Phantom Of The Kill’s Characters Keep It Compelling

Last time I talked about Phantom of the Kill, I went over how similar the game is to Fire Emblem. Which, again, isn’t a bad thing. You’d be right to go ahead and call it a copycat, but it’s a well executed one. Especially since it does a number of things right, in relation to characters, that keeps you coming back to the game.

It isn’t that Phantom of the Kill’s characters are especially endearing. As you proceed through the main campaign, some people’s personalities will stand out in the story segments before specific battles. But in general, your army is more focused on appearances. Friendships don’t result in support conversations. Characters don’t have detailed profiles that tell you about themselves, their histories, and their personalities. All you know is that someone looks good, belongs to a cool class, and has pretty decent stats. Or hopefully has decent stats.

That’s part of what makes Phantom of the Kill endearing. When you randomly recruit characters with either Lazuli or Mana, you never know who’ll you get. I have two versions of the female Naegling, at different gold star levels, and they’re different classes. Knowing you can have the same person, who’s pretty darn cute might I add, but with different abilities, allows a luxury of choice that Fire Emblem doesn’t afford. It’s getting an opportunity to use someone who’d otherwise be useless to you.

Especially since you can consume other warriors to power up the ones you’d like. Every character has between one and four stats associated with him or her. If you save up and fuse five at once with a character you like, you can spend a certain amount of Zenny, the in-game cash, and increase the success rate of the fusion. Fusing the exact same character with one you like will even break his or her limits, allowing the max level to increase before an evolution is needed. Not only does this make a character you like and are likely to use stronger, but it can help make them powerful enough to stand strong in later campaign levels while they are at a lower level. Once time, after fusing my Amenonuhoko with a copy of herself, she increased her Limit Break and improved her Self-Healing skill that would slightly recover her health at the beginning of a turn if no allies were within three spots of her.

Evolutions are also possible. If you get specific materials, imp and sprite characters found in daily Event Quests, and max out certain characters’ levels, it’s possible to evolve them into a better form of themselves. They’ll have an improved class, better stats, and their star rating will increase as a visual indication of their prowess. It’s basically Fire Emblem’s reclassing mechanic, but with more battling needed to acquire those extra materials.

You may have some that can’t evolve, but could reincarnate. This allows you to keep all bonus stats and skills the character may have acquired, while resetting them to level one to begin leveling them up again. It’s handy for characters that may have hit a level limit and you enjoy using, but aren’t getting anything out of further fights.

But maybe the best thing about Phantom of the Kill is the way it incentivizes a diverse army. Before each campaign map, there’s a list of three Missions you can view for that stage. The persistent reward is one Lazuli for beating the battle without any of your characters dying. There’s also a constant Zenny or Mana Point reward for clearing the fight within a certain number of turns. But, as time passes, the game will try to get you to win with specific units. Section 2, Stage 8 kicks it off by offering 500 Mana Points if you don’t have any bow users in your army for that fight. From there on out, many stages offer one of these missions, sometimes asking you to forgo mounted units or healers, and even restricting the number of total characters you’re bringing in.

It really helps provide more of a purpose for grinding, which you’re going to have to do anyway to keep newly acquired units on par with your favorites and to level up ones you’ve chosen to evolve or reincarnate. You’re going to go back to early campaign levels in Phantom of the Kill. It’s unavoidable. Some are really great for leveling up new units, since you know exactly what kind of challenge you’ll be facing. Knowing there’s something else still to do there makes it less tedious.

In a way, it’s funny. Phantom of the Kill is a very character-driven game, though your army may not even contain the characters you’re seeing in the campaign. The people you know and love are adored for their beauty and battle prowess long before you might ever get to know them as people. But, that doesn’t keep it from being any less engaging. Maybe it even makes the game more pure, because abilities are what really end up mattering most in this game, as you play.

Phantom of the Kill is immediately available for Android and Apple iOS devices.