
	Platform Xbox Genre Action Publisher Majesco Developer Microsoft Game Studios Japan ESRB T (Teen) Released Q2 2005

- Card battle game elements without the cards - Xbox Live battles are better than expected - Particle and light effects go into overdrive, highlighting impressive graphics

- Repetitive missions: first talk to characters, then go to the surface, get through battle, return to underground. Repeat. - Longer than needed load times just moving from one area of the underground to another get annoying - The game’s story has more holes in it than a mountain of Swiss cheese

Review: Jade Empire (XB) Review: Fable (XB) Review: Kingdom Under Fire - The Crusaders (XB) Review: BloodRayne 2 (XB)
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Phantom Dust

Score: 8.2 / 10

Playing Phantom Dust for the first time, I was reminded of Sega’s Phantasy Star Online (PSO), a title that successfully fused a sci-fi universe with role-playing game/card battle elements. Phantom Dust’s story is a convoluted mess and takes place on Earth instead of the vast reaches of planets spread throughout the universe like PSO, but it refines the RPG/card battle features into a more action-oriented title that takes real strategic planning to attain success and offers an unexpectedly solid online experience.

Let’s get the story out of the way right now. Some sort of dust has shrouded the entire Earth, and now each and every human in the world has lost their memory, not knowing who they were or where they came from. There’s only one memory

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that each seems to have: the ruins.

With dust all over, everybody has moved underground to avoid it and the mysterious beings that roam the topside world. But in a search for the truth behind the ruins memory, the Vision, lords of the new land, enlist the skills of the Espers, those who seem to have new special psychic powers at their disposal. Only problem is, if you spend more than 15 minutes

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aboveground, you lose all your memory. So the Espers can only go on quick hit-and-run missions.

Now, there are many problems with the story. If everybody’s underground and there’s dust choking the Earth’s atmosphere, and dangerous beings are everywhere, how can everybody survive? After all, there’s no food source, and one character actually remarks that they forgot how to grow food. There are no animals around, so that food source seems gone too. And water can’t be too drinkable either. How’d everybody build underground cities? They’ve forgotten how to do things, so how did they remember to build? You follow the search-for-the-truth exploits of the Protagonist (yes, that’s his official name) and his both current and may-have-been partner, Edgar (the Protagonist and Edgar seem to remember each other, but aren’t really sure).

But I’ll stop picking on the story there, because what it lacks in plausibility, Phantom Dust makes up for in playability. Like PSO, you’ll undertake missions assigned to you by various dwellers of varying importance and rank in the underground world the Protagonist calls home.

The Phantom Dust gameplay focuses on a sort of fighting game, only there are no punches or kicks flying around. Instead, it has your character using dust-enhanced psychic attacks and defenses that take hit points away from your opponent and block his attacks on you. Your opponent also has the same attack/defend powers. The strategic part of the game comes from selecting a good balance of attack/defend powers to defeat any enemies on a particular level. Each character has a regeneration zone where attack/defend power ball regenerate. Each power has to be assigned to one of the four Xbox controller buttons. When you wish to use that power, pressing the corresponding controller button activates it. You’ll have to stay close to your regeneration point, because certain powers can be used only once, and you must go back to the regeneration zone to collect new power balls to fill in for controller buttons without a power. You can also replace weaker powers with stronger ones that may have appeared.

Some enemies are more susceptible to certain attacks, and have better defenses for others you may fling at them. That also goes for you versus enemy attacks. The key is finding attacks that do the job of annihilating your foe with a good defense system.

There are other more sophisticated powers, such as erase skills that wipe out enemy skills, or special powers, such as ones that allow you to gravitate above an enemy and attack from above. Each power requires a certain number to activate, from one to five. Once you use a power, the meter reloads, counting up to five, and you will not be able to use the power until you reach the power’s respective number. Again, it all comes down to using a sound strategy to use good powers for your attacks and having sufficient defending powers to keep your opponent’s attacks at bay.

The only negative gameplay element is that the missions get repetitive: first talk to characters, then go to the surface, get through battle, return to underground. Repeat. There’s somewhere around 100 scenario missions, so after a while, the déjà vu effect starts to take hold.

Visually, Phantom Dust is highlighted by impressive particle effects, particularly from the attacks you’ll throw at your opponents and they throw at you. A nice, neon-enhanced glow sharpens the graphical package, and the colorful costumes of many of the game’s characters alleviate the rather dull environmental visuals, above and below ground.

Online, Phantom Dust is an unexpected treat, due in large part to the more strategic skills needed compared to a quick trigger finger that you would need for a FPS online. You battle opponents in the same environments as the scenario mode, and the gameplay’s the same. But with a human opponent involved, the strategic chess-like thought and skill that are needed to win creates a much more compelling strategy game than you might have imagined. You can also play co-op online, another great offering not every Xbox Live title offers. Plus, playing the trading card game angle, Phantom Dust allows you to trade skills online to give yourself a better chance for online victory. For fans of PSO, Phantom Dust provides a viable alternative.

Surrounded by the huge releases of Doom 3 and Midnight Club 3, Phantom Dust is one of those under-the-radar titles that many Xbox gamers may not have even noticed on the store shelf. But while you won’t be forgetting (dust or no dust) about Fable or even Sudeki (two bigger, more-hyped Xbox RPGs) anytime soon, Phantom Dust, especially with its online gameplay, is worth the attention of Xbox RPG gamers.

- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(May 24, 2005)