Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero (PS5) Review – The One Piece

The original Phantom Brave came out on the Playstation 2 in 2004. In the game, we experience the life of Marona, whose parents die to an entity named Sulphur. Marona’s character evolution from the beginning through the end is legendary and makes the first game a masterpiece in character writing. Now 21 years later the sequel Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is upon us!

Game Name: Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero
Platform(s): PS4, PS5 (Review), Nintendo Switch, PC (Spring 2025)
Developer(s): Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher(s): NIS America
Release Date: January 30th, 2025
Price: $59.99

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero starts shortly after the original game’s events. Ash and Marona are sailing when the Shipwreck Fleet, an entire fleet of ghost ships, stops them. Ash protects Marona and sends her away, but she then gets stuck on Skullrock Island, the home of the Argento Pirate Crew. When Marona regains her senses, she realizes Ash is now stuck on the Shipwreck Fleet.

Marona meets Apricot, a phantom whose father was chasing after the Shipwreck Fleet before he disappeared. They decide to join forces and go on a mission to take on the Shipwreck Fleet. To do so, they need to create a fleet of their own.

Living On Skullrock Island

The core of your time in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero will be on Skullrock Island. This will serve as your headquarters as you search for the Shipwreck Fleet and build your territory. You can create new phantoms, go salvaging, fuse your items, explore dungeons, and build your fleet in the Marina.

As you progress through the story, you will unlock more types of phantoms to utilize in your arsenal. You start with normal humanoid warriors, thieves, archers, and wizards. You will unlock magic knights, more beast phantoms, and even large monster phantoms. In the phantom creation system, after selecting a phantom type, a color, and a name, you move on to stat choices. You can allocate three points to the stats of the phantom, which you can use to further enhance their strengths or mitigate their weaknesses. I generally always used these points to increase their top stats even higher. An important part of stat allocation is elemental resistances. You start at zero across all three elements available to you: Fire, Wind, and Water. You can reduce your resistance to one element to add resistance to another.

Combat in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a refined system. At the beginning of every map, you start with just Marona in your party. She can confine phantoms from your party to items scattered across the field. These items can increase the stats of the phantoms confined to them. Items also have links to other items across the field, and sometimes they are linked to items that enemy phantoms are confined to. These bonuses can be unlinked if you throw the item off the field. For certain boss enemies, it is necessary to remove the items linked to the bosses. Otherwise, they may have significant damage reduction or even invincibility. You can also be knocked off the map and go out of bounds. If you or an enemy go out of bounds, you lose a percentage of your HP and then reappear on the map near where you fell off.

Movement isn’t like your usual SRPG NIS game with grids and tiles. It is free movement. You have a limit to how far you can move, but you can move back to regain your speed if you don’t make it to your intended destination. You can also jump as a form of movement, which makes positioning more strategic. Certain phantoms, like owls, can jump higher than others.

Each phantom has a deployment cost, and if you equip the phantom with an item, it costs more deployment points to confine them to an item. You can confine a phantom to Marona if you have a high enough bond with the character. It costs a deployment point, so make sure you keep your resources in mind.

When you confine a phantom to Marona, it is known as confriend. Marona changes her appearance to fuse with the phantom she is confining to her. This fusion enhances stats and prioritizes the highest individual stat between Marona and the phantom for enhancement. It also grants the moves of both characters, along with a special, super-powerful one-time-use ability. Each of these powerful abilities features very unique animations.

Bringing Phantom Brave To 3D

Nippon Ichi Software has already brought Disgaea into the 3D plane, and my experience with Disgaea 7 has shown it was a successful transition. I think bringing over the art style to 3D still works well with the chibi anime models.

The animations are well done and provide a good incentive to keep trying different phantoms to confriend Marona. I do admit that sometimes one model can slow down and stutter while the other in the animation remains fluid. I’m not sure if this is due to the PS5 or if the Nintendo Switch release also experiences the model stuttering during those big animations.

Keeping The Roots

The first Phantom Brave was very dark and had moments that showed a lot of grief in the main characters. In The Lost Hero, there are still dark moments, but luckily there are also a lot of heartfelt and genuine moments, with even some added humor in the mix. Marona and Apricot serve as an interesting dynamic, with Marona being the individual who has a lot of experience dealing with and overcoming her obstacles. Apricot, on the other hand, has been in emotional stasis for five years since her death. She slowly gains more and more confidence and courage in herself as Marona builds her up, making it a very emotionally impactful arc.

One thing that I couldn’t help but think about as I was playing Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero was One Piece. Each island you visit has an intense story while also adding a new mate to your pirate crew. This is a very diverse cast of characters, and they all contribute to your crew’s dynamics. Rouen adds a flair of pirate experience, Henna brings a rush of enjoyment and freedom, and more characters add moments of growth to each other. There are many themes about freedom and being the person you want to be with honor and purpose. I love the balance Nippon Ichi Software was able to create in this game through its storytelling.

This wasn’t the first time Nippon Ichi Software tried to incorporate inspiration from One Piece, as you can see in Disgaea 6, too. I do think this was the most genuine attempt at it, though, since it didn’t need to be a satire like Disgaea usually is.

Phantom Brave 

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a fantastic sequel to the original. It gives us time to see Marona as a mature character and introduces a whole new cast to fall in love with. Free movement is an added mechanic that can create some frustration with obstacles on the map, but overall, it is implemented well.

If you are someone who hasn’t played the original, you can play this one, but the appreciation of Marona and Ash’s bond will be lessened due to how little you get to see them on the screen together. This is a highly recommended experience from me, though, if you want to see a good balance between emotional impact, comedy, and important moments.

Review Disclosure Statement: Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero was provided to us by NIS America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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