Blog Posts

Play Diaries: Phantom Rose 2

...is like a gorgeous, solid hard-cover mathematics textbook

I've been playing a lot of Phantom Rose 2 recently. My relationship with mobile games is tenuous - the nature of the playing field is such that most games hold out on you and feel engineered carefully to hold your attention while they dripfeed you the complexity of their system.

I don't want that. I prefer my games to hit me with their systems like a truckload of bricks, sending me flying across the pavement skittering along with the rubble and brick-dust. The experiences that have stuck with me are the ones where I've been intensely chewed up by a system that demanded that I pay attention to it or be ground to fine powder. I want little hand-holding, because I like to experience my media in a concentrated dose. I used to stay up during school nights to read my favourite novels and sure enough, I like to stay up playing my favourite games.

Few games, especially those on mobile stores risk giving their players access to the entirety of their systems all at once. Too little and players lose interest early; too much and players either feel overwhelmed or drop off early because they feel they've seen all the game has to offer. There are simply so many other options vying for their attention.

Somehow Phantom Rose¹ fits neatly in the intersection of traits that appeal to my taste and thus grabbed my attention. I'm partial to the anime art style, and I find the characters endearing. The character and enemy designs belie a sense of world-building and lore that is intriguing. The music sets a haunting mood and is excellent backdrop to the melancholic scenario. The story is present enough for me to ignore or focus on as I wish. I must admit, I had forgotten the recurring characters from the previous game. But still, I enjoyed the dramatic moments and boss fight reveals.

The label ‘roguelike deckbuilder’ spans expansive territory and I struggled to find my bearings when I first played the game. My brain simply refused to wrap itself around the combat systems. Why was I forced to use two cards each round? Why were status effects restricted to only one buff and one debuff each for the player and the enemy? Why was I dying so often?²

The promise of narrative resolution and my innate stubbornness somehow held me through that crawling stage of learning the game. Now, at the start of each round my math-brain is ready - crunching digits, summing damage, subtracting debuffs, adding buffs and factoring card effects. My goal is to defeat the enemy within as precise a margin as possible. Overkilling the enemies means using a strong card earlier than it is needed. Which means that card could be in cooldown when I most need it later potentially proving a fatal error.

Often, the game asks me to use every resource at my disposal - card effects, item usage, blessings, sacrificing my own HP, purchasing cards along the way with soul roses, or even spending gems³ to ambush phantoms⁴. When I finally defeat a phantom in spite of its schemes, I feel as if I have solved a particularly tricky problem from a mathematics text book. My brain burns in joyful calculation.

That joyous burn is also my gripe with the game.

Using my logical, math brain for long stretches is painful. Especially when a lot of choices feel like choosing between the lesser of two evils. You’re taking a hit either way, but you may pick your flavour of damage mitigation.

I feel simultaneously compelled to play a lot of the game but doing so makes me want to take a break from it even more. I've found that this is not the kind of game that wants me to experience it in one concentrated dose. It's balanced in such a way that encourages me to slowly earn and gather my resources to earn that next incremental buff or blessing that will make the next run marginally easier.

Like all good roguelikes, those small improvements drive the overall arc of progression. Looking at my player journey from start of the game to where I've reached now, there's a definite sense of progression. It's reflected in my stats, card unlocks, starting items, new game modes, and more. It's what kept me playing the game consistently over the last month and what made me keep the first game installed for so long on my phone. Yet, I can’t help but feel as if my player skill has hit a ceiling much earlier than I hit a slowdown on the curve of upgrade/unlocks within the system.

It doesn’t help that randomness in the game often feels out of control in a way that is unsatisfying. There is a luck stat shown to me as a player that influences various event outcomes during your run, but the randomness I most wanted to influence was the card draw. This was afforded to me in ways that felt unsatisfying - most of the character upgrades allowed me more chances to pick from (what felt like) sub-optimal choices and the new card pack unlocks can only be activated in entire sets.

The progression of difficulty and challenge in the game always feels hostile, like the world increases in harshness at a pace that outstrips your own growth. It creates a suffocating sense of pressure which feels quite thematic for the world of Phantom Rose. But as a player, this slow progression echoed the dripfeed to me. There are few moments of explosive growth or overwhelming victory that I can point to from my experience of playing the game. Even if I recognized a powerful card combo while playing, it always felt near impossible to execute in practice. I wish the game gave me more opportunities to feel thusly powerful and revel in the occasional overwhelming victory.

After (painstakingly) completing Diamond Adventure #4, I realized that Custom mode afforded me that chance to theorycraft and experiment with my card deck and the game systems more freely as I wanted. I wish the main adventure integrated more of its ideas earlier on. I would have felt more engaged to experiment with different card decks if the game structured or guided it more as challenges rather than just by random card draws.

Despite my grumbling, I’m likely to keep craving more of that joyous brain burn. I enjoyed my vector calculus class, after all. One thing is for sure, with all the other modes (Arcade, Roulette, Custom) and the entirely new Mage class - there’s enough flavours of burn for me return to for a long time.

1. Phantom Rose and Phantom Rose 2 are available on PC as well on Steam, but I played them on mobile so that’s the point of reference for my thoughts.

2. gitting gud aside

3. Or watching an ad, if you haven’t yet purchased the Supporter’s Pack In-app purchase

4. 10 HP may seem a sliver, but for some battles that is the margin of victory