Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Etheral Empire

Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Etheral Empire Overview

Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Etheral Empire is a tactical role playing game that was released for the PSP in late 2006. The game is a remake of the original Japanese game, Spectral Souls II. The game plays like most other tactical role playing games and has no really outstanding features that could have made the game unique. One issue with the game is that the load times in between screens is atrocious and this really slows down the game play. If you can get past the load time issues and you are a fan of tactics style RPGs then this game still has something to offer.

Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Etheral Empire Screenshots

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Full Review

Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Etheral Empire Review

Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Ethereal Empire is a strategy-RPG that was originally developed for the PlayStation 2, but was never released in the states. However, the game was eventually ported to the PlayStation Portable, and has recently been brought to the states by NIS America. Will this latest title hold over fans of previous NIS America-published titles? Read on to find out.

The storyline in Spectral Souls takes place on the continent of Neverland, with the human and demon armies in constant war with one another. These battles have been going on for years, with both armies achieving large-scale victories and countless deaths between the two sides. Eventually, with the help of a man from Earth named Akira, the two rival armies reached a very shaky peace agreement. A few years passed and eventually led to the continuation of the war.

Throughout Spectral Souls, players will have the opportunity to take control of the game’s three different armies. These armies include the Neverland Imperial Army (the demon army) and the Reformed Simba Empire (the human army), which are both keen on not allowing any sort of control by the other rival army. The third and final army in the game is known as the Rozes Liberation Army, and basically consists of different creatures who are all keen on obtaining peace in the land. For the most part, players will be able to choose which of the three armies they would like to control, but you will occasionally encounter storyline sequences where you must choose a certain army. As you progress through the game, you will also run into scenarios known as historic events. These missions are events that basically go down in the history books and, depending on the army you choose, will have some effect on the storyline.

As far as the actual combat in the game goes, Spectral Souls features an active time bar to indicate characters’ turns that is similar to that seen in Disgaea and Suikoden Tactics. When the map begins, each of the characters will appear located at different positions around the map. The game’s characters, both allies and enemies, each have a certain amount of AP, or action points. Each action, whether it is moving, using items, attacking, or healing, uses up an amount of your character’s AP. However, after each turn, your character will regain their AP, and then be able to use their amount to perform their actions once they receive another turn. Similar to other Nippon Ichi titles, the combat takes place on a grid, so as you can see, many of the elements of Spectral Souls are very similar to that of the traditional strategy-RPG. However, there are some things that help separate it from other titles in the genre.

One of the most unique things among the combat inSpectral Souls is a maneuver called “hold.” This ability allows the characters in the game to combine their attacks to perform an even more devastating maneuver. Some examples of this type of attack are to combine two slash attacks together, which will cause the triple slash attack, or purify and attack, which will cause holy attack. There are some attacks that won’t combine in this manner, such as a slash and an attack, but even if they do not combine, each of the attacks will still be used. So, basically, there is no real downside to performing the hold ability on a regular basis. The game also features another type of attack known as “charge.” This command allows each of your characters to team up to perform one devastating attack upon a certain enemy. Basically, all you have to do is select a character, use the charge command, choose ability, and then recycle that with your other characters to perform a devastating charge attack. Pretty simple, really, but these are an interesting addition to the combat.

If you’re familiar with Nippon Ichi titles, one of the things you know is the amount of customization. While Spectral Souls doesn’t allow you to create your own cast of characters, the game does have a lot of item creation. Not only is it possible to, like I said, create items, but it is also possible to create your own magic spells. Creating your own spells and weapons is one of the easiest ways to obtain items and is the only way to acquire some of the most powerful items. Plus, with the large amount of items available for creation, this adds a little depth and should be able to keep players occupied for some time.

While there are some nice things about Spectral Souls, there are also some bad things. And I mean really bad. Throughout the game, players will be experiencing more load times than I have previously ever seen in a game. In fact, some of the most basic things, such as a normal attack, will take several seconds for the game to load. Considering that you will be basically battling at least ten enemies every round and that it will normally take a couple of attacks to defeat several enemies, the time really adds up here. The load times definitely have a tendency to slow down the combat, and can make an interesting game like this seem a little boring from time to time. To make matters worse, even during the game’s many communication scenes, using the character portraits takes several seconds for responses to load back and forth. These long load times also have a tendency to cause the music to skip a beat, which is a shame because some of the music is really nice, but we’ll get into that in a bit. While the load times can become bothersome, I thought it should be noted that NIS America has said they tried very hard to speed up some of the load times, but there were still some problems. It’s a shame though, because the load times could easily turn many gamers away.

Graphically, Spectral Souls is an overall good-looking game. The game features a wide variety of different characters, and their appearances and portraits are nice to look at. For the most part, the character sprites are also well done in appearance too. While the game’s magic spells and attack abilities aren’t exactly spectacular in appearance, most of them get the job done and fit with the appearance of the game. However, there is one problem, and that concerns slow-down throughout the game. While it isn’t always a problem, it almost always is noticeable walking around a town and sometimes during combat.

Aside from the occasional music skipping, which I mentioned earlier, the sound in Spectral Souls is very good. The game features some great tunes, including the opening theme, battle music, and the music that is played while viewing the map. Personally, the music during combat was one of my favorites and felt like something that fit an RPG perfectly. While the game doesn’t feature any voice work, it does feature some nice dialogue and so on. There are also some good sound effects to be found throughout the game.

Seeing as how the game features three different armies, there is some sort of replay value to be found with Spectral Souls. The game also features a few different endings, so there are more reasons to go through the game more than once. Also, as I mentioned earlier, there are several different items, magic spells, and other equipment that can be crafted in the game, which should give some gamers some reasons to stick around and play through the game.

While I enjoyed my time with Spectral Souls, I will admit that it took a little time to get used to. Overall, the game features some really good concepts, but much of these could be easily overlooked because of the load times and slow-down. Even though the game lacks the humor of Nippon Ichi-developed titles, it does feature similar gameplay that strategy-RPG fans could easily enjoy.