The last Phantom, thankfully, doesn't charge for his services.

'Soldier' reporting, sir! Ready to serve! My fighting skills are not as strong as they could be, but I remain for a long time once confined! You may not have been briefed on confining yet, so I will be awaiting your orders!"

"What do you think, Marona?"

"They must have come a long way, so we should let them join us."

"Sounds like a deal. Thanks, Ms. Marona."

All three join the party, and we get a short tutorial about creating more party members. The ghost then tells us how to leave Phantom Isle, by checking the mail box and reminding us to save.



Now, I'll need your help. Our new party members' names all suck on toast. Give me some better ones! And while we're at it, throw out some names and other units you want to see in action! Let's take a look at what we can create right now!

SOLDIER - As was indicated in his self-introduction, he's not that great. Crappy SP growth across the board. He does have one saving grace: He's the longest-lasting unit on the battlefield, able to stay around for 8 turns before vanishing. I promise, I'll get around to this Confining and vanishing thing soon!


FIGHTER - A pretty average physical fighter. Designed for getting up in the enemy's grill and punching or stabbing it. Proficient in Physical skills, and to a lesser extent, Energy. He sucks at the rest.


VALKYRIE - Sort of the yang to the Fighter's yin. Again, grill-punching is her forte, but is better at Energy skills than Physical.


WITCH - The game's dedicated magic-user. Useful when you want to exploit elemental weaknesses, but the problem is that generally, bosses have no elemental weaknesses. Also, she won't be on the battlefield very long. As you might expect, Elemental Magic skills are her weapons of choice, but she can also use other types of magic to a lesser effectivity. If you talk to her on Phantom Isle, you can reorganize the skill list of a character or item.


HEALER - As stated, she can stand around Phantom Isle and heal your party for some bordeaux. She also gains experience and levels up when she does this. In battle, as you might expect, her role is that of a dedicated healer: her Healing SP will grow the quickest out of all her other skill types.


MERCHANT - As stated, you can talk to her on Phantom Island to buy weapons. Her inventory will expand as she levels up. I don't believe she gains experience when you buy things. As you might guess, she's not very good in a combat role. She also comes with a passive skill, "Made of Money", which boosts the amount of bordeaux gained when she kills an enemy. Hmm, if only there were a way to get such abilities on characters who don't suck out loud at combat...


DUNGEON MONK - Ohhh boy. I think this guy's going to need his own update. The short of it is that he can create Random Dungeons. As the name suggests, they are randomly generated dungeons that are used for the real high-end power leveling. Needless to say, we're going to be getting a lot of use out of this guy, and, probably more than one of him.

Now, let's look at the status display to check out just what makes these characters tick!

LV - current experience level. The black bar behind it is an experience indicator, displaying how close to gaining a level the character is. There is no hard number that tells you how much XP you have or how much you need to gain a level in this game. As with all games set in the Disgaea universe, the maximum level is 9999. We MIGHT hit this at some point, it's not as easy as, say, Disgaea 3 from what I hear...

HP - Hit Points. Pretty self-explanatory. The character is dead if this hits 0.

REMOVE - Not applicable with Marona, but this indicates how many turns the character can remain in battle. Once their turns are depleted, the Phantom vanishes from the battlefield.

MANA - A secondary experience you receieve from enemies. You spend mana to do lots of various things. Even items accumulate mana.

MOVE - The distance a character can move in one turn.

JUMP - How high the character can jump.

STEAL - How likely a character can take an item from an enemy.

GUARD - A percentage that is used when the character is holding an item. Basically, when they take damage, this percentage of the damage will be transferred to the item.

Now for the stats.

ATK - Attack. Determines the damage from physical attacks.
DEF - Defense. Reduces damage from physical attacks.
INT - Intelligence. Determines the damage from magical attacks.
RES - Resistance. Reduces damage from magical attacks.
SPD - Speed. As stated earlier, this is the god stat. You want this stat as high as it can possibly go. This determines the turn order for battle, so more SPD means more turns without the enemy getting a chance to move.

What does that "When Equipped" screen mean? Well that shows you what will happen to a character when that character or item is equipped. You can equip characters?! WHAT?! This will all be explained in due time!

Now let's check out some of the skills our characters have.

Here's the format for skill descriptions:
Name: Cost [SP type] [Governing stat] - Descriptors.

Most characters have three innate, basic skills.

Strike: 0 [Phys][ATK] Basic unarmed attack. Causes knockback.
Toss: 0 [Phys] Non-damage skill that passes the equipped item to the target.
Body Swing: 0 [Phys] An attack that uses an equipped character as a weapon. I believe this uses both characters' ATK stat, but I'm not sure.


MARONA
Chartreuse: Passive. Unique to Marona. This skill prevents her from receiving Soul Death and going out of bounds. The game requires Marona to be available to the player at all times.
Confine: Passive. Unique to Marona. Allows Marona to confine Phantoms in to items. This mechanic will be explained in the tutorial.
Heal: 2 [HEL][RES]. Restores a minor amount of HP to a small group of targets. Unlocked at Lv. 3.
Espoir: 5 [STM]. Removes all status effects from a group of targets. Unlocked at LV. 10.
Revive: 15 [HEL][RES]. Revives a downed group of characters and restores their HP. Unlocked at Lv 15.

The status effects are as follows:
Poison: Indicated by purple bubbles. Each time the afflicted character ends their turn, they take 10% of their Max HP in damage.
Sleep: Indicated by yellow Z's. This character cannot do anything when their turn comes up, and their action is skipped.
Paralysis: Indicated by two white jagged stripes. This character's SPD and move distance are reduced.
Amnesia: Indicated by a purple question mark. This character cannot use any skill that costs more than 0 SP, limiting them to the most basic of skills.
Gamble: Indicated by two sweat drops. This character, when attacked will either dodge the attack completely, or they will take 100% of their Max HP in damage.


ASH
Solemn Vow: Passive. Unique to Ash. This skill doubles Ash's ATK and INT during his last turn in combat. You can tell when that is when he starts glowing red, or paying attention to the REMOVE counts.
Quick Attack: Passive. This skill allows the Phantom to act immediately on the next turn after being confined. If more than one Phantom is confined on the same turn, then SPD determines the order in which they act.
Flying Bomb: 5 [PHY][ATK] - Melee damage attack. Grapples the target and causes an extreme amount of knockback. Unlocked at Lv. 10.
Rising Dragon: 24 [ENG][ATK] - Unique to Ash. Heavy Melee damage attack. Unlocked at Lv. 25.


MERCHANT
Made of Money: Passive. Increases the amount of Bordeaux gained when killing an enemy by 1% for each level. Merchants start with Made of Money at level 20.
Profit Punch: 0 [STM] [ATK] Deals damage and increases Bordeaux dropped by target when killed by 20%. Stacks up to 1000%, or after 50 uses of the attack. Causes knockback.
Mega Bonus: 10 [STM] [ATK] - Deals damage to a large area of targets. Boosts EXP and Money given by the target by 20%. Unlocked at Lv. 10.


HEALER
Shock: 0 [E-M] [INT] Basic Elemental Magic skill, used mainly to boost SP. Causes knockback.
Heal: 2 [HEL] [RES] Tier-1 healing spell. Has a small area of effect.
Espoir: 5 [STM]. Removes all status effects from a group of targets. Unlocked at LV. 5.
Mega Heal: 8 [HEL] [RES] - Tier-2 healing spell. Has a moderate range and area of effect. Unlocked at Lv. 9.
Revive: 15 [HEL][RES] - Revives a downed group of characters and restores their HP. Unlocked at Lv 15.
Giga Heal: 15 [HEL] [RES] - Tier-3 healing spell. Has a large range and area of effect. Unlocked at Lv. 25.
Omega Heal: 35 [HEL] [RES] - Tier-4 healing spell. Has a huge range and area of effect. Unlocked at Lv. 50.


SOLDIER
Energy Saver: Passive. Boosts the character's confine time by 1.

There's a few more things to do on Phantom Isle before we go out to Terra Firma. First, let's talk to Marona, which is how we do inventory and party management.



SUMMON - Recalls an item or unit from storage. Phantom Isle can only have up to 50 units and items out at a time.

STORE - Places an item or unit in storage.

CREATE - Creates a new Phantom.

NAME - Renames a Phantom.

Pretty easy, no? Now, let's explore Phantom Isle a bit. You can run around and jump. In fact, the game rewards you for exploring. There's some hidden caches of bordeaux to find!


Furthermore, you can jump from the roof to the treetop over there. It's a little tricky, but when you manage it...


You get a Changebook, our first item!


But we can do even BETTER than that! Let's just grab our ghosty friend and our three new buddies...

...throw them up on to the tree...


...stack them up on each other (Note: You can only do this now, or until you get a sufficient number of items to stack up)...


...climb up on top...


...and jump! Who could this be?



A Sea Mail, or as the menu calls him, a Bottle Mail!


BOTTLE MAIL
Bottle Mails are a strange specialty unit. They excel at Space-Time Magic and Status Altering magic, but suck at almost everything else. No unique skills of their own per se, with one interesting exception. You might notice that unusually high STEAL stat. Well, that's what you get Bottle Mails for. They're the best way to take items and steal them via confining them! I'll show you what I mean in this mystical tutorial coming up.

SKILLS:
Shield: 3 [SAM] - Boosts the targets' DEF by 35% up to a maximum of 200%. Learned at Lv. 6.
Magic Wall: 3 [SAM] - Boosts the targets' RES by 35% up to a maximum of 200%. Learned at Lv. 12.

Now, you can't actually create Bottle Mails yet. In order to unlock a new class of character, you have to defeat it in combat. For humanoids (humans and owl-men), you only have to kill one of them. For monster-type enemies, you need to defeat ten of them before you can create them.

Well, we've done everything we can do, short of get all our friends off the tree by storing them, and having Marona re-summon them. Next time, we'll head off to Terra Firma and help out the people!

The Soldier looks kind of like a muppet, so name him Bert.

NIS' tactical rpgs are games I dearly want to love, but they never really do it for me...

Actually, the only one I ever played was Disgaea 2, and the Geo Panel Magical Disco Floor System had me so irritated by game's end there was no way I was tackling any of the post-game or expanded content. The Item World should have been the best thing about the game, not the worst! But yeah, it kind of soured me on their stuff altogether.

Anyway, totally looking forward to this. I'm always down for a comprehensive breakdown of these sorts of games.

Huh, this game has some pretty nice music, if the first few links are any indication.

Cristi for the healer.

Milo for the merchant - gender aside. It seems appropriate.

Pretty lengthy intro post, but this looks great so far! I played this on the PSP which had even more additional content, but I couldn't really get through it... Still, it's nice to see this game again. Out of most of NIS' games, this one has one of the nicer and more serious stories, great music, and some really endearing main characters. Though why does the Valkyrie appear to be better than the Fighter in every single way possible? Is that a title thing?

Oddly enough, this has to do with a very odd localization decision. That doesn't really sound like much of an incantation, however, the original Japanese line was "You will go no further. Grant me the power of the Water Dragon, Eccarlate!", which really does sound like one.

Phantom Brave is by far my favorite NISA game. I love the strategy involved in confining, and how confine limits actually compel players to make a large party, rather than just grind one super unit like Disgaea.

I insist you recruit an entire party of owls. Give them names like Hoover and Hoolio.

Witch named Kiki.

I liked the story on this game, just got caught up on gameplay. Looking forward to seeing more.

I think you should document every instance of Ash's catchphrase, with a tally or screenshot or both.

The thing with Nippon Ichi games is they all have SOME sort of field effect thing to their battle maps. Phantom Brave is NOT as crazy as, say, La Pucelle or Disgaea, but I'll get in to that with the next update.

Shh! Yes, it does have to do with that, and I'll get in to it a little down the road.


That would explain his unique Energy Skill, Rising Dragon.

Oh, one IMPORTANT detail I forgot:

Nippon Ichi games have a massive bank of names that they pull from when randomly assigning names.

You have a relatively massive character limit of 14.

Then name someone buttfart.

Inevitable cat monster should be named Princess Kitty.

♫My Little Garden♫
Welcome back, everyone! Previously on Let's Play Phantom Brave: We Meet Again, Our main character got murdered, some dead interlopers wandeerd to our island, and we stacked them like crates to get a dead sentient bottle to join us! Let's meet the team!



Marona is not a strong physical fighter, but she has her own unique talents she can bring to the team with a proper staff, equipped with an offensive Healing Skill, which we'll be able to obtain from Milo soon. As she levels up, her SPD will grow pretty quickly, and there's an item with lots of skills that use SPD to boost the damage, so if we find one of those, we'll be in business.


Ash, as his stats would indicate, IS a strong physical fighter, with plenty of defenses to back it up. A strong sword would probably be the best for him.


IF we decide to use Milo for combat, we're going to have to boost her ATK if we want to use her Profit Punch skill as a standard attack. Unfortunately, I don't know if it'll be too easy to turn her in to a good front-line combatant.


Cristi is totally usable as a second healer and combat medic. She won't be able to keep pace with Marona, whose SPD is higher, but RES is lower. Again, a staff with the basic Healing attack-type skill will do for her.


Bert...ugh...I don't know about him. He might be a stop-gap character, until we get more classes to choose from that either offer more variety, or just less suck.


buttfart is a loose cannon with nothing left to lose. I could give him some more Status Magic, I think there's an actual attack skill in that class of skills. I'll do some research in the strategy guide and figure it out.


After dying a peaceful life of old age with her husband Tombo, Kiki decided to join a little girl's army of the dead.

Witch Skills
Shock: 0 [INT] [E-M]. Basic short-range attack.
Fire/Ice/Wind: 2 [INT] [E-M]. Tier 1 elemental spell. Short range, small area of effect.
Mega Fire/Ice/Wind: 8 [INT] [E-M]. Tier 2 elemental spell. Medium range, medium area of effect. Learned at Lv. 9.
Beating for Two: 12 [E-M]. Combo skill that deals damage in a cone-shaped area. Learned at Lv. 19.
Giga Fire/ice/Wind: 15 [INT] [E-M]. Tier 3 elemental spell. Long range, large area of effect. Learned at Lv. 25.
Omega Fire/Ice Wind: 35 [INT] [E-M]. Tier 4 elemental spell. Very long range, huge area of effect. Learned at Lv. 50.

Kiki here, appropriately enough, comes with Wind to start.

One thing I forgot to mention previously is, below Mana on the status window is the character's elemental affinities. Look back up at Kiki's status window. We see that she's got a -70% affinity with Fire, 10% with wind, and 60% with Ice. This means that she'll take 70% more damage from Fire-aligned attacks, and that her damage with Fire spells will be reduced by 70%. Best way to interpret these is that if these percentages are negative, then it sucks for you. These can be mitigated by allocating points to elemental affinity during character creation.

So in the case of Kiki, she needs some Ice spells to get to her full potential.

Now, let's get going!

On the world map, you can click on an island to travel to it. The one that's pulsing light and dark is the island of your next plot destination. So, let's get going to Terra Firma!


Note: All these title cards are narrated by Ash.



Our scene opens in the village on Terra Firma with some idle crowd gossip.



"What's the elder thinking!? She's just a little girl. There's gotta be better Chromas out there..."

"Shh! This generation just doesn't know when to keep their voices down... Methinks he's planning to fight evil with evil... Y'know, like fire."

Marona appears to be talking shop with the village elder. Oddly enough, nobody notices Ash.

"...he sounds like a thief."

"Exactly! He's taken every jewel on the island. --not that there were a lot. What's more... he's taken all of our food as well." {Not to include the obvious fruit on the tree in the background, I assume.}

"That's terrible! Who would do something like that?"

"Aren't I paying you to figure that out? ...bah! I'll give you a clue. All we know is that he's in the White Wolf Army. ...Who knew they'd sink so low?" {I dunno, guy. LARPing Vampire: The Masquerade players can be pretty psychotic...}

"The White Wolf Army!? No way!"

This causes everyone present to gasp in shock. The narrator takes over.


"W-Who said that!?"



Ash uses telepathy (I think) to speak with Marona quietly.

("Sorry, Marona. I didn't mean to shout. Anyway, listen to me... You need to refuse this job.")

("Huh? Why?")

("Think about it. Who's the strongest Raven? Raphael--the leader of the White Wolf Army; so skilled that he's one of the Nine Swords of Ivoire. We wouldn't stand a chance.") {Raven? Armored Core reference!}

("You're right...")

Then, with a happy grin on her face...

("We'll just negotiate. I don't like lots of fighting, anyway.")

Ash facepalms.

("That isn't what I--")



"Oh, it means a lot to us. I'll hope for your success."

The crowd disperses. There's a rustle in the bushes!



OH hey!

But then Momma runs up, scooping the child in her arms.

Oh, and they're Owl people.



"Stay away from her, do you hear me? Stay away."

Mother leaves with child, and sad violin music starts playing.
♫Gloomy Feeling (Violin)♫

"Marona..."

"It's okay, Ash. One day..."

Early on, we are introduced to Ash's pragmatism, and flawed attempts to shield Marona from the harshness of reality. At the same time, we are introduced to Marona's boundless optimism with just a hint of melancholy. She's been alone with only Ash to keep her company for eight years.

After this cutscene, we're dropped back to the World Map. Clicking on Terra Firma again offers the tutorial I was talking about earlier! Let's do it!

TUTORIAL 1

Marona is the center of combat. Her Confine ability is what allows you to summon your Phantom allies in to battle to aid in killing the enemy.

"Since Marona isn't a skilled warrior, she can't fight alone."

Ohh BOY, are they wrong on this. Marona is really a dervish of frenzied destruction, and it only takes a couple of hours of work to unleash that potential. But okay, game. We'll play it your way for now.


See that rock and the bush in front of Marona? Those are items. A Phantom can be summoned in to these objects.


What you see here is the Confine menu, selecting the flower. Here, you can select a Phantom to Confine in to the object. Different objects have different effects on the Phantom's stats. You can see these effects to the right of the character's stats. This flower, for example, would be good to confine Kiki or Cristi, as it boosts the phantom's INT and RES.


The tutorial has you drop Ash in to the rock. As I said earlier, Ash has Quick Attack, which lets him act immediately after Marona ends her turn. You can confine as many phantoms as you have items available as you want, up to the limit of 15.


The game then calls out the REMOVE stat, which, as stated, indicates the number of turns the Phantom has left before it leaves the battlefield. Once removed, the Phantom cannot be re-confined.

After this, the game turns the battle over to you to take out the Scrabbit.


I confine Ash to the rock, and confine our Healer to the flower, and the Scrabbit is dead in short order.


Destruction Bonus is the bonus Bordeaux you get for killing enemies.
Take Home Bonus...well, I'll explain that soon.
The Charging bonus gives bonus XP and Mana to all Phantoms involved in the battle, as well as Marona. For Marona, this bonus XP is based on her level. For Phantoms, this is based on the level of the item they were confined in compared to their own. You get more XP the higher the item is in level.

TUTORIAL 2

This tutorial covers the effects of picking up objects and characters. For the purposes of this game, I will be using Equip and Lift interchangably, as they are one and the same.


As you can see, there's a sword lying on the battlefield. Rather than confine a Phantom in to it, we can confine it in to another object, and have the Phantom use the weapon. Marona can even pick it up herself and use it!


First, we confine Ash, and end Marona's turn.


Then, during Ash's turn, we select the sword and press A, and select Lift from the menu.


Now, Ash is equipped with the sword. The sword actually contains skills that are added to Ash's skill list for as long as the weapon is equipped.


We select a Scrabbit and hit Attack. This opens up the new list of skills we have available with the sword equipped.


I already told you about how SP works in this game, so this is pointless.


Snake Beater has a different area of effect than what we've seen so far. It's got a cone-shaped AoE, which will hit all targets within the blue area. Friendly fire is a thing, and is annoying if you're not paying attention.

Not bad!


Also, one final thing to note: You cannot drop or throw a weapon after you've attacked with it. However, you can perform an attack after you have picked it up, so you can have the next ally down the line swipe the item from your character and do something with it next turn!

The game turns it over to us, but we're gonna do things just a little differently...

I'm gonna lay the last little bit of tutorial on you right now! See, this weapon is unique, and cannot be found anywhere else in the game, so we're gonna swipe it and take it home! Select Confine and look at your unit list.


Below the unit list is a Take Home percentage. What this means is that every Phantom has a chance to take the item that they were confined in to back to Phantom Isle when their REMOVE clock runs out. Remember when I said that Bottle Mails have high STEAL stats? Well, STEAL also applies to this Take Home percentage, and, as you can see, he's got a 100% chance to take this unique item home! So let's confine buttfart in to the sword.


Confine! Now, we just need to wait out his turns, so buttfart heads for the corner, while Marona brings out a few more Phantoms to deal with the Scrabbits. Bottle Mails have a natural REMOVE of 3, so it's not long before...


Booyah! Now let's finish off these rabble!



TUTORIAL 3

This tutorial teaches you about "Protection", basically those field effects I was talking about earlier.


Sometimes, you'll see a number floating over a character or item. This indicates that it is receiving a Protection effect.

For example...


This Scrabbit has a DEF x4 effect, quadrupling its defense! The tutorial has Marona run up and punch it in the face for no damage. As you can see from the screenshot, the black and white trail that is coming from that tree nearby is what is generating the effect. You can deal with protection effects in one of three ways.

1. Destroy the generating object by attacking it.
2. Confine a Phantom in to it and have the Phantom take it home.
3. Throw the object out of bounds, or OB.

Note that only the object receiving a Protection effect will gain its effects. The generating object gets nothing out of it, so if you want to get a Protection effect, make sure you're confining to the right end. The number floating above the object or character indicates the number of Protection effects it is receiving.

Now it's our turn!


Marona runs for the tree generating the DEF x4 effect and throws it OB, severing the Scrabbit from the Protection. Then, for good measure, she runs over with her last remaining movement and smacks the Scrabbit, and confines Ash to the HP Heal 30% tree.


This doesn't last long.

After the tutorial, you're sent back to the world map, and Ash suggests that we return to Phantom Isle to heal up from the damage we sustained in the tutorial.

When we arrive...



Every time you engage in a battle, there is a chance that there will be some sort of event at Phantom Isle. This is just one of them: the Merchant will earn bordeaux. Only Phantoms and objects that are not in storage have a chance for an event to occur.


Also, we can now equip items to our characters. Please note that items also count toward your 15 character limit. You could Confine up to 7 phantoms, each with items equipped, and send Marona in to battle with a weapon equipped.

To review, some of the phantoms you have on Phantom Isle will perform services. The Merchant, obviously, will sell you items. She gains Experience when you buy items from her.


Here, we've got a book that will give Kiki the Ice skill, so we'll be grabbing that. We also pick up a pair of canes for Marona and Cristi. The Canes have an offensive Healing skill, Blinding Light, which will allow Marona and Cristi to begin boosting their Healing SP. We get a Stone Cane for buttfart, as it's got some basic Buff and debuff skills that will help make him an asset to the team.


Cristi, obviously, will restore everyone's HP and SP for a price at Phantom Isle. She gains XP when she does this.

Kiki will allow us to rearrange a character or item's skill list so we can put things as we want them. This is free of charge, and, obviously, does not result in her gaining levels.

That's a lot to take in, so next time, we'll get on to Episode 1 proper!

I was only teasing, and now you've committed yourself to the course! Ha ha!

I think this is my favorite NIS game, mostly because it's so character driven. I mean Disgaea has an interesting setting, and non-standard characters, but when you get down to it the plot is a standard save the world affair. Here much of the game is basically "screw over Marona" as you can already see. I might be jumping ahead a little, but the main "bad guy" is more of a natural disaster than a villain; part of me thinks this is great, but part of me also wishes there was a bit more explanation to it.

I also liked the battle system, it's probably difficult to see in screen shots, but rather than having a grid it's more point and click. I was very surprised to see that the Wii version was a straight port, still requiring a D-pad, as it would have worked much better on that system. It's too bad that the designers seemed to go overboard with it, people remember how difficult "slippery" and "bouncy" areas are (especially when you can "fall off" the map) and wanted to go back to simple grids. If they had just limited it to "point and click" and not tried to get fancy we may have seen more of this and actually got it polished rather than dropping it entirely and going back to grids as each subsequent NIS games has.

I haven't have the urge to buy a guide for a game in years, but one line from this game's guide always stuck with me. To beat the final post-game boss you should "raise your stats until numbers have no meaning, and then raise them some more".

But that's Doublejump's advice for every NIS game!

Granted, they usually stress that more for the optional bosses, not the storyline bosses, but still....

If I remember correctly, Phantom Brave is pretty good about grinding for an NIS game. You can get through most of the main game without having to grind at all, if you have a decent party build.

Of course, the post-game more than makes up for that.

No, that's every NIS game still. At least, it's not terribly hard to get through Disgaea's main game without grinding.

So that's how you get the bottlemail! I'd read text-only descriptions of how it was done, but wasn't actually able to do it myself when I played the PS2 version of this.

I think this was my least favorite of the NIS games I've played--managing confining and removal of characters (along with the very limited equipment system) never really grew on me. I'm looking forward to seeing it done better.

I think my strategy for this game was make marona a sword with a billion speed on it then never let anyone else have a turn >;3