Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero opens up not long after the events of the original game. Marona, a girl with the ability to summon ghosts to aid her, saved the land from a great evil and has gone from being a pariah to a renowned hero. She and her closest phantom Ash, however, have barely gotten time to adjust to their new status quo before a pirate appears. He attacks Marona and siphons off most of her power before launching an attack that separates her from Ash. She awakens on the island of a young pirate ghost named Apricot, whose own legendary pirate father has gone missing. Together, the two team up to form a pirate crew, rescue their loved ones, and discover the secret of the new evil that's harassing the waves.

The Lost Hero is a straightforward sequel. It doesn't take any huge leaps forward but mostly serves as an excuse to reunite Marona and Ash for another adventure alongside a new cast. The story is cute and charming, and it's tinged with occasional moments of surprising darkness. (After all, most of the cast are ghosts.) I can't say it is a huge favorite, but it's a pleasant adventure.

Like Disgaea, Phantom Brave is primarily a strategy RPG based on creating a fanciful cast of brightly colored heroes to battle swarms of enemies. Instead of the grid-based gameplay of Disgaea, Phantom Brave allows each unit to move freely around the map. Attacks and abilities use cones and lines instead of specific layouts, so with careful positioning, you can hit multiple enemies in a single attack. You can also freely jump while moving around, so you can get useful height advantages over your enemies.

Also unique to Phantom Brave is the combat. By default, the only unit on the map is Marona. To summon additional units to the field, Marona has to use her Confine ability on objects in the environment, which can range from swords and spears to palm trees and dead fish. This lets you confine one of your Phantoms into that object, so they can take a physical form. This form is an amalgamation of their basic stats and the stats of the object in which they are confined. Certain objects may confer bonuses or penalties.

A confined unit, however, is not permanent. For every turn a unit takes, its Remove counter goes down by one, and once it reaches zero, they are removed from the field for the rest of the battle. Depending on the unit and your luck, they may also take the confined item back with them, which can then be used in other stages. Likewise, if Marona goes down, nobody else can confine, and that means you suddenly have a strict time limit to revive her, or the game is over.

Functionally, this means you must carefully consider when to bring a unit onto the field. It's tempting to deploy your entire team at the start of a fight, but if you do, then they might run out of Remove counter points by just crossing the battlefield. Frequently, Marona might have to fight on her own or with a smaller retinue of allies and save the big guns for when the stronger enemies arrive. Different unit types also have different amounts of Remove points. The "old" units tend to have extremely powerful skills but can only remain on the battlefield for two turns, while a pirate is generally weak but can remain fighting for many turns.

This is made more complex by the fact that confined objects also have special attributes, similar to Geo Effects in the Disgaea games. An object that can be confined into may also have a special effect, ranging from increasing defense and damage to flat-out being invincible. Anyone confined into that object gets the same bonus, and objects are frequently linked together so one specific object gives its bonus to multiple other objects or enemies. You can destroy these objects to remove their effects, but that means you can't use them to confine, and you don't get their benefits, either.

Confined objects also serve as weapons, and almost anything you can confine into can be used as a weapon. Units can bring weapons with them when confining, or they can grab something off the battlefield. Sure, this can be a sword or a gun, but frequently, you'll find that it's more effective to beat the crud out of an enemy with a palm tree or big flower, especially since most confined objects have different special attacks. A simple vase can shoot fireworks or explosives, or heavy box can double as a potent shield.

New to The Lost Hero are some alternate options to amplify your team's ability to fight. In addition to the Confine power, Marona can also Confire and Confriend. Confire allows Marona to confine an ally into a special gadget, which is a mechanical item with special attacks and attributes. Gadgets are either found directly on the stage or can be summoned by Apricot. They are very powerful tools that certain classes can make extra use of, and having them available means that even in stages with minimal opportunity for Confining, you can still bring out strong units.

Confriend, on the other hand, is a way to give Marona more combat capability. On her own, Marona is fine but unexceptional. Once she gains Confriend, she gains a special meter that fills up as she fights, and when it is full, she can fuse with an ally on the battlefield who's capable of being Confined. This gives Marona a new form, special abilities, the ability to act multiple times in a row, and changes her stats to be the highest value between her and the person she fused with. However, once she uses up her actions in this form, she reverts to normal, and whoever she confined with becomes unavailable for the rest of the stage.

For the most part, Phantom Brave's combat system is a fun twist on the Disgaea combat. There are enough similarities that fans of one are likely to like the other, but the differences are also substantial enough that it doesn't feel like a Disgaea clone. The emphasis on unit limits and turn limits means that you're strongly encouraged to figure out different kinds of units to use, rather than pumping up Marona to maximum stats. The level design is largely quite good and offers a lot of flexibility and variety in terms of how you approach stages. Even something as simple as the gadget option can change a lot, depending on whether you bring in a flying zeppelin to zoom up high walls or a barrel tank to blow up stone barricades.

A negative to the more freeform movement is that the enemy AI seems to struggle. I'd regularly run into enemies who ended up positioned next to a rock or other large object they couldn't jump over, and instead of going around it, they would run against it for a few seconds and then freeze in place. This happens most often in the dungeons, which function as the Item World for this entry, but it also happens in the main game. It doesn't ruin the game, but it feels a tad disappointing when a big boss is marching toward you and gives up because a tiny rock blocked its foot.

Like the Disgaea games, a major part of The Lost Hero's appeal comes in the varied ways you can shatter the game's difficulty. There are countless different systems to power up your characters. You can find and equip hundreds of different skills, which range from basic health boosts to absurd things like massively supercharging your damage. You can customize your pirate ship to grant passive bonuses to your whole party, you can use the dungeon feature to upgrade items to be cartoonishly powerful, and even the Juice Bar option returns so you can power-level characters without using them in combat. It's worth noting that this isn't strictly necessary if all you want to do is play the story. Like other games in the franchise, it's largely there for those who love seeing numbers go up, so they can take on new challenges.

Overall, The Lost Hero is a really fun entry in the "infinite grinding experience" franchise that Disgaea and its spin-offs represent. The mechanics are different enough that I don't feel like I'm playing the exact same game, but at times, it is more familiar than it isn't. The core combat is a lot of fun, but I'd strongly recommend not shattering the difficulty curve quickly; the more engaging mechanics shine more if you don't. If I had any real complaint, it still feels pretty similar. I enjoy the Disgaea games and their spin-offs, but there are so many of them that it's harder for The Lost Hero to stand out, despite having a relatively fresh take on the mechanics and concepts.

Graphically, however, The Lost Hero just isn't that great. It reuses the same engine as the newer Disgaea games, so it contains a lot of the same simple models and recycled assets. There are some genuinely nice animations, but a lot of them aren't very impressive, and I noticed a surprising number of frame rate issues despite running the game in Performance mode. The voice acting and music are good enough, if not exceptional, but overall, the presentation is kind of a disappointment.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a surprising sequel that does a good job of living up to its predecessor, but it doesn't exactly tread new ground for the franchise. A cute but forgettable plot, solid gameplay, and a near-infinite amount of grinding potential give the game a solid amount of value. The only thing holding it back are the unimpressive visuals and poor performance. If you're a fan of the Nippon Ichi games or the original Phantom Brave, there's a lot of fun to be had in this sequel.

Score: 8.0/10