YMMV / Phantom Brave

• Canon Fodder: We never get to see the other members of the Nine Swords, or learn why Walnut has the same power as Scarlet the Brave.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • The AI loves to take full advantage of the asymmetrical laws of going out of bounds. If you manage to make an enemy go O.B., the entire enemy army levels up, but there is no such handicap for your units. As such, some enemies live for nothing other than chucking your full HP, freshly-confined units off the edge and immediately removing them and their weapon from battle with no penalty. Some take it as far as to throw themselves off the edge just to level their own army up.
    • Somewhat remedied by the fact that your Marona can pretty much summon as many units as you want as long as nobody dies, leaves a body behind or you hit the current deployment capacity.
• Funny Moments: The two Drama CD's have some amusing events, such as Laharl trying to recruit Ash into a band which he names "The Laharls" (and Ash's deadpan reaction of "Not happening..."), and, upon trying to recruit Castile into a Pettanko Quintet alongside Marona, Myao, Flonne and Etna, Etna herself breaking down into tears over the fact that Castille has more chest than she does.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Failure title modifies anything it's attached to by reducing its stats by 90% and XP by 100%. When attached to a bonus dungeon, everything in there becomes extremely weak and gives little XP. However, since phantoms gain XP based on the items they're confined to (Marona is an exception, as she cannot be confined), they're not affected by this and still gain hundreds of levels per battle. And that's not even mentioning the use of the Failure title in fusion...
  • The Bottlemail is great for the Failure dungeons as well. Acquire one by going through "Weird" dungeons or get the free one from Phantom Isle, then go into a high level Failure dungeon and confine it to one of the items on the level. Once the Bottlemail is forced out you will probably get to keep the item, which you can then either use or sell for tons more Bordeux than you're likely to be able to get otherwise. Combine it with leveling up the Merchant using the above method and can then use the money to buy very high powered equipment for your entire party easily from the moment you've got access to Dungeons and Titlists.
  • The ability Quick Attack. It guarantees the character will get an attack, which can be very good for high ATK but low SPD weapons, like axes. On the downside, only two classes come with the ability naturally, and it costs an abnormally high amount of mana to transfer. But if the skill is fused to a slime before transfered onto the character in question, the cost is laughable.
  • Trolleys. Particularly, high-level trolleys picked up through failure dungeon grinding. A SPD-boosting item with SPD-based attacks? Yes. Hell, yes. Now watch Marona club to death everything on the field before anyone else can get a single turn. Who needs Phantoms?
• Ho Yay: This picture by Nippon Ichi's artist of choice speaks for itself.
• Moe: Marona
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: While not an example of Excuse Plot, Phantom Brave's story feels like a bunch of random events and Fetch Quests that seems to go nowhere. On the other hand, the creative and challenging gameplay is one its strong points.
• Scrappy Mechanic: "Slippery" and "Bouncy" floors, since you may accidentally send allies or enemies flying off the map and the automatic pathfinder can waste energy trying to move to a precise location. God help you if the floor is both Slippery AND Bouncy...
• That One Level: Any stage with few items on the field. Fewer items = less confinable Phantoms, which means relying on one overpowered Phantom rather than a team of roughly equal Phantoms. Either that, or use Marona for anything other than healing purposes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In "Another Marona", out of all the phantoms that joins you in the beginning, only Walnut, Raphael and Sprout have dialogue in cutscenes. Also, characters like Scarlet, Marona parents and the unseen members of the Nine Swords are absent as well.
• Toy Ship: Marona x Castile. This picture by Nippon Ichi's artist of choice speaks for itself.
• The Woobie: Poor, poor Marona. In one of her memories, she's a 5-year old; waiting for her parents and Ash to come home. They never do.

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