Phantom Brave
Sep. 17th, 2004 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothI've been playing a lot of Phantom Brave, lately. It's addictive, sort of like Disgaea, which isn't a big surprise as it's by the same people. The story isn't as good, though -- you're playing a pitiful possessed girl that hunts monsters and everyone hates, and there's various evils rising up that you fight. So Laharl and co. still rule in the interesting premise department.
The system itself is very... odd, however. At the heart of it, you create characters (like in Disgaea) and level them up, but their stats also depend a great deal on the 'title' you give them ('Glossy', 'Desired', 'Dense', 'Failure') and on the item they're confined into on the map. Usually, this means that the map dictates which characters you send out -- if you've got a lot of rocks and bricks, break out the fighters, it it's a lot of flowers and trees, maybe a mage assault is in order, and if there's nothing but grass, it's Scrabbit time!
It uses a phased initiative system like Final Fantasy X, where your speed attribute determines how often you get to act. So, high-speed characters (like a scrabbit holding a weed confined to another weed; I have one with 300 speed, compared to a normal character's 80ish) might act five times before any enemy even gets to move.
This is mitigated by the 'remove' timer -- after a certain number of actions, your confined spirit goes back to the spirit world, maybe taking the item he was confined to with him, and maybe not. That's how you get new items, other than buying them in a store, and usually how you get new titles too (on the items you steal -- items have titles). So, the scrabbit would go five times pretty quickly, wreak some havoc, and then vanish, while the slower characters were still around to keep fighting.
This makes large maps really annoying, since you can't summon out your whole force right away, or they'll run out of time moving across the map. You get fifteen summonings per battle (summoning someone with equipment counts as two), so you have to pace yourself.
Having to confine to items makes maps without many items really annoying too. There was one random dungeon map that had only ONE item to confine to, out of range way on the other side of the map. Before I could get to it, one of the enemies picked it up and chucked it over the edge. Game Over, unless I wanted to fight with Marona, which is sort of like fighting with a carrier with no fighters in it.
Enemies chucking your characters over the side of the map is really annoying, especially because if you do it back to them, all the OTHER enemies gain a level, but you gain nothing if they do it to you. Scrabbits and saber cats (among others) have this aggravating 'roundhouse' move that tends to chuck your people out of bounds as a side effect. Argh. >.<
Anyway, the most different thing about Phantom Brave than Disgaea, other than the lack of a grid and the phased initiative, is the equipment system. People can only hold ONE item of equipment, at max. If you're holding a weapon, you can't lift anyone else up to throw them, or be lifted ('lift' used on someone holding an item tries to steal it). But enemies and allies, living or dead, can be picked up and used as weapons! Many's the time I've been assaulted by a soldier swinging a dead cat.
Equipment also has a more involved level up process. It doesn't gain levels as easily as characters (you have to spend 'mana' to level it up; mana is gained more slowly than xp, and is also used for fusing and for learning new moves) but you can fuse it with other items to raise its stats. Characters can only fuse to learn moves from items (or other characters).
The only way to change characters' base stats is to make a whole new character. The maximum 'experience' of character you can create new seems to be 3 + the highest level of that character you currently own, and the experience level acts like the 'useless, average, genious' thing in Disgaea -- it affects how much of each stat they get on each level up. So far, I've created a second set of characters with 7 'experience' (compared to the 1-3 most of the original set had) because that seems to be a price breakpoint -- it goes from 1500 bor for a 7-exp, to 6500 for an 8-exp (then 8000 for a 9-exp, 10 for a 10-exp, etc.)
Unforunately, I assumed it was like Disgaea, where you could 'reincarnate' to get better stats with the original characters, so all my good names are used up on the obsolete party. }:P
Okay, I had to get that out of my system. }:) Grr, I wish I could skip work and go play some more...
The system itself is very... odd, however. At the heart of it, you create characters (like in Disgaea) and level them up, but their stats also depend a great deal on the 'title' you give them ('Glossy', 'Desired', 'Dense', 'Failure') and on the item they're confined into on the map. Usually, this means that the map dictates which characters you send out -- if you've got a lot of rocks and bricks, break out the fighters, it it's a lot of flowers and trees, maybe a mage assault is in order, and if there's nothing but grass, it's Scrabbit time!
It uses a phased initiative system like Final Fantasy X, where your speed attribute determines how often you get to act. So, high-speed characters (like a scrabbit holding a weed confined to another weed; I have one with 300 speed, compared to a normal character's 80ish) might act five times before any enemy even gets to move.
This is mitigated by the 'remove' timer -- after a certain number of actions, your confined spirit goes back to the spirit world, maybe taking the item he was confined to with him, and maybe not. That's how you get new items, other than buying them in a store, and usually how you get new titles too (on the items you steal -- items have titles). So, the scrabbit would go five times pretty quickly, wreak some havoc, and then vanish, while the slower characters were still around to keep fighting.
This makes large maps really annoying, since you can't summon out your whole force right away, or they'll run out of time moving across the map. You get fifteen summonings per battle (summoning someone with equipment counts as two), so you have to pace yourself.
Having to confine to items makes maps without many items really annoying too. There was one random dungeon map that had only ONE item to confine to, out of range way on the other side of the map. Before I could get to it, one of the enemies picked it up and chucked it over the edge. Game Over, unless I wanted to fight with Marona, which is sort of like fighting with a carrier with no fighters in it.
Enemies chucking your characters over the side of the map is really annoying, especially because if you do it back to them, all the OTHER enemies gain a level, but you gain nothing if they do it to you. Scrabbits and saber cats (among others) have this aggravating 'roundhouse' move that tends to chuck your people out of bounds as a side effect. Argh. >.<
Anyway, the most different thing about Phantom Brave than Disgaea, other than the lack of a grid and the phased initiative, is the equipment system. People can only hold ONE item of equipment, at max. If you're holding a weapon, you can't lift anyone else up to throw them, or be lifted ('lift' used on someone holding an item tries to steal it). But enemies and allies, living or dead, can be picked up and used as weapons! Many's the time I've been assaulted by a soldier swinging a dead cat.
Equipment also has a more involved level up process. It doesn't gain levels as easily as characters (you have to spend 'mana' to level it up; mana is gained more slowly than xp, and is also used for fusing and for learning new moves) but you can fuse it with other items to raise its stats. Characters can only fuse to learn moves from items (or other characters).
The only way to change characters' base stats is to make a whole new character. The maximum 'experience' of character you can create new seems to be 3 + the highest level of that character you currently own, and the experience level acts like the 'useless, average, genious' thing in Disgaea -- it affects how much of each stat they get on each level up. So far, I've created a second set of characters with 7 'experience' (compared to the 1-3 most of the original set had) because that seems to be a price breakpoint -- it goes from 1500 bor for a 7-exp, to 6500 for an 8-exp (then 8000 for a 9-exp, 10 for a 10-exp, etc.)
Unforunately, I assumed it was like Disgaea, where you could 'reincarnate' to get better stats with the original characters, so all my good names are used up on the obsolete party. }:P
Okay, I had to get that out of my system. }:) Grr, I wish I could skip work and go play some more...
