Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / Phantom Rose

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/key1scarlet.png

A maid's corpse lies cold and lifeless in the depths of a dilapidated mansion. Pale face and hollow eyes are met by the grace of a strange, sharply dressed woman. By the power of time, the hands of fate begin to rewind, and a journey repeated countless times begins anew...

Phantom Rose is a digital Animesque Roguelike Deckbuilding Game released on PC via Steam on August 7th, 2019. It was developed by Studio Maka, a one-man development studio lead by developer makaroll.

Taking control of a maid named Reina, the player is tasked with ascending through a mansion infested with evil foes and defeating the Crown Phantoms that stand in your way, ultimately making your way to the boss at the top. Gameplay progresses in stages with a grid-based overworld, with the player encountering enemies, events, collectibles, camps, and shops on various squares. To make progress, the player must reach the stairs and battle the Crown Phantom to proceed to the next floor.

To survive, the player must gather cards from defeated Phantoms, scattered treasures, and stray shopkeepers to build a deck of battle cards. During combat, each sides take turns expending cards in randomized order of five rounds per turn, with cards from both sides' decks randomly drawn from the deck and arranged on the battlefield. Cards used by the player disappear permanently from the deck, but to control how the cards are expended, the player can swap out any of the cards on the field with the cards in their hand, saving one card while using another. In addition, by collecting a resource called Soul Roses, the player can send a card from their hand back to the deck and replace it with another randomly-drawn card. Cards have various effects, such as dealing damage, inflicting buffs and debuffs, and creating defenses to block enemy damage; strategically manipulating the harmony between your field, hand and deck are the keys to earning victory.

On December 3rd, 2020, a free to play Mobile Phone Game version of the game was released by Studio Maka under the name Phantom Rose Scarlet. While ostensibly a port, featuring all of the same assets and story as the PC version, the gameplay in Scarlet has been completely overhauled. Removing most of the random elements and doing away with the permanent card loss mechanic, gameplay in Scarlet now revolves around managing the cooldowns of the cards in your deck as they are used. All cards in the deck are now available to use at will and can be selected and played on a field consisting of four cards activated in displayed order, with two of your opponent's cards in randomly chosen slots and two slots available to the player. Movement through the mansion has been simplified to a mostly-linear structure with occasional branching paths, and some events and interactions have been considerably streamlined. Scarlet was later integrated back to the Steam release as a free upgrade with the original mode renamed as Classic.

A sequel, Phantom Rose 2: Sapphire, is in development and will release for PC via Steam in 2023 and smartphones in 2024. Focusing on a new protagonist, Aria, Sapphire features the gameplay of Scarlet with an expanded collection of cards, new features and story.


Phantom Rose contains examples of:

  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can pick up a Cat Ears item. Its description claims that it "may boost morale", but in reality it simply puts a cat ears sprite on her and gives alternate art of Reina wearing them in certain scenes.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: The infamous chest-unlocking minigames in the original game were toned down for Scarlet. All variations of the game besides the spinning-disc version were removed, and if you fail the minigame it simply resets rather than denying you an item.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack:
    • The Chain Strike attack card ignores any Barrier effects that the opponent has. It also bestows this effect to the card immediately after it; if your Phase enables you to place two of your own cards in a row, pair it up with a heavy-hitter to deal some serious damage.
    • The Pierce attack card deals double damage if your opponent has a Barrier. However, if it fails to break the Barrier the user loses any currently-applied buffs.
  • Bait-and-Switch: On a Gold Adventure, the boss introduction cutscene for Lucia will be rudely interrupted by Time, who kills Lucia and replaces her as the Final Boss.
  • Boss Rush: Arcade Mode in Scarlet, unlockable after clearing Diamond-1, strips away the exploration and pits you exclusively against Crown Phantoms in a gauntlet after choosing a randomly-generated starting deck. The farther you get, the more penalties are applied to you, but clearing stages awards Scarlet Shards that can be used to buy skins for Reina's knife.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Risky, an unlockable game modifier in Scarlet, turns on a permanent effect for Reina that causes her to lose HP equal to the level of a played attack card whenever she uses one. Conversely, using a magic card causes her to gain HP equal to its level.
  • Cooldown Manipulation: In Scarlet:
    • The Star Blade and Star Shield cards are designed around reducing the cooldown of other cards. The Star Blade reduces attack card cooldowns on use, while the Star Shield reduces the cooldowns of all cards but only if it's used on Phase 1.
    • Various consumable items are designed to reduce card cooldowns for the player, such as the Mana Potion.
  • Fantastic Racism: Phantoms commonly have crimson colored eyes which are associated with Whispers. Normal people with crimson eyes are discriminated due to its stigma and have to mask their eyes with glasses or magic. Reina proudly displays her crimson eyes without care about others' thoughts.
  • Fight Like a Card Player: Characters are still depicted fighting normally, they're just controlled by cards for some reason.
  • Freemium: Scarlet is free-to-play, but has advertisements scattered about everywhere, including ads for advantages like getting a full heal and an ambush against Crown Phantoms. You can purchase a $5 pack to make the ads go away, which comes with the added benefits of increasing Diamond intake by 50%, increasing your inventory space by 3, and giving you a unique Chibi Reina skin.
  • Hartman Hips: Reina and a good number of characters sport these.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: Lucia wants to be known individually by the public instead of just being "Charlotte's Daughter". Lucia wants to find some talent she's good at other than piano as she worries that she'll disappoint her mother and Reina if her piano skills noticeably denigrate.
  • Improbably Female Cast: The human/human-like cast and phantoms are all female, the exceptions being the Duke who is a stuffed rabbit and the non-human phantoms.
  • Leg Focus: The majority of the female characters and enemies have outfits that emphasizes the legs. Even the Meat Eater has entire legs from the maids it eats sticking out.
  • Mana Potion: Although Mana is stored in a blood bag (Mana Pack) while Blood is stored in a potion bottle (Blood Potion).
  • Ninja Maid: Reina kicks ass and looks like a damn good maid doing it.
  • One Curse Limit: Each party can only have one buff and one debuff at the same time, discouraging using cards of different buff type.
  • Palette Swap: The Elite and Fallen Phantoms have a purple tint compared to their more colorful normal forms.
  • Perverse Puppet: Lady Yunice and Duke are living enemy dolls.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Charlotte figures out that if one places a light of a mana crystal made from Phantom's blood on a person and their eyes change to a crimson hue, then it's very likely they're a Whisper.
  • Reformulated Game: Scarlet uses a different card battle mechanic from Classic while keeping the basic mechanics (e.g. card order, buffs, buying cards) intact.
  • Resurrective Immortality: Time always appears at the same place every week even after Orphea killed her multiple times. Orphea has now given up and drinks tea with her regardless if Time asked for it or not.
  • Revenue-Enhancing Devices: The vast majority of the paid options in Scarlet are Fanservice Costumes for Reina. You can also buy extra inventory space with real money, in addition to the aforementioned Freemium pack.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's strongly implied that Reina is in some way responsible for what's happened to the mansion and everyone in it (especially Lucia), which explains why everything is out to kill her.
  • Notice This: On repeat runs, you may come across a sparkling object on the otherwise decorative background. Clicking on it will reward you with one of the game's many Story Breadcrumbs.
  • Shield Bash: The Shield Strike attack deals 8 damage and adds the value of your Barrier to the damage calculation, then halves your Barrier value.
  • Soul-Powered Engine: Dead phantoms leave Soul Roses that hold an extreme amount of mana. Research created an airship engine that could fly for 1,400 kilometers under a single petal from a Crown Phantom's Soul Rose.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: The game only has five actual cutscenes, none of which have dialogue and expect the player to go along with what's happening on-screen. To get any context as to what's happening before and during the game, you have to collect Diaries and Notes, which are randomly awarded upon clearing a Gold or Diamond adventure. The Flavor Text for enemies also serves to provide some insight as to how the enemies view Reina and the situation that they're stuck in.
  • Tempting Fate: Cirie prepares to steal from the mansion and ensures herself that she'll do her best tomorrow. Too bad tomorrow is when the Phantoms begin to infest the mansion.
  • Timed Mission:
    • The Glory buff automatically lets the owner win once the status wears off. Charlotte starts her battle with this buff at 9. And if she gets the Sensitive debuff, which she's able to apply to herself, your window grows that much smaller.
    • The Time Limit buff halves the opponent's HP at the end of Phase 3 and heals by that amount. Time starts her battle with this buff at 5. You can either use a combination of Intimidate and/or applying the Sensitive Debuff and attacking to reduce that buff to 0 before Turn 3, or build up defenses and not bother attacking until turn 3 ends, since your efforts would be mostly wasted attacking before then.
  • Too Awesome to Use:
    • Because of the one-time use mechanic in Classic, most powerful cards are usually hoarded for boss encounters. This also applies when using white roses to upgrade the cards.
    • Mana Potions in Scarlet may feel this way, given that they completely reset the cooldowns of every card in your deck. Used strategically they can completely turn a fight around, which is why you may be inclined to just not use it until the very end when it's absolutely necessary.
  • Victory Pose: Reina points her knife at an angle after beating a Phantom. If a Phantom escapes, then she'll look away frowning.
  • Weird Currency: Classic uses white roses, known as Soul Roses, as currency. Scarlet changes this to different colored diamonds.

Top