When you put ice cream, a grinning garden gnome, a dictionary, a quart of blood and some shadows in a blender, Phantom Brave is what happens. It's a smooth, verbose concoction that's tinted by battles and black humour, but is a little hard to swallow. It's also got a story as laboured as that metaphor.

It's a strategy RPG which, to the uninitiated, means it's turn-based and stat-heavy, like a chess/Final Fantasy lovechild. Or, to put it another way, it's very like Final Fantasy Tactics. (That'll be the original chess/Final Fantasy lovechild, a Japan and US-only PSone title.) You control a band of characters - in this instance a young girl called Marona and her army of ghost warrior cohorts - and take down foes in chessboard-like locations. The twist is that Marona's allies can only be summoned to the play area for a set amount of turns after which they vanish, so you have to be careful about who you summon and when, because the bigger battles can last for many, many turns.

Unfortunately, from the start it's clear that the game isn't as good as last year's summer surprise, Disgaea - genre-buddies with this and hailing from the same developer. Although you're given free range of movement - instead of the territory being marked up into squares - terrain remains inexplicably blocky, while the state system, which is essentially just a spreadsheet backend with formulas to juggle, isn't explained to you very well at all.

But, despite its flaws, Phantom Brave still has a lot of charm. The use of items is the real core of the game, and leads to a lot of enjoyable action as you bring characters into play by 'confining' them to environmental objects or use scnic pieces to double as weapons. You get a genuine buzz from bringing wave upon wave of friends into the fight to crush the enemies, which can range from killer bunnies to old men via amorphous blobs and anger-driven plants.

Unfortunately, the joy you'll find in entering battle armed to the teeth can be overshadowed by the niggling feeling that you're a bit disorganised amidst the masses of choice on offer - which no game that asks you to master stats should ever do. But without all those options it'd all seem as barren as its starkest battlefields This makes Phantom Brave pretty much closed off to all but the most dedicated - especially when the more accessible Disgaea is out there.

In fact, Phantom Brave is only an essential purchase for those who've played all the way through Disgaea's hours of gameplay and are hungry for more of the same.

Graphics 60%
Retro, functional. Or is that simple, basic?

Sound 70%
Nice swooping score and ditties.

Gameplay 70%
Solid stat RPG, if a little jumbled.

Lifespan 90%
Loads, but will you last the distance?

Overall 70%
Not the best of the genre, but solid nevertheless. If you're after an RPG with a bit more strategy then we recommend Disgaea.