Review : Spectral Souls for Windows Phone
If you’re one of those who refuse to spend more than 2 or 3 bucks for a mobile game, regardless of the amount of game time and fun you get for your money, you may most likely stop reading right here and right now.
Spectral Souls, by the Japanese developer Idea Factory and publisher HyperDevbox, is a remake of the game Shinji Gensou Spectral Souls II which was released in late 2006 for Sony’s PlayStation 2 and then later ported to the PlayStation Portable, before it was finally made a mobile title debuting on iOS and Android.
It weighs in a rather hefty $12.99, but if you consider the fact that it’s not some dumped down regular mobile game but a full console one, offering more than a hundred hours of gameplay, it’s a bargain. What you will get in exchange for your well-earned wages is a tactical RPG that sets itself apart from its competitors by offering a unique blend of RPG and strategy elements and furthermore making you play not only one party, but all three parties that form story.
The Storyline
It takes place in Neverland. A world shattered by a 7 years lasting war between humans and demons who both fight for dominance to rule over the world. To be a little more accurate, the conflict revolves around the demon army, the established human army and a rather young group of rebels. The latter forming an alliance with the human army against the demons. But as the story unfolds, the goals of both human armies separate more and more from each other and they eventually become enemies too.
Unlike most other games you don’t get to play one side only. Throughout the game you have to switch several times between the demon army, the human army and the rebels. The story alters according to the decisions you make in the progress of the game. So depending on what you do and when you do it, you’ll even get to see a different ending.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Spectral Souls is a turn based tactical RPG, where each of your units has a certain range of movement and its own unique skill set. Like in any other RPG you can of course equip your characters with items you find or purchase in dedicated shops. Before you send them into battle, you may also improve their skills or alter the skill set.
While the graphics won’t knock over anyone, the soundtrack stands for its own, so do the game mechanics. Each battle takes place on a small map, where you try and move your units to take advantage of higher ground or bringing them in position, so they can attack from behind. What adds the tactical component to the mix is the fact that for each of your characters only a certain amount of action points can be spent for movement and/or using skills. So you better not let anybody of your party move out of healing range. It’d be a shame if your healer had to spend most of his action points for chasing your line of offense, just to find there are not enough points left to perform a healing spell.
That’s not where strategy ends though. Instead of performing attack after attack, you can stack up multiple attacks to so called chained attacks, which unleash a vast amount of damage. You can even do sort of tag team attacks, by performing charge attacks. These blow out the highest damage possible, but they require multiple of your characters to take part and only work under certain conditions. None of the charging units may be attacked during a charge, which is very often quite difficult to achieve. Unlike regular or even chain attacks, your characters don’t perform charges right after you pulled them off, but during their next turn. Which particularly means that your enemies will have the time and chance to interrupt said attack.
Just like every other mobile game, Spectral Souls does not come with a manual either. I managed to find the original PSP manual online, though it’s anything but good, to be honest. It gives you a good idea of what the game is all about, but it doesn’t go deep enough to understand more than just the basics.
Fortunately the developers were fair enough to include an in game tutorial, which deals with every single aspect of the game. It’s so detailed, that it’ll take a couple of hours to completely read through it. How good is it that you don’t need to do so. Whenever you’re not sure what to do or how to perform a certain action, you can quickly fire it up and have a look at the explanations.
Controls
Spectral Souls can’t deny its origins. Remember every single button and trigger you can find on a PlayStation 2 controller and you can imagine the interface on your Windows Phone. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you won’t accidentally trigger something you don’t want to by randomly swiping away some stains on your phone’s display. Some UI elements are hidden and only appear, when they’re needed. What always remains on the screen though is the virtual D-Pad and at least two action buttons. It may seem a little confusing at first, but you’ll get used to it rather quickly.
Since you’re looking at the battle maps in a pseudo 3D perspective, pretty much like the Diablo series, it can get difficult to see opponents, who may be hiding behind rocks or trees. That’s why I recommend anyone to adjust the view before actually starting your moves/attacks. You can slightly tilt the angle of view in 3 steps and you may turn the entire map in 90° steps. It’ll become a second nature after you’ve lost one or more party members to enemies you overlooked at first sight.
Conclusion
Spectral Souls – Resurrection of the Ethereal Empires is a must have game for every fan of the genre. With its typical Manga style artworks and amazing soundtrack, its addicting story line and addictive game play, it’s very much comparable to the king of the genre: Final Fantasy (tactics though). And with hundreds of hours of time you can spend with it, its price is more than justified. Unfortunately the game doesn’t offer a trial, so if you aren’t sure if the game will suit you, I suggest you look up some game play videos on YouTube, which should give you a pretty decent insight.
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