[quote name='strebor']I've been looking at these Nippon Ichi games for awhile now - is Phantom Brave a good one to start with if I've never played a strategy RPG before?[/quote]
The word on the street is PB is rather complicated and heavily stats-based, though I've never played it, myself. I would recommend starting with FFT or something like Fire Emblem, as they aren't especially complicated, and are pretty kickass (Advance Wars games are good too, but they feel more like Metal Marines than RPGs).