This game is kinda dissapointing (spoilers)

[Charteuse Gale]

Already finished the game in switch like 2 weeks ago(beating it in hellish mode and hellish post end game mode) . It feels lacking and dissapointing, before you buy this game just don't expect this game gonna mind blown you like the previous phantom brave.

I have played the previous phantom brave and i can say the previous is still better than the sequel.

1. The story is cliche and predictable, don't expect plot twist because the story is very straight forward and obvious like disgaea 5. The villain is too cartoonish and was quite bad villian to be honest. The opening story is kinda weak, when you meet Apricot , it looks kinda girly but after that the story was quite fine until the later end game chapter which you realized they just speed running the story. There is many thing they can explored on this game story , like the blue kingdom, phantom town island , origin of phantom ,etc but they just stick to the boring cliched part of the story on the final chapter.

2. There is no skip animations when doing skills, it is 2025 game and no skip animation on skills ? disgaea have it long time ago. Maybe it is because this game use 3d free pathing movement which make it hard to code the pathing when got hit by skills that moving ally/enemy positions ? also compared to previous phantom brave, this game skills animations is not that great. So yeah, the best aoe skills in the game like dimensional slash took like 10 seconds animations, good luck doing dungeon run using this skill over and over(also you need to use this skill a lot because enemy on dungeon was quite many).

3. Dungeon on this game is very tedious and boring. You can't change map layout and enemy numbers, you will often go to dungeon with over 8-11 enemy in big area. Even if you can one hit kill enemy , you need a lot aoe skills like omega spells or dimensional slash to make it quicker. Not mention dungeon still use the same game formula on previous phantom brave , events every 10 floor. They only add slot gadget on dungeon and that's the only new thing they add. Why not make it like random mini events when we enter floor like disgaea item world ? why not add pirate ship invasion like disgaea 2 when the game theme was pirate ? why not make something interesting on this game dungeon.

4. Gadget, this is like Makai Kingdom vehicle. Overpowered at early game but become trash at late game(lvl 9999). They really make it simple, just give us 3 gadget vehicles, and gadget vehicle level was based on Apricot level. Mechanic class on this game was just poster girl at best, her job is just to increase vehicle max level limit and adding 3 turns remove when confired to gadget. The gadget vehicle stats is fixed, you won't be able to increase it at all, there is nothing you can do about it, there gadget don't have inventory slot( can't equip item), and the it does not matter whose the pilot is, lvl 1 unit as pilot is same as lvl 9999 unit. Unlike in Makai Kingdom where you can buy vehicles part, vehicles have inventory to equip items, pilot increased the vehicle stats, they really make gadget very simple at this game. Also just use barrel robot gadget, tank and zeppelin is kinda trash because it use fire elemental skills, if enemy have high fire resistance, then your gadget will become useless against it. But eh you will abandon gadget in end game anyway.

5. Marona in this game is one girl army and i am not joking. You can easily beat the hardest mode on this game called the hellish mode which was the carnage version on this game. Just get solo travelling scroll for Marona and you already beat the game, the hard part is finding the scroll which was rng. Not mention Marona can confriend which she inherited the stats and skills, she will have like 20 passive skills when she confriend which make it broken.

6. Fusion has been nerfed on this game. You can't fuse characters and only weapons, which was fine i think. The problem is weapons can't inherit other weapons skills and your characters is locked to weapons they use. Example you can't use sword skills when you use axe and vice versa.

7. Your inventory will be filled with maps and skill scroll, you will get it every time you clear stage, so good luck clearing inventory at some period of time when it stacked at your inventory. Explorer class in this game also just like mechanic, was just poster girl, her job was just to create map and use return. Unlike monk in previous phantom brave, the dungeon is based on map and was fixed, you can't alter the enemy type, enemy numbers, map layout , etc. You can just left explorer at lvl 1, Marona have confast skills to let her take first turn after Marona to use return. It is sad, why not make explorer interesting ? make the dungeon level based on explorer ? give her abilities to find treasure chest at dungeon ?

8. Status ailment in this game is same like previous phantom brave. But what is this joke ? the game devs is so lazy at status ailment ? let me tell you status ailment in this game was a joke. When you got status ailments, your characters will have green colored on their entire body. If you want to know what status ailment the characters got, you need to check status screen. I mean why ? previous phantom brave have clear status ailment, like have ??? above characters screen when they got amnesia status, green as poison, thunder symbol as paralysis. It just feels lazy, not mention i rarely got status ailment on this game, ghost class inflict paralysis and zombie gives poison i think but eh i don't even notice it at all.

9. Generic characters on this game is very strong compared to story characters and dlc characters, they can even beat Marona solo girl army but need a lot investment from a lot of egg for reincarnation. Change book is quite rare, same with scroll skill especially phantom rarity. Generic can inherit other class skills when reincarnating and can also get scroll skill, generic is very easy to build compared to story characters. Marona advantage is that she have no remove and solo travelling skills can easily give her max stats with some good equip and 5 change book.

10. Phantom rarity in this game is quite easy to get but quite tedious. For scroll with phantom rarity, you need to delve deeper on phantom rarity dungeon maps and pray on rng. You need to clear 90 floors to get phantom weapons, and with how tedious and boring dungeon is , i just don't bother doing it. Not mention all phantom weapons is just reskinned from 5 stars weapon and they just slapped phantom rarity at it which was quite sad to be honest. Previous phantom brave have unique weapons like spirit sword, divine sword, etc by stealing final floor boss at dungeon. There is also unique weapons like heliotropes , shiva, etc at story chapters.

11. post end game is very lacking and easy to beat. You don't even need max stats or such. If you have solo travelling skill , Marona can solo it easily even without confriend. If you can't then confriend will make it more easier too. Getting max stats on this game is very easy, you can also get max stats from phantom weapon, even lvl 1 character can get 9,999,999 attacks if you equip it with phantom weapons. And no, maxing stats on weapons is not that hard on this game, in fact it was much easier than farming change book or egg. So yeah there is no need to grind characters to be honest when weapons can cover it easily.

Overall for casual, this game was quite fine , it is not that grindy and challenging because the game offers many broken thing for you to break the game and steamroll it easily.

[Red Bat]

IDK if I'd call it disappointing. There's better NIS games, but it still feels like it's among the best. If for no other reason than that the problems with the earlier NIS games (except Phantom Brave, funnily enough) are hard to ignore.


Anyway, my 2 cents on what you said below.
---

1.To be fair... None of the Nippon Ichi games except maybe Soul Nomad and the original Disgaea had good stories. It's kind of something people should expect at this point.

2.Skip animations should be a thing of course. At least most animations are short unlike the team attack animations and the longer attack animations in the Disgaea games. However yes, the game takes forever to play solely because of this issue.

3.Again to be fair, the random dungeon mechanic in almost every NIS game is usually kind of annoying. It feels to me like there's fewer confinable items on average in this game compared to the last game, but at least they give you more ways around that. Overall there are better random dungeons like in Disgaea 5, but it at least feels better than Makai Kingdom or even the first Phantom Brave. Although that isn't saying much since a lot of the reason it's better is that the game's class system actually provides variety.

4.I actually felt like the gadgets were slightly better than the vehicles in Makai Kingdom. But I might have some bias as I think Makai Kingdom was a hot mess of a game overall. This game doesn't lean on the vehicle mechanic and treats it like a throwaway feature, but that's fine. Gadgets cost 1 confine point as opposed to costing 2 points (of 8 non-refundable points) in Makai Kingdom. I found vehicles in Makai Kingdom to be more of a gimmick, same as buildings. There needs to be more than 3 gadgets though, especially since 2 of them do fire damage. Granted, the pull and push mechanics of 2 of the gadgets does at least give them a niche once their stats start to falloff, which isn't something you saw in Makai Kingdom.

5. Marona is way more independent in this game, but at least you have to work for it. She felt weaker in the first game, but you could abuse fusion and scale her high resistance stat off a lot of attacks. In this game she has no good starting aptitudes and average across the board stats, which gives her no niche but lets you customize her. I imagine that outside of confriend, the phantoms will eventually surpass her hypothetical power due to reincarnation mechanics, but otherwise she's quite powerful.

6. To be fair, fusion was ridiculous in the first game once you learned it's mechanics.

7. There needs to at least be a "sort" feature. Was surprised there wasn't one since every other NIS strategy game seems to have one.

8. Yeah they need more visual indicators for status effects. Checking status screen for everything seems annoying.

9. Part of the reason generic characters feel strong is they actually have passives, unlike the first game and Makai Kingdom. There's actually a noticeable difference between similar characters. Although the SPD nerf means unfortunately our dear Scrabbit is the gimmicky monster character he was always meant to be, instead of the speedy glass cannon he was in the first game. Still like the Scrabbit either way.

10-11. Haven't messed with any of the high level random dungeons of post game yet. Hoping they patch in more content, but most likely what we'll get is another round of DLC characters. That's fine though as I usually don't complete the post games. At least NIS postgames are better than Megaman Battle Network's tedious post game unlock BS.

[IvanIceSpike]

Originally posted by Charteuse Gale:

Already finished the game in switch like 2 weeks ago(beating it in hellish mode and hellish post end game mode) . It feels lacking and dissapointing, before you buy this game just don't expect this game gonna mind blown you like the previous phantom brave.

I have played the previous phantom brave and i can say the previous is still better than the sequel.

1. The story is cliche and predictable, don't expect plot twist because the story is very straight forward and obvious like disgaea 5. The villain is too cartoonish and was quite bad villian to be honest. The opening story is kinda weak, when you meet Apricot , it looks kinda girly but after that the story was quite fine until the later end game chapter which you realized they just speed running the story. There is many thing they can explored on this game story , like the blue kingdom, phantom town island , origin of phantom ,etc but they just stick to the boring cliched part of the story on the final chapter.

2. There is no skip animations when doing skills, it is 2025 game and no skip animation on skills ? disgaea have it long time ago. Maybe it is because this game use 3d free pathing movement which make it hard to code the pathing when got hit by skills that moving ally/enemy positions ? also compared to previous phantom brave, this game skills animations is not that great. So yeah, the best aoe skills in the game like dimensional slash took like 10 seconds animations, good luck doing dungeon run using this skill over and over(also you need to use this skill a lot because enemy on dungeon was quite many).

3. Dungeon on this game is very tedious and boring. You can't change map layout and enemy numbers, you will often go to dungeon with over 8-11 enemy in big area. Even if you can one hit kill enemy , you need a lot aoe skills like omega spells or dimensional slash to make it quicker. Not mention dungeon still use the same game formula on previous phantom brave , events every 10 floor. They only add slot gadget on dungeon and that's the only new thing they add. Why not make it like random mini events when we enter floor like disgaea item world ? why not add pirate ship invasion like disgaea 2 when the game theme was pirate ? why not make something interesting on this game dungeon.

4. Gadget, this is like Makai Kingdom vehicle. Overpowered at early game but become trash at late game(lvl 9999). They really make it simple, just give us 3 gadget vehicles, and gadget vehicle level was based on Apricot level. Mechanic class on this game was just poster girl at best, her job is just to increase vehicle max level limit and adding 3 turns remove when confired to gadget. The gadget vehicle stats is fixed, you won't be able to increase it at all, there is nothing you can do about it, there gadget don't have inventory slot( can't equip item), and the it does not matter whose the pilot is, lvl 1 unit as pilot is same as lvl 9999 unit. Unlike in Makai Kingdom where you can buy vehicles part, vehicles have inventory to equip items, pilot increased the vehicle stats, they really make gadget very simple at this game. Also just use barrel robot gadget, tank and zeppelin is kinda trash because it use fire elemental skills, if enemy have high fire resistance, then your gadget will become useless against it. But eh you will abandon gadget in end game anyway.

5. Marona in this game is one girl army and i am not joking. You can easily beat the hardest mode on this game called the hellish mode which was the carnage version on this game. Just get solo travelling scroll for Marona and you already beat the game, the hard part is finding the scroll which was rng. Not mention Marona can confriend which she inherited the stats and skills, she will have like 20 passive skills when she confriend which make it broken.

6. Fusion has been nerfed on this game. You can't fuse characters and only weapons, which was fine i think. The problem is weapons can't inherit other weapons skills and your characters is locked to weapons they use. Example you can't use sword skills when you use axe and vice versa.

7. Your inventory will be filled with maps and skill scroll, you will get it every time you clear stage, so good luck clearing inventory at some period of time when it stacked at your inventory. Explorer class in this game also just like mechanic, was just poster girl, her job was just to create map and use return. Unlike monk in previous phantom brave, the dungeon is based on map and was fixed, you can't alter the enemy type, enemy numbers, map layout , etc. You can just left explorer at lvl 1, Marona have confast skills to let her take first turn after Marona to use return. It is sad, why not make explorer interesting ? make the dungeon level based on explorer ? give her abilities to find treasure chest at dungeon ?

8. Status ailment in this game is same like previous phantom brave. But what is this joke ? the game devs is so lazy at status ailment ? let me tell you status ailment in this game was a joke. When you got status ailments, your characters will have green colored on their entire body. If you want to know what status ailment the characters got, you need to check status screen. I mean why ? previous phantom brave have clear status ailment, like have ??? above characters screen when they got amnesia status, green as poison, thunder symbol as paralysis. It just feels lazy, not mention i rarely got status ailment on this game, ghost class inflict paralysis and zombie gives poison i think but eh i don't even notice it at all.

9. Generic characters on this game is very strong compared to story characters and dlc characters, they can even beat Marona solo girl army but need a lot investment from a lot of egg for reincarnation. Change book is quite rare, same with scroll skill especially phantom rarity. Generic can inherit other class skills when reincarnating and can also get scroll skill, generic is very easy to build compared to story characters. Marona advantage is that she have no remove and solo travelling skills can easily give her max stats with some good equip and 5 change book.

10. Phantom rarity in this game is quite easy to get but quite tedious. For scroll with phantom rarity, you need to delve deeper on phantom rarity dungeon maps and pray on rng. You need to clear 90 floors to get phantom weapons, and with how tedious and boring dungeon is , i just don't bother doing it. Not mention all phantom weapons is just reskinned from 5 stars weapon and they just slapped phantom rarity at it which was quite sad to be honest. Previous phantom brave have unique weapons like spirit sword, divine sword, etc by stealing final floor boss at dungeon. There is also unique weapons like heliotropes , shiva, etc at story chapters.

11. post end game is very lacking and easy to beat. You don't even need max stats or such. If you have solo travelling skill , Marona can solo it easily even without confriend. If you can't then confriend will make it more easier too. Getting max stats on this game is very easy, you can also get max stats from phantom weapon, even lvl 1 character can get 9,999,999 attacks if you equip it with phantom weapons. And no, maxing stats on weapons is not that hard on this game, in fact it was much easier than farming change book or egg. So yeah there is no need to grind characters to be honest when weapons can cover it easily.

Overall for casual, this game was quite fine , it is not that grindy and challenging because the game offers many broken thing for you to break the game and steamroll it easily.

damn, exactly as i feared