Thank god for 3 day weekends! Nippon Ichi made a smart choice by releasing their latest SRPG entry, Phantom Kingdom (entitled Makai Kingdom in the upcoming US version), right before a national 3 day weekend in Japan. As they realized that their game was going to stop the 100,000 purchasers from doing anything productive for the few days after release.
Phantom Kingdom is really easy to sum up. Basically N1 took the 3d gameplay from Phantom Brave and brought the best aspects of it back to the demon world of Disgaea. The game is very much a culmination of everything they've learned from years of making SRPGS.
Rule 1: Create a good story with a likeable cast.
----------
Many have said that N1 stories are aimed at making anime stories for anime fans. Well that may be true, but at the same time I think N1 stories are good examples of what makes anime-styled writing so enjoyable. The plots in their last three games have featured a handful of colorful interesting characters. Whether it be the wise-cracking Laharl; the sorrowful Walnut; or the all-seeing prophet, Plum; The cast of characters are always given some nice development as the story moves on. Another thing they've always handled well is writing short stories filled with small mysteries that are revealed in the end. Kind of like a who-dunnit of old, it's always fun to guess what's really going on during an N1 plot and see if you got it right in the end. Anyhow PK does a great job at having a fast paced story that's serious at times like PB, yet also humurous with a very entertaining cast like Disgaea. A story of love, hate, greed, revenge, loss, envy; it's a very human story....about a bunch of "Last bosses" (official N1 term for Maou/Demon King). It's actually pretty neat to say "this is what happens what gods interact socially" and then show that they deal with the same human-level emotions.
Lastly, the game uses an interesting way to express the story. PK is no doubt a very low budget production, it definetely seems like it was made on a much smaller budget/time frame than La Pucelle/Disgaea/PB. So rather than have a low production value story, the team sat around and thought of way to tell a story that didn't need budget. What they came up with was a basically an in-game version of a Mammet play! While I'm not trying to say the dialogue is at that level, the game uses the idea of a 1 room play and the entire story after the OP is told on 1 screen...the galaxy
From here it plays out just like a play with characters coming into the room and the interactions between the various people creating subplots and pushing the plot ahead. While I don't think the cast is quite up there with the Disgaea group, I think plot-wise it's actually the best that N1's written to date. Also as there are only 9 chapters, the story moves pretty quickly.
Rule 2 - Give the players more
-------
PK is filled with a lot of gameplay systems. Between Confine, Class Make, Re-incarnation, Special Re-incarnation, Vehicles, Vehicle upgrading/equipping, Buildings creation, Building equipping, Random Dungeons, Score meter, etc...there is enough depth in here to make everyone happy.
In terms of weapons there are the most to date. You have drums, syringes, shovels, remote controls, ballons, samurai swords, axes, spears, rifles, bazookas, gattling guns, and more. Each weapon has about 6-10 attacks installed in them and each character has a weapon mastery level for each weapon. The more you use a weapon the higher your mastery level goes and the more skills open up for you to use with the equipped weapon. Of course each class excels in learning certain weapons.
Job classes are many and each has their specific level up bonus stats, equip percentages, weapon adaptability. Re-incarnation works really well here as taking a mage who gets RES/SP/INT+1 bonus at each level-up and putting her soul into a warrior who gets ATK/DEF/HP+1 bonus at each level-up will result in a character that gets RES/SP/INT/ATK/DEF/HP+1 each level up + has magic skills + is strong at physical weapons & int weapons. It's really intuitive and while I didn't re-incarnate much in Disgaea, I was doing it quite a bit in PK.
Vehicles are excellent. There is quite a lot of them and they are really varied in moving/attack ability. You equip a vehicle with a person and depending on the person's (tech) skill they will up all of the vehicles stats to a certain degree. Army people have really high tech stats and are great drivers. Then you equip 3 offensive/defensive items on them. On the field you can drive around huge distance per turn (usually 1/2 the map size) and not only that but the vehicle counts as it's own character! What this means is that it uses up a space on your max characters out (8 max, and 3 buildings max), but it also means you could have 3 vehicles on the field and only 1 character left alive. In one turn the character can jump in each vehicle, move them, and attack with them; then he can jump out and fight on foot. Vehicles are gained at random through the bonus meter. Vehicles level up like characters, and buying parts/repairing them costs vehicle parts which are a 2nd type of money. You can get this in battle or from breaking down items.
Buildings are even better. The simple idea is that buildings allow you to get stat bonuses (exp+50% for all characters coming out of the building for example), and they also let you pack a ton of characters on field. Even if you're only using 8 characters, you can retire a damaged character back into a building and have a new one come out. If a character dies though the max counter drops by one. Also at the end of a map you get score bonuses like the Disgaea bonus meter. These are usually filled with bonus exp so having 30 characters in a house on screen gives the gained bonus exp to all of them. Very quick way of leveling people. Houses also bring in strategy as you might be on a map with 3 buildings each packed with different types of enemies and you only have enough manpower to destroy one before the round ends. So you carefully choose which building you want to destroy (which kills everyone in it). Or if you're more powerful than the enemies inside, you can jump in and murder all the enemies inside their base at the end of the round.
Score/Bonus meter: To finish a map you need to meet a minimum point requirement. This can be anywhere from 100 points to 1000 points. Each object or enemy carries a point value which can range from 0-1000. Basically it's up to you to decide how you want to approach the maps. Do you just kill the enemies worth tons of points and get out of there? Or do you kill everyone and go for the full 1000 point bonus meter. The bonus meter is available to view on each map and at every 100 points you get a bonus item/money/exp/vehicle parts. Do you kill the boss worth 400 points? Or do you kill everything else on the map and get the 600 points you need to finish without taking on the boss, it's up to you.
Extensions: Basically maps are divided into a bunch of sections. You start on a small map area and one of the enemies/objects will have the word KEY above it. By killing this you open up the next section of the map. There are also hidden sections that can only be opened by throwing an enemy/item where the new section will be (you can see at XXX frame outline of the hidden section if you move your pointer over the map area where it is). When you open up an extension a 2d portrait will often show up which sums up the new area. If you see a portrait of an intense cook you know that the new area is going to be packed with frying pan slinging chefs. Or if it's a portrait of an empty desert you know there's going to be no enemies in it. It's a nice visual touch.
Skills: I won't even get into this. But between all the weapons, vehicles, and character class specific attack animation/spells; just like Phantom Brave there are hundreds. Playing through the game once you will probably only see about 1/3rd or less of them.
Randomness: Everything in the game is random. The enemies you'll face are set the first time on any map, but their equipment and certain variables (weaknesses, spells) are always random. Then on the 2nd attempt at any story map, the entire map, the enemy types, the levels, equipment, items are completely random and different everytime you try them. This keeps it fresh and fun. Though for instance the first time I fought the final boss one of the enemies invited a building full of more characters which made it a lot harder than when I tried again and no one was inviting.
So yea, the gameplay is good...damn good.
Rule 3 - Try to be balanced
-------
Playing through PK, I realized what upset the balance so much in PB. In PB you were able to make a random dungeon of any level which made it really easy to level up and made all the story levels a piece of cake. PK takes strides to fix this.
Basically to make a random dungeon you have to spend lots of mana (earned from killing enemies) and it'll make a random dungeon the same level as that person. This means you cannot get a dungeon of higher level than your highest level character. The dungeon depth = the level. So a lvl.50 dungeon is 50 floors deep.
Next the dungeons are frighteningly hard and risky as hell. The only way to return from a random dungeon is to use a specific item. This item cannot be bought, not gotten through any normal map. Thus the only way to get one is in a random dungeon. Usually a full random dungeon will contain 1 of these items (and you can't equip it mid-dungeon). Next, once you leave a dungeon. The dungeon is destroyed and you can't go back. Lastly, the dungeon has random restrictions such as "no buildings allowed/only 5 characters allowed" which basically means you can't put your characters in buildings or vehicles because if you get a no buildings allowed floor and everyone is in a building you have to reset. Also there is an item that lets you skip 30 floors in a random dungeon; though it, like the escape item, is very rare.
So creating a random dungeon takes time, costs mana (which takes time to build up), and you run the risk of going for 10-50 floors straight, dying, and losing 1-2 hours of progress; or doing 5-20 floors and using an escape item; or jumping to floor 30/60 and doing a few floors and escaping. With the right usage, random dungeons can still be great as their bonus meter gives incredibly good exp/money/items. But for the main story portion it's better to stick to story battles.
So in the end because you can't abuse random dungeons, and because the store seems to peak at a certain point with regards to buyable weapons, you end up usually being very near the same level/stats as the enemies and so you are forced to use strategy.
Rule 4 - Keep them playing
-------
Like Disgaea, PK features multiple endings and a new game+ feature that starts you back at ch.1 but with everything as it was before you finished the game. There's also a bunch of hidden dungeons and cameo bosses...including a sneak peak at the (lead?) character from the upcoming PSP Makai Wars
Overall
--------
Nippon Ichi took all these rules to thought and made a deep, rewarding, and consistently enjoyable game with a great cast and good story. It's by the far the most fun gameplay of their games, and the addition of vehicles/mecha was an excellent design decision. For a learned gamer of N1 ways, the main story is about 30 hours long and the bonus dungeons will last you long past that. The music, though not by usual composer Tenpei Sato, by various composers is really fitting and great. And the graphics, though low resolution and pixelated, are pleasing enough and some of the storyline sprite animations are nice.
N1 has made an excellent game with Phantom Kingdom and shown that even on the most miniscule budgets, with a creative mind and a willingness to innovate the gameplay, you can make a A quality title that people will buy and enjoy. I can't wait for Makai Wars, and if it's anything near this quality it will be the definitive Japanese-developed PSP game for the system.
Overall: A
PS - here's the voice crew (everyone does a great job in the game)
Zeta = Koyasu Takehito
Plum = Mizuhashi Kaori
Alec = Nojima Kenji
Salome = Norikasa Ai
Royal King Dark the 3rd = Wakamoto Norio
Shiidol = Ikeda Shuuichi
Babylon = Aono Takeshi
Mikki = Genda Tessho
Orphelia = Narahashi Miki
Doraizen = Nagasako Takashi
Trennia = Noto Mamiko
Phantom Kingdom is really easy to sum up. Basically N1 took the 3d gameplay from Phantom Brave and brought the best aspects of it back to the demon world of Disgaea. The game is very much a culmination of everything they've learned from years of making SRPGS.
Rule 1: Create a good story with a likeable cast.
----------
Many have said that N1 stories are aimed at making anime stories for anime fans. Well that may be true, but at the same time I think N1 stories are good examples of what makes anime-styled writing so enjoyable. The plots in their last three games have featured a handful of colorful interesting characters. Whether it be the wise-cracking Laharl; the sorrowful Walnut; or the all-seeing prophet, Plum; The cast of characters are always given some nice development as the story moves on. Another thing they've always handled well is writing short stories filled with small mysteries that are revealed in the end. Kind of like a who-dunnit of old, it's always fun to guess what's really going on during an N1 plot and see if you got it right in the end. Anyhow PK does a great job at having a fast paced story that's serious at times like PB, yet also humurous with a very entertaining cast like Disgaea. A story of love, hate, greed, revenge, loss, envy; it's a very human story....about a bunch of "Last bosses" (official N1 term for Maou/Demon King). It's actually pretty neat to say "this is what happens what gods interact socially" and then show that they deal with the same human-level emotions.
Lastly, the game uses an interesting way to express the story. PK is no doubt a very low budget production, it definetely seems like it was made on a much smaller budget/time frame than La Pucelle/Disgaea/PB. So rather than have a low production value story, the team sat around and thought of way to tell a story that didn't need budget. What they came up with was a basically an in-game version of a Mammet play! While I'm not trying to say the dialogue is at that level, the game uses the idea of a 1 room play and the entire story after the OP is told on 1 screen...the galaxy
From here it plays out just like a play with characters coming into the room and the interactions between the various people creating subplots and pushing the plot ahead. While I don't think the cast is quite up there with the Disgaea group, I think plot-wise it's actually the best that N1's written to date. Also as there are only 9 chapters, the story moves pretty quickly.Rule 2 - Give the players more
-------
PK is filled with a lot of gameplay systems. Between Confine, Class Make, Re-incarnation, Special Re-incarnation, Vehicles, Vehicle upgrading/equipping, Buildings creation, Building equipping, Random Dungeons, Score meter, etc...there is enough depth in here to make everyone happy.
In terms of weapons there are the most to date. You have drums, syringes, shovels, remote controls, ballons, samurai swords, axes, spears, rifles, bazookas, gattling guns, and more. Each weapon has about 6-10 attacks installed in them and each character has a weapon mastery level for each weapon. The more you use a weapon the higher your mastery level goes and the more skills open up for you to use with the equipped weapon. Of course each class excels in learning certain weapons.
Job classes are many and each has their specific level up bonus stats, equip percentages, weapon adaptability. Re-incarnation works really well here as taking a mage who gets RES/SP/INT+1 bonus at each level-up and putting her soul into a warrior who gets ATK/DEF/HP+1 bonus at each level-up will result in a character that gets RES/SP/INT/ATK/DEF/HP+1 each level up + has magic skills + is strong at physical weapons & int weapons. It's really intuitive and while I didn't re-incarnate much in Disgaea, I was doing it quite a bit in PK.
Vehicles are excellent. There is quite a lot of them and they are really varied in moving/attack ability. You equip a vehicle with a person and depending on the person's (tech) skill they will up all of the vehicles stats to a certain degree. Army people have really high tech stats and are great drivers. Then you equip 3 offensive/defensive items on them. On the field you can drive around huge distance per turn (usually 1/2 the map size) and not only that but the vehicle counts as it's own character! What this means is that it uses up a space on your max characters out (8 max, and 3 buildings max), but it also means you could have 3 vehicles on the field and only 1 character left alive. In one turn the character can jump in each vehicle, move them, and attack with them; then he can jump out and fight on foot. Vehicles are gained at random through the bonus meter. Vehicles level up like characters, and buying parts/repairing them costs vehicle parts which are a 2nd type of money. You can get this in battle or from breaking down items.
Buildings are even better. The simple idea is that buildings allow you to get stat bonuses (exp+50% for all characters coming out of the building for example), and they also let you pack a ton of characters on field. Even if you're only using 8 characters, you can retire a damaged character back into a building and have a new one come out. If a character dies though the max counter drops by one. Also at the end of a map you get score bonuses like the Disgaea bonus meter. These are usually filled with bonus exp so having 30 characters in a house on screen gives the gained bonus exp to all of them. Very quick way of leveling people. Houses also bring in strategy as you might be on a map with 3 buildings each packed with different types of enemies and you only have enough manpower to destroy one before the round ends. So you carefully choose which building you want to destroy (which kills everyone in it). Or if you're more powerful than the enemies inside, you can jump in and murder all the enemies inside their base at the end of the round.
Score/Bonus meter: To finish a map you need to meet a minimum point requirement. This can be anywhere from 100 points to 1000 points. Each object or enemy carries a point value which can range from 0-1000. Basically it's up to you to decide how you want to approach the maps. Do you just kill the enemies worth tons of points and get out of there? Or do you kill everyone and go for the full 1000 point bonus meter. The bonus meter is available to view on each map and at every 100 points you get a bonus item/money/exp/vehicle parts. Do you kill the boss worth 400 points? Or do you kill everything else on the map and get the 600 points you need to finish without taking on the boss, it's up to you.
Extensions: Basically maps are divided into a bunch of sections. You start on a small map area and one of the enemies/objects will have the word KEY above it. By killing this you open up the next section of the map. There are also hidden sections that can only be opened by throwing an enemy/item where the new section will be (you can see at XXX frame outline of the hidden section if you move your pointer over the map area where it is). When you open up an extension a 2d portrait will often show up which sums up the new area. If you see a portrait of an intense cook you know that the new area is going to be packed with frying pan slinging chefs. Or if it's a portrait of an empty desert you know there's going to be no enemies in it. It's a nice visual touch.
Skills: I won't even get into this. But between all the weapons, vehicles, and character class specific attack animation/spells; just like Phantom Brave there are hundreds. Playing through the game once you will probably only see about 1/3rd or less of them.
Randomness: Everything in the game is random. The enemies you'll face are set the first time on any map, but their equipment and certain variables (weaknesses, spells) are always random. Then on the 2nd attempt at any story map, the entire map, the enemy types, the levels, equipment, items are completely random and different everytime you try them. This keeps it fresh and fun. Though for instance the first time I fought the final boss one of the enemies invited a building full of more characters which made it a lot harder than when I tried again and no one was inviting.
So yea, the gameplay is good...damn good.
Rule 3 - Try to be balanced
-------
Playing through PK, I realized what upset the balance so much in PB. In PB you were able to make a random dungeon of any level which made it really easy to level up and made all the story levels a piece of cake. PK takes strides to fix this.
Basically to make a random dungeon you have to spend lots of mana (earned from killing enemies) and it'll make a random dungeon the same level as that person. This means you cannot get a dungeon of higher level than your highest level character. The dungeon depth = the level. So a lvl.50 dungeon is 50 floors deep.
Next the dungeons are frighteningly hard and risky as hell. The only way to return from a random dungeon is to use a specific item. This item cannot be bought, not gotten through any normal map. Thus the only way to get one is in a random dungeon. Usually a full random dungeon will contain 1 of these items (and you can't equip it mid-dungeon). Next, once you leave a dungeon. The dungeon is destroyed and you can't go back. Lastly, the dungeon has random restrictions such as "no buildings allowed/only 5 characters allowed" which basically means you can't put your characters in buildings or vehicles because if you get a no buildings allowed floor and everyone is in a building you have to reset. Also there is an item that lets you skip 30 floors in a random dungeon; though it, like the escape item, is very rare.
So creating a random dungeon takes time, costs mana (which takes time to build up), and you run the risk of going for 10-50 floors straight, dying, and losing 1-2 hours of progress; or doing 5-20 floors and using an escape item; or jumping to floor 30/60 and doing a few floors and escaping. With the right usage, random dungeons can still be great as their bonus meter gives incredibly good exp/money/items. But for the main story portion it's better to stick to story battles.
So in the end because you can't abuse random dungeons, and because the store seems to peak at a certain point with regards to buyable weapons, you end up usually being very near the same level/stats as the enemies and so you are forced to use strategy.
Rule 4 - Keep them playing
-------
Like Disgaea, PK features multiple endings and a new game+ feature that starts you back at ch.1 but with everything as it was before you finished the game. There's also a bunch of hidden dungeons and cameo bosses...including a sneak peak at the (lead?) character from the upcoming PSP Makai Wars
Overall
--------
Nippon Ichi took all these rules to thought and made a deep, rewarding, and consistently enjoyable game with a great cast and good story. It's by the far the most fun gameplay of their games, and the addition of vehicles/mecha was an excellent design decision. For a learned gamer of N1 ways, the main story is about 30 hours long and the bonus dungeons will last you long past that. The music, though not by usual composer Tenpei Sato, by various composers is really fitting and great. And the graphics, though low resolution and pixelated, are pleasing enough and some of the storyline sprite animations are nice.
N1 has made an excellent game with Phantom Kingdom and shown that even on the most miniscule budgets, with a creative mind and a willingness to innovate the gameplay, you can make a A quality title that people will buy and enjoy. I can't wait for Makai Wars, and if it's anything near this quality it will be the definitive Japanese-developed PSP game for the system.
Overall: A
PS - here's the voice crew (everyone does a great job in the game)
Zeta = Koyasu Takehito
Plum = Mizuhashi Kaori
Alec = Nojima Kenji
Salome = Norikasa Ai
Royal King Dark the 3rd = Wakamoto Norio
Shiidol = Ikeda Shuuichi
Babylon = Aono Takeshi
Mikki = Genda Tessho
Orphelia = Narahashi Miki
Doraizen = Nagasako Takashi
Trennia = Noto Mamiko
