If I review a few more solid games like Phantom Dust from Majesco, I might have to take back some of the nasty things I’ve said about the quality of their games over the years. Of course it helps that the development of Phantom Dust took place in Microsoft’s own game development house in Japan. And why Microsoft didn’t publish this quality, library-gap-filling action/strategy game for the Xbox in the USA themselves is anyone’s guess, but some marketing data somewhere must have told them it just wasn’t going to fly. Well Majesco had a little vision, and perhaps the luxury of being able to release this title at 20 clams, and rescued it from oblivion so American Xbox players could have themselves a real, honest-to-goodness Japanese-styled action/strategy game in their library.
Phantom Dust takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a strange dust moves through the atmosphere causing all humanity to lose its memory. At the same time monstrous and dangerous apparitions appeared on the surface of the Earth. (Why is post-apocalyptic Earth always so forbidding? Can’t we for once have cute, friendly, furry bunnies along with cotton-candy trees after our apocalypse?) To protect themselves, the remnants of humanity live underground. To say all memory is gone is actually not true. The afflicted all have a memory of ruins and a feeling that they must find them. While for most people the whole situation is a major buzz-kill, there are a few who have been given a power by the dust. Called Espers, they have the ability to turn their will into action with a thought. These individuals are sent onto the surface by the leaders of humankind to discover the mystery of the dust, to determine if the ruins everyone remembers are real, and find a way to reclaim the planet. That is where you come in.
You and another human have been found on the surface in metal containers by scouting Espers. They seem to recognize immediately that you will be powerful with the force – uh, dust. (I almost got sued there.) You are taken underground and introduced to the offbeat cast of characters that pass for survivors. From there you are introduced to combat training with the Esper skills you have.
Oddly though, you really don’t “have” these skills. They must be collected on the playing field in the form of capsules made up of aura particles of various colors denoting their type. As they are collected, the player assigns them one of the four main face buttons for use. This of course means no more than four skills can be equipped at any one time. At first skills appear without any player control over which skills are in the arena and the game is pretty much designed to teach the player proficiency with the attack, defense, movement and opponent skill erasing and status-altering skills. As skills are collected and used they become a part of the player’s special bag of tricks. Later these collected skills can be combined in distinct, savable arsenals – kind of like a deck of skill cards in Magic or Pokémon – that can be tailored to the player’s fighting style. A player may save up to 16 different arsenals and each arsenal has 30 skill slots. This means that while the skills still appear on the playing field and must be picked up for use, they are the skills that the player has chosen to appear. The player still has no control of the order they appear in though. With about 300 possible powers, arsenals can be built and customized for almost every style of playing.
The game is played split between the underground headquarters of the human survivors, where the player will yammer on with the non-player characters and receive missions, and the battle arenas above ground, where the player will engage in combat with the surface-dwelling enemies. The underground stuff gets pretty tedious quickly. Fortunately most of the game is about battling in the arenas and not talking to the fruitcake moles.
Actual play is smoothly executed with the player trying out all the skills at his disposal, acquiring new skills and constantly tweaking his favorite arsenal to ensure he’ll get the Esper skills that best fit his playing style. Each skill comes at a cost in limited energy. While in combat the player is constantly balancing offensive and defensive skill use with use of cover and downright running and dodging to allow energy to rebuild after expending it.
In addition to the main one-player gaming experience, there is a robust Xbox Live multiplayer mode that allows the player to take the skill arsenals he has built up in the single-player mode into combat on Live. On Live players can also buy, sell and trade skills they have acquired as well as download new content. Two players can also battle via splitscreen, while up to four consoles can be connected via system link.
The presentation of the game is an interesting mixture. Visually the game is very good. The characters are nicely detailed and move well. The combat arenas, which are heavily player-destructible, also sport good detail and are about what you’d expect in a post-apocalyptic world – ruined buildings and the shattered infrastructure of civilization. The sound effects are okay. They’re definitely nothing to write home about, but serviceable. Voice acting is kind of limited with most conversations taking place with cartoon balloons. The music is what is odd. Much is a mix of copyright-free classical stuff – and some strange choices at that. I swear that one is a Rimsky-Korsakoff piece that was turned into the song “Stranger In Paradise.” Thankfully custom soundtracks are supported by the game.
Overall Phantom Dust is a good game. It plays, looks and controls well. It is almost surely never going to have a big following in the USA and I don’t think many players will consider it great, but at $20 it definitely delivers your money’s worth. If you’re a fan of action games and still not convinced to give Phantom Dust at least a rental, consider the fact that it was designed by Yukio Futatsugi, the designer of the critically-acclaimed Panzer Dragoon series on the Sega Saturn. That might tip the scales for you.
