Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero

Although The Lost Hero’s early exposition can meander, Marona and friends offset this imperfection with a thoroughly engaging and sporadically poignant second half. Best of all, the game’s multitude of different combat components gel into a system that allows for a near-unprecedented amount of flexibility.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is likely to overwhelm even the most experienced of SRPG aficionados at the start, but that’s by design. Its depth and uniqueness will delight those choosing to stick with it, while others can just lower the difficulty to push through this colorful and charming adventure.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is tough to recommend. This is a deep, difficult strategy RPG with a long campaign, tons of characters, and satisfying mechanics. Unless you’re coming here from the Disgaea series. Then it’s a shallow imitation of a superior franchise with an even more inconsequential storyline. On the other hand, if you’ve never played Disgaea, it’s unlikely you’ll encounter this game at all. If you’ve somehow gotten here with no Disgaea in your history and a love of complex strategy RPGs, The Lost Hero will be an excellent adventure. Otherwise, I’m simply not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong. This sequel truly experiments a lot, with many elements you’d not usually see in a typical SRPG. Still, perhaps because I was looking for an exciting story with twists and turns, and what I got was a Sunday morning cartoon full of villains I’m unable to take seriously, then it’s very hard for me to recommend this game to the average person.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a solid game, but the Switch performance really detracts from the overall experience. If you have the ability to grab this on another platform, you should do so. This is otherwise a very enjoyable game with a decent amount of depth if a bit lacking in difficulty due to poor enemy pathing. If you're into SRPGs, it's worth a look into if you have the time.