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PSP | RPG | Spectral Souls

Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Idea Factory
Release Date: Available Now
Genre: RPG
Number of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: Teen
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10 screen shots

GRAPHICS: 4.00
SOUND: 3.50
CONTROL: 2.00
FUN FACTOR 2.50
AVG USER SCORE n/a
AVG CRITIC SCORE 2.5

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Review: Spectral Souls

Review by D. F. Smith | 10/03/2006 | 15:05:55 PM PST

In another world, on another system, Spectral Souls might have been fun. There seems to be a solid design base here, some smart ideas for a strategy-RPG. It's not that bad to look at, either -- pretty 2D artwork, fairly detailed 3D backgrounds. Fans of Final Fantasy Tactics and such would probably enjoy it; another twist on their favorite genre.

Fantasy, Meet Reality

Too bad that cool character art took so long to load...

What's the problem? The problem is incredibly poor disc management. Spectral Souls features the load times from Hell. Load and seek delays aren't uncommon in PSP games -- by now they've become a permanent fixture on the platform -- but Idea Factory's latest is on a completely different level. Between the frequency and length of nagging hitches in your progress, this might be the all-time heavy-wait champion.

Spectral Souls loads between speech balloons. Yes, speech balloons, in almost every cutscene. Between one character's statement and the next character's response, there's usually a short wait and a "Disc Access" message in the corner of the screen.

Players of this game will learn to hate that "Disc Access." It also appears, for a longer pause, before nearly every action in combat. Not just every complicated spell effect, every action -- every move across the map and every simple swing of a sword. In places where you'd normally expect a load time, between battles and on the way out of the save screen, the wait could perhaps be described as "epic."

And Then What?

Protip: Use the last few action points in a turn to prep a Charge chain combo for later.

In between the load times, there might be a good game here. Idea Factory's worked in this genre for years, with several related releases already out in Japan. It's had plenty of time to refine its techniques. For instance, this isn't just a turn-based battle game -- in the Grandia style, Spectral Souls has active-time initiative, which adds several interesting twists to combat.

Some characters reach their next action faster than others (there's a handy bar gauge to chart everyone's relative progress) and a "Charge" system lets you exploit the turn order to your advantage. One character foregoes an attack to link up with an ally behind them in the initiative chain. If that ally can attack before the target's turn comes around, the two characters get a bonus for striking together. Individual characters can use another combo system to chain basic skills and create advanced attacks.