It isn’t often that a game gets a sequel 20 years after being initially released, but that is just so the case with Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. Set six months after the events of the first game, Marona is back to find her dear friend Ash and also defeat a fleet of ghost ships alongside her new friend Apricot while assembling her own legendary crew.
While Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero isn’t due out for another couple of months, I caught up with Kento Jobana, the scenario writer for the game. In Part Two of this two-part interview, we talk even more about writing the story for this sequel title, about upcoming DLC plans, his thoughts on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and more!
If you missed out on Part One of the interview, you can find it here.
You can check out Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero at the official website, on X, on Facebook and Instagram, on YouTube and Twitch, and on Discord.
Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is coming to PC (Steam) in Sprin 2025, and to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on January 30, 2025.
You can also pre-order the Collector’s Edition now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
OR: Taking it back to Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, in an interview with RPG Site [from October 2024], you talked about your extreme reluctance in writing the story for this game. You talked about how you said you specifically didn’t want to tackle the project and the friction you had with the owner of Nippon Ichi Software. Why were you so resistant being involved with this game in the first place, initially?
KJ: I think there might have been a little misunderstanding with that. I wasn’t reluctant to work on Phantom Brave[: The Lost Hero]. My reluctance was to continue to use the characters of Ash and Marona in a sequel. [That was] a game that ended really well, it was very nicely completed. Also, there the fact that this is a game from twenty years ago, and would players still be interested in these characters and these things. That’s where my hesitation to work on this project came from.
So, what happened after that is I offered: ‘[w]hy don’t we have new main characters? Why don’t we go with new main characters and keep the Phantom Brave name?’ I had a conversation with the chairman of our company, and the chairman said ‘[n]o, you need you use Ash and Marona and I want to challenge you to use Ash and Marona as the main characters.’ That kind of inspired [me]- ‘If that’s the directive and that’s what’s expected of me, they believe I can do it.’ So [I] went back to the drawing board and came up with essentially eight different plots, eight different ideas. [I] went to the team and said ‘[w]hat do you think about this? Will this work? Will this work? Will this work?’. Eventually, they landed on what has become Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. This is something that [I] felt as the writer, the team felt made sense. It continued in the same vein as the original, and was truthful and faithful to it, as well as being something that fans of the original would like and appreciate and not feel like these characters that they had grown to love over the years would be ruined. That’s kind of what, after all this trial and error, [we] were able to do to bring Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero to life.
“For me, ever since I was a kid, I often felt different than other people with my way of looking at things than most around me. What gets reflected into this game, specifically, in the fact that characters [that are] different than humans come out more than the first game, and their point of view and values- I took great care to portray, particularly in regard to the Phantoms.”
OR: Think you mentioned in the interview shared on NIS America last month that you “went through something like 15 drafts before it reached its current form.” Can you share a few of those other plot ideas that you ultimately rejected, if possible?
KJ: So, here’s a couple.
One was basically the adventures of Ash and Marona after Phantom Brave, and there was no real drama and no real huge thing that they would fight up against. It basically felt like fan service for the sake of fan service, and just having these characters acting the way that they always have. Because that was incredibly unsatisfying, they didn’t go with that.
Another one [I] rejected that [I] thought about was ‘[w]ell, what if we have a character who is – because the theme of pirates was essentially decided on from the beginning – what if we had one where you have a little girl, and she wants to be a pirate, and what if she is able to join forces with the soul of this legendary ancient pirate, and then she and this combined soul of this pirate pull the plot forward and they do these things. [I] rejected that idea too, but the idea of having this young girl who wanted to be a pirate and was somehow related to pirates, lives on in this game in the character of Apricot. That idea ended up being not used in its entirety, but from that idea that was rejected originally, [we] did get this character that did get used in what eventually is [coming] out.
OR: To follow up on that – do you prefer telling stories where the plot drives characters forward, or characters and their development drives the plot forward?
KJ: Both are perfectly good ways of developing plot. For [myself], the characters are always the most important. [My] process, particularly, actually, is to come up with a simple plot and place the characters within it and think about how these characters would grow and interact with the plot. The interesting thing, though, is that oftentimes in almost every instance when doing this exercise, the plot needs to be changed because the characters themselves will demand some kind of different change within the plot due to who they are and how their growth and development would play out because of who they are as characters.
It’s always the case for [me] that these characters will end up, even if [I] may have a story and scenario written in the beginning, that by putting these characters into this mental exercise of how it would play out from there, the plot then gets changed based on placing these characters into these situations and thinking about how they would act and grow in these situations.
OR: One of the most surprising things about Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, for me, is that y’all are aiming for a simultaneous worldwide release for this game. Even Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless had a staggered release of January 2023 for Japan and October 2023 for the rest of the world. If you know: why was this game chosen to be released everywhere at once? Did those release plans influence your writing any?
KJ: As you pointed out, we’ve never really done this before because it’s something really difficult to do. It is very difficult to create something in Japan and then have it come out at the same time globally. However, this project specifically, from the beginning, was intended to be a global simultaneous release. Because that was the plan from the beginning, [I] knew what was happening. As a scenario writer, how this influenced [me], was essentially [I] had to go above and beyond, and in some cases, what [I] was capable of. In Japanese, the expression literally means ‘doing the impossible almost’ or ‘going beyond’.
As a writer, [I] just put my nose to the grindstone and it took a lot of motivation [and] determination, but that was how it affected [me] as a writer.
OR: Donald M. Murray – he’s a former professor at the University of New Hampshire – once wrote ‘[a]ll my writing – and yours – is autobiographical.’ What of yourself do you see in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero?
KJ: For me, ever since I was a kid, I often felt different than other people with my way of looking at things than most around me. What gets reflected into this game, specifically, in the fact that characters [that are] different than humans come out more than the first game, and their point of view and values – I took great care to portray, particularly in regard to the Phantoms. In the first game, the Phantoms – you only really meet Ash. However, in this game, you’ll see many Phantoms that come out. And not only do they play a bigger role in the story, but you get to learn about them, and you get to see things from their point of view. Because as a matter of necessity, their point of view is going to be different as the dead than those that are still living. That aspect of [myself], that being different and then having a different set of values than other people, is something that is really reflected within these characters of the Phantoms. [I] think there’s a lot of appeal there. It’s a different way of looking at things than what other writers would do, and that’s what is autobiographical in this story.
“The way we thought about this game was to make sure that people who had never played the first game were able to hop in and not feel like they needed or were missing information from the first game.”
OR: We’re wrapping up here. To take off of that – you’ve mentioned in numerous interviews about your love for Tim Burton and your love for horror and monster films. I’m not going to retread that here. I’m just simply going to ask: Did you see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and what were your thoughts on the movie?
KJ: Yeah, I went to see that the day it released in Japan! One thing that I really felt about it was that, even though it was a movie from 30 years ago, it very, very much felt like it followed directly from the first movie. It didn’t really take into account [that] maybe there are people who hadn’t seen the first movie. It felt very much like almost a love letter to those fans of the first movie, and as a result of that, it was almost like watching a dream – the fact that this movie that came out 30 years ago had a direct sequel. So, it was intimately linked with the first.
OR: Do you believe that people need to pick up Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle Remastered, being released in November 2024 for PlayStation 5 by NIS America, Inc., in order to enjoy Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero?
KJ: No, not necessarily. The way we thought about this game was to make sure that people who had never played the first game were able to hop in and not feel like they needed or were missing information from the first game. And even for those people who might have played the game 20 years ago – they might not remember. So, there is a fill-in narrative sequence at the beginning of the game that sets everything up and makes it so that you can understand the story, the characters, and what’s going on as well as an in-game dictionary that covers the terminology of this world and the first game that you can reference if you’ve never played the games before or don’t remember [it]. So, it’s not necessary that someone’s played the first game – it’s certainly by design.
The team didn’t want to make a game that relies so heavily on the first game that someone would have to play it in order to enjoy, appreciate, and understand this game.
OR: Are there any DLC plans for Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero that you can talk about?
KJ: There will be eight DLCs planned, currently. There will be a set of Castile and Walnut from the first game, and the second being Sprout and Scarlet from the first game. They’ve got a story that is accompanying in this. So yeah, you can expect that.
[OR Note: PR stepped in at this point to clarify that they have not finalized how the DLC will be packaged for the English version. But they will be releasing those DLC characters mentioned.]
OR: To someone who may never have picked up the original Phantom Brave before, and is looking to pick up this new title – what do you have to say to them?
KJ: There’s probably plenty of people out there who maybe have seen that this is a sequel to a game that came out 20 years ago and might have some hesitation about that. Or there might be some people who haven’t really seen this before at all, and just read a little bit that there is a new game called Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero coming out. For those people, who might feel a little trepidation because of these things: Please don’t worry, the development team took special care to ensure that this game is easily approachable for anybody. And that’s not only from the perspective of the story – the scenario, as we mentioned earlier – written in a way that newcomers can feel right at home and caught up to speed on what’s happening. But also on the gameplay side, as well.
The gameplay is well-explained and easy to understand, so people can get right into it. If you have someone out there who has any interest in the game via the character art or the characters or the story or the world setting, any of that looks interesting to you, [I] recommend that they pick it up.
There will be a demo coming out that they can give a try and hopefully that will encourage them to get the game when it comes out, and [I] really hope that anybody who has any interest whatsoever in this game will give it a chance. And hopefully, they love it.
OR: Last question: What’s next for you?
KJ: So, the next project actually is, in contrast to this game, which is a large-scale project, is a small project. If anything, it’s more of a pet project for me, personally. It’s a game that blends fantasy, but with fairy tales – children’s fairy tales, with beautiful visuals. It’s something [I’m] really excited to work on. If anything, it’s more in the vein of games like Yomawari or The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince – more of that anime style that Nippon Ichi tends to create. So that’s a project that [I’m] specifically created and made that [I’m] excited to make that’s a cool blend of different elements. [I] really hope that you look forward to it.
OR: Thank you very much, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me!
And that concludes Part II of our two-part interview with Kento Jobana! Thank you very much to NIS America, Inc., for helping to arrange this interview.
You can wishlist Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero on Steam now.
You can also pre-order the Collector’s Edition now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
Are you looking forward to Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero? What gameplay elements do you want to see in this Tactical RPG title?
Let us know in the comments below!
