Amnesia And Superpowers Rock!

What can I say about Phantom Dust for the XBox? I could tell you that I didn't go to the store intending to buy it. I don't remember what I did intend to buy, but it either wasn't there, or it was too expensive. And there was Phantom Dust, with this weird looking cover, and a $20 price tag, and the back of the box talking of over 300 powers, and I said "What the hell." I know that Phantom Dust is one of my favorite XBox games, locked in a struggle for superiority with Max Payne, and Thief: Deadly Shadows, with the edge going to whichever one I happen to be playing that day.

So, what to say of Phantom Dust? It's a game set in a post-apocalyptic future. Nothing new there. The world is wrecked, a strange dust covers the surface. Exposure to this dust causes a loss of memories; nobody on the planet remembers anything from before all this, except a vague memory of some 'Ruins'. Everyone remembers the Ruins though. Having moved underground to be safe from the dust, humanity learned that certain people were granted strange powers in this new world, and with horrific creatures roaming the surface, these "Espers" were sent on missions to try and find the Ruins, in the hopes they would discover what happened to the world. Of course, they aren't immune to the amnesiac effects of the dust, so excursions to the surface are for limited times (15 minutes per mission).

Your character was found in a strange metal tube, on a precipice overlooking a crater. On the opposite precipice was another tube, containing a guy named Edgar. At least, that was the name in the locket he carried. You don't know your name, and so like most, you choose your name. For example, your colleagues in the game sport names ranging from Tsubataki, to Cuff Button, to JD. I chose "Key". It seemed apt.

Your name is largely irrelevant (and there's probably a point to that), because no one ever calls you by your name out loud. Even in unspoken dialogue boxes, your name rarely appears. In fact, your character doesn't speak once the entire game. Oh, the way the other characters speak at times tells us your character must have said something, but you never see a dialogue box, or hear one word spoken. Your character mostly responds through body language and facial expressions, mostly shock, determination, and sadness, though he always starts with a faint smile on his lips. That lends a sort of nonchalance, him walking with his hands set lightly on his hips, as if just enjoying the sunshine while strolling out to get his morning paper. It's a nice snapshot of the character, that he can stride into even highly dangerous situations that way, seemingly without concern for the risks he's facing.

What should I say about the gameplay itself? There are all sorts of reasons to go to the surface - protect a supply route, train a robot to help out, try out new skills, rescue a child that wandered on the surface, even to provide a young writer with inspiration for his book. Really though, it all boils down to you fighting monsters, and sometimes the other Espers. The monsters range from floating bean pods with eyes, to humanoids, to a giant bird-thing, to weird mechanical looking creatures several stories tall. The employ all sorts of different strategies, taking as much advantage from the 300 skills available (more with Xbox Live, but I'm too cheap to shell out for that) as you do. In the battles you have your Level and your Aura, Level being the maximum amount of Aura you can have, Aura dropping as you use skills, then replenishing if given the time. The environments are destructible, and can thus be used against your enemies, either blasting their footing out from under them, sending them falling off the screen (though they return to their start point, minus some health, just the same as you), by destroying overhanging ledges, causing them to rain down on foes, or blasting nearby objects, and letting the shrapnel do the work. Of course, they can do all that as well.

What to say about the skills? There are 300, 60 for each of the five schools: Psycho, Optical, Nature, Ki, and Faith. There are differences, with the Optical focusing primarily on long-range attacks, the Ki on short-range, and Faith having several attacks that cost health to use. There's also defenses, some which simply block, others which erase the skill they block, still others that give you the Aura cost of the attack as a gift. There are skills to enhance or degrade abilities, meaning they can speed you up for brief times, or increase the damage your attacks inflict, or lower the homing ability of an enemy's attacks. There are Environmental skills that affect everyone out there, and Erase skills to well, erase the enemies' skills, or erase the effects enemies' skills have had on you.

After the first couple hours of gameplay, things have changed in the world, and skills no longer appear randomly in the battlegrounds. Now you have to bring an arsenal of skills with you, remembering to leave some room for Aura particles, or you won't have any Aura to use your skills! You get money for completing missions, so you can buy skills you don't have, multiple copies of skills you like, and as many arsenals as you wish. The arsenals can house skills from 1, 2, or 3 different schools, depending on which you buy. For some reason, 1-School Arsenals cost twice as much as 2-School , so I just buy 2-School and use them as 1. I've currently got 15 different arsenals, three for each school. My preference is to go for a nice mix of attacks, defenses, erases, and so on, and to group skills that compliment each other. For example, there's a Psycho School attack called "Rain of Rocks". It causes rocks to rain down on your opponent, but it's kind of slow and can be outrun, unless you use the skill "Entangle" (or is it "Lift Up"? "Pressure"? There are several skills in different schools that have similar effects. I don't consider that a bad thing.) to hold your enemy in place for a few seconds, while you drop the hammer, so to speak. Since the game is set up where running out of skills in your arsenal causes your health to begin dropping, I've also got a Faith Arsenal with few attacks, but an Erase skill that can erase skill capsules. So I just use that to delete their arsenal, and let their health fall on its own. It's a cheap tactic, but it works if you can stay alive long enough.

What to say to conclude? Well, I don't know why I've been discussing the game like I'm giving a eulogy. It still works just fine, I was playing it earlier this afternoon. It feels like a combination of two animes that I enjoyed the first halves of: Scryed, for the superpowers as a result of strange calamity, and Big O (it's not hentai, it's the name of the giant robot, don't ask me why), for the world where no one has memories side of it. There's a sense to the game I get, not only that events are repeating themselves for some of these people, but that certain Espers are related to certain monsters you encounter. It's more obvious in some cases than others (Tsubataki and the Gyne Sisters), and if I'm right, it's definitely related to the big reveal of Phantom Dust, which get parceled out in various chunks as you go, so that things weren't quite as I expected.

Ah, I know how to wrap up. If you have an XBox, and you still want some use from it, get this game. I think that works.