Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero (Nintendo Switch) Review

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero begins immediately after the events of the original game. Morona and her spectral friend, Ash, are setting sail to return home, when a pirate commandeers their ship. The villain has the same confinement powers as Morona: the ability to bind a phantom to an object, which allows the entity to take a physical form. This power comes into play in the core mechanics of the turn-based strategy battles. Most of The Lost Hero's party members are phantoms and Morona must be guided on the maps to various objects to confine a phantom.

Morona is the party leader and the only unit players can choose to initially deploy. All phantoms must be deployed via confinement. This was one of the many wrinkles in the original Phantom Brave's gameplay that made it stand out from other strategy RPGs. The sequel takes things further with Morona's enhanced abilities, meant to foster deeper planning and flexibility. Typically, when a phantom takes corporeal form, it has a limit of a few turns before the catalyst is absorbed and the spirit loses physical form. In The Lost Hero, Morona has an ability to further extend the time a phantom has on the material plane.

As the story develops, Morona's confine powers expand and can fuse phantoms together so long as she has a high enough friendship with them. The fusion or "confriend" mechanic visually alters character designs in weird and amusing ways. New kinds of objects for confinement are introduced, like machinery, and friendly units can mount vehicles. These new gimmicks and mechanics, while fun, don't feel like substantial evolutions to justify a sequel more than 20 years later. The gameplay is functionally the same as ever, and even with the new mechanics, it is more of the same confining and summoning on a field.

The biggest changes to the Phantom Brave formula is the battlefield no longer being limited to an isometric grid. Battles are fully 3D with a fluidly controlled camera system and all units move based on an AP system. The other dramatic change is the jump to fully 3D character models. While technically serviceable, they lack the charm and expressiveness of the old sprites. The original game had a tremendous amount of unique animations, frames, and poses that made scenes and battles entertaining. Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero's 3D graphics are noticeably stiff and less dynamic than the old sprites.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero's visuals won't impress, but they are not ugly. There are enough round edges to make some features look appealing. At best, the graphics are on the sterile and generic side. Impressively, The Lost Hero has a 60 fps mode that is surprisingly stable.

The real problems with Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero are how safe and dull it is. The story is more of the same from the prior game. The plot meanders and the tone is utterly toothless. The themes are also sickeningly saccharine and forced. Most of the time, story arcs revolve around fetch quests. The power of friendship themes were cute in the first game, but it gets tedious in The Lost Hero. There is only so much blind optimism a person can take, and eventually there needs to be some realness to ground the story. There isn't an attempt to build upon the the foundation established in the first story. The new characters are mildly amusing at best, but there is rarely a moment when the story emotionally hooks players.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero might interest newcomers, but they will be confused by the lack of context. Regretfully, it's a dull and boring game that doesn't take any risks. After 20 years of the original Phantom Brave being rereleased, a sequel should have been more daring and willing to innovate upon itself.