Genre: Action
Developer: Microsoft Game Studios Japan
Publisher: Majesco Games
Released On: March 15, 2005
# of Players: 1-2; 4 online
ERSB: Teen
Supports: Dl content, 480p, Dolby Digital
MSRP: $49.99
Also On: None
Website: Phantom-Dust.com
Better Than: you think
Once in a great while, a game comes across my living room floor with an idea so simple, so intuitive and with action so fast and fun you think to yourself “How is it that nobody thought of this before?” Phantom Dust is such a game. Created by Microsoft Game Studios Japan and lead by Panzer Dragoon creator Yukio Futatsugi, Phantom Dust is a 2-on-2 battle royale where anything goes and everything usually does.
It’s a bit hard trying to describe this game as there has never really been anything quite like it, ever. It’s a bit of a mix of Power Stone, Destrega, Dragonball Z and a card battle game, and it’s the perfect blend of each. Some of you may be wondering "When is an action game like a card battling game?" Well in your average card battling game such as Magic, you basically assemble the best deck of cards possible and play an elaborate game of war, playing cards one at a time in order to best the opponent’s hard-earned and hand crafted deck. Only in Phantom Dust, you are assembling not decks of cards but sets of skills called "arsenals" and battling it out in real time to stunning visuals and pulse pounding music. Destructible environments aplenty in this game, as pieces of the stage so large it nearly jars you to see crumble to tiny bits, and an entire section of freeway collapses before your very eyes. Oops. I missed. And it adds so much to the cinematic experience that keeping yourself from being distracted by the stunning visuals almost becomes a game in itself. Phantom Dust draws you in with it’s beauty, captivates you with it’s intelligent design and hooks you like a drug.
This is not a typical fighting or action game in a sense that you’re not freely running around swinging wildly in all directions, hoping to score a hit. In Phantom Dust you will spend a majority of your time locked onto your enemy, continually looking in their direction dodging this way and that, deflecting lasers and hurling massive meteors and soaring high in the air. And while the thought of being able to simply lock onto your opponents may sound stupid in such a game, the real meat of the gameplay lies in determining what range your target is and which skills are appropriate for each situation; the color of your reticule when locked on will tell you which. And if it’s skills you want, it’s skills you’re going to get, as the game boasts 300 to unlock, buy, collect and trade. It’s staggering really, as I have spent so many countless hours with this game only to have come across a small fraction of what’s in store.
Skills range from basic projectile attacks to elaborate meteors crashing down from the heavens, lasers, icey walls and fiery shields; ghostly snakes that jump out of the ground and entangle your opponent, inhibiting them from moving; skills that knock you down; skills that take your skills; skills that break your skills… You name it: chances are it’s in there. The game is simply that fleshed out and amazing.
Assembling your arsenal is paramount in this game, and knowing how to do it properly is the key to successfully winning battles. Simply throwing in your most powerful skills in abundance will not win matches, as you will struggle to raise your aura level (the energy required to use a skill) to a suitable level to even use them at all. Meanwhile you may be stuck with nothing to use if you didn’t maintain a certain amount of weaker, less aura-demanding abilities. And considering you never know which order they will appear for you to grab them, well, it’s a fine balancing act indeed, and a fun and rewarding challenge at the same time. And it gets even more complex than that, but it’s not hard at all to learn. The game eases you into the action slowly and step by step, and offers a multitude of video tutorials detailing how everything works. Top notch. And once you manage to put together an arsenal that’s balanced and you learn all of the tricks to each attack and defensive maneuver you might start to get a little cocky: This is one of those games like Ninja Gaiden that make you feel like a bad ass with all the crazy cool stuff you can pull off.
The enemy AI is simply as smart as it needs to be in the early goings - nothing more, nothing less. They will run balls out at you if they have full energy and skills in their possession, attack, turn and run as fast as can be away from you as soon as they’re done. You can even catch the enemies in a loop of running 10 steps away, spinning around as they suddenly realize they have enough energy to attack you again, attack you again and run away, repeat, repeat, repeat... But at the very least it keeps you on your toes. Likewise your partner isn’t a rocket scientist either, and will spend a lot of time seemingly running around in circles. Sometimes it’s difficult keeping them alive at all, and then out of nowhere they’ll kick everyone’s ass and beat the level for you before you can even manage to find any worthwhile skills to use. Uh, thanks? But who needs enemy AI when you can play against players worldwide, and Phantom Dust fully supports Xbox Live for all of the 2-on-2 strategic action you can imagine. Trading kill cards is also possible via Live.
The game can be quite challenging despite the dumb AI, as you frantically try to remember which button you currently have assigned to defense while monitoring your aura recovery, as bats of death and fireballs aplenty are raining down from all directions. It’s pretty intense stuff. And the computer has no qualms about getting sheisty and double-teaming you in a corner so you can hardly move or recover enough aura to defend yourself. Environmental awareness is very important, since a majority of the time you will be running in one direction and looking in another, and you don’t want to get caught in a corner. It’s during the frantic close-quarters combat that the camera can get a little disorienting, having your enemy zooming around you with melee attacks causing the camera to swing so wildly around that down becomes up, up becomes down and you suddenly find yourself walking off of a ledge to your death. Frustrations begin to mount when you happen to be standing close enough to a skill to pick it up accidently when trying to use your favorite attack, and again, it’s all about environmental awareness and knowing where you are at all times so mistakes like that don’t happen.
Phantom Dust oozes style from every crack and crevice, showcasing some of the best visuals ever seen in any game, period. The artistic genius of the design seems to push the graphics even further and well beyond the capabilities of the machine. You’re not likely to see a more stylish game on Xbox all year long, and the game manages to capture the spirit of greats such as The Matrix and Dragonball Z without coming across as a total ripoff. Anime fans may even notice that Phantom Dust has a bit of Cowboy Bebop flair; you can almost imagine Spike and the gang landing their ship at any moment. (Might not make such a bad crossover really, so long as they don’t call it ‘Cowboy Dust’.) The visuals are complimented nicely with one of the most original and awesome soundtracks I have heard in a long time - eerie atmospheric noises put to drums with outbursts of random instruments - and can be substituted at any time with your own tunes via custom soundtrack support. Not that you’d want to – it’s really that good. For those that have played Ninja Gaiden, the music is very similar in style.
However with so many positives going in it’s favor, no game is without its flaws. For whatever reason there appear to be few levels to battle in; you will do battle in the same areas over and over and over again. It never gets boring necessarily, as you are always coming across newer, more powerful and spectacular skills, but I just scratch my head in wonder as to how a development team with this much talent and enough good ideas to come up with 300 unique magical attacks can somehow only came up with a handful of levels to play in. Oh well. Downloadable content is said to be in the works, and if we’re lucky Majesco will take a page out of Team Ninja’s book and not Bungie’s (free please). The game can also get a little mundane when you’re running around your home base looking for a mission to take on, humping everyone wildly with the A-button hoping for something to do. And for those players wishing to wipe the slate clean and start the game over, there’s no way to skip past the initial introductory levels, and they are pretty freakin boring the second time around.
Some gamers may be turned away from Phantom Dust at the sound of the term "card battling" game. But the fact that card games like Magic and Pokemon exist at all is a testament to the simplistic brilliance of their design, and therein lies Phantom Dust’s excellence. It is a new way to play a tried and true formula and it’s a hell of a good time doing it. Kudos to Majesco for bringing this gem over from Japan (What the hell is wrong with you Microsoft?), and for releasing it at an unbelievable price of only $19.99. It’s unfortunate that the Xbox library didn’t benefit more from Japanese developers and their crazy ideas, but with the occasional game like Phantom Dust trickling through, I think I can manage just fine.
For more information and a kick-ass Phantom Dust trailer, go to Phantom-Dust.com.
