Spectral Souls
Hooray, we now officially have a worst game on the PSP. By a mile.
Published: September 26, 2006
The PSP desperately needs a really solid console-level RPG experience, this much has been said before right here on this site. The PSP occupies a unique space in the handheld market in that it's powerful enough to basically give you a console experience on the go, yet still needs games tailored to the console experience. Role-playing games may be a bit of an exception, if only because they're built for the long haul, which is fine; portable games should give you both short and long experiences alike.
Unfortunately, the only real representation that the PSP has had (with a few not-so-notable exceptions) has been an odd dumping ground for older ports of games. This would be fine if the games themselves were worth the $40 entry price, but so far none of them have been, either because of a bad bit of coding, a game that's simply too old, or gameplay that just flat-out sucks. Never, though, have all three come together in such a horrifying display as in Spectral Souls.
Sony Computer Entertainment America is notorious for not allowing PSP games that don't include added content to be released Stateside if they're just ports, and yet, somehow, SS, an ultra-shoddy port of a PS2 game, scoots through approvals and gets the green light. But hey, at least it's not 2D, right guys? No, this is 3D -- PS one-era 3D, packed with the kind of slowdown not seen since the 8-bit days and Idea Factory's trademark low-budget "charm" all rolled into one game.
Spectral Souls is, technically speaking, Spectral Souls II, but the intro movie at least explains the plot of the first game amidst a flurry of footage from it, which at least serves as a nice primer to what's to come. Or what should have come. The story of humans and demons living in the same world and a bloody revolt of the humans against their former masters, only to see retaliation and then finally a tenuous peace that's slowly eroding is barely worth experiencing, mainly because if you want to, you're going to have to sit though seeing this all the goddamn time:
"disc access"
The game loads. It loads everywhere. It loads for more than a minute when heading into new areas, it loads for just as long when showing a cutscene, and then again to get out of it, it loads for text conversations (there's no voice acting at all in the game). And then you get in the battles and you just want to dig your eyes out with a spoon. The game pauses to load up movement grids, it loads for simple attacks, it loads for command menus, it loads for combo attacks for each character, it... you get the idea. I've never in my life seen a game that was coded so poorly.
The problem isn't necessarily that the game is slow and clunky. though it is -- painfully so -- (there's nothing like walking around town and watching the game slowdown because it's rendering buildings), it's that all these little pauses ruin any of the fun that could be had with the battle system, which is something of a cross between traditional attack-from-the-sides-or-back strategy RPG truisms and a sort of turn-based system. See, you don't move your whole team at once. There's a timeline at the top of the screen that slowly scrolls the portraits from right to left; quicker characters act faster.
It seems a little weird at first to have a more traditional RPG setup for turns happening in the middle of a strategy game, but it does technically work rather well. By using the on-screen indicators, you can set up combo attacks, which give you bonuses to damage and experience earned. All characters attack with skills, but by tapping the R Button, you can execute a Hold Attack, which lets you stack up multiple attacks until you're out of action points. If you combine combos (okay, Charge Attacks) and Holds, you can deal absolutely insane amounts of damage. There was some nice thought put into the Charge and Hold systems, too; a slash and a fireball attack get their own name, just as a pair of slashes or a dash and attack. The number of combos is impressive, but none of those really matters when you have to deal with loading screens as you back in and out of menus to coordinate attacks.
Unfortunately, the only real representation that the PSP has had (with a few not-so-notable exceptions) has been an odd dumping ground for older ports of games. This would be fine if the games themselves were worth the $40 entry price, but so far none of them have been, either because of a bad bit of coding, a game that's simply too old, or gameplay that just flat-out sucks. Never, though, have all three come together in such a horrifying display as in Spectral Souls.
Sony Computer Entertainment America is notorious for not allowing PSP games that don't include added content to be released Stateside if they're just ports, and yet, somehow, SS, an ultra-shoddy port of a PS2 game, scoots through approvals and gets the green light. But hey, at least it's not 2D, right guys? No, this is 3D -- PS one-era 3D, packed with the kind of slowdown not seen since the 8-bit days and Idea Factory's trademark low-budget "charm" all rolled into one game.
Spectral Souls is, technically speaking, Spectral Souls II, but the intro movie at least explains the plot of the first game amidst a flurry of footage from it, which at least serves as a nice primer to what's to come. Or what should have come. The story of humans and demons living in the same world and a bloody revolt of the humans against their former masters, only to see retaliation and then finally a tenuous peace that's slowly eroding is barely worth experiencing, mainly because if you want to, you're going to have to sit though seeing this all the goddamn time:
"disc access"
The game loads. It loads everywhere. It loads for more than a minute when heading into new areas, it loads for just as long when showing a cutscene, and then again to get out of it, it loads for text conversations (there's no voice acting at all in the game). And then you get in the battles and you just want to dig your eyes out with a spoon. The game pauses to load up movement grids, it loads for simple attacks, it loads for command menus, it loads for combo attacks for each character, it... you get the idea. I've never in my life seen a game that was coded so poorly.
The problem isn't necessarily that the game is slow and clunky. though it is -- painfully so -- (there's nothing like walking around town and watching the game slowdown because it's rendering buildings), it's that all these little pauses ruin any of the fun that could be had with the battle system, which is something of a cross between traditional attack-from-the-sides-or-back strategy RPG truisms and a sort of turn-based system. See, you don't move your whole team at once. There's a timeline at the top of the screen that slowly scrolls the portraits from right to left; quicker characters act faster.
It seems a little weird at first to have a more traditional RPG setup for turns happening in the middle of a strategy game, but it does technically work rather well. By using the on-screen indicators, you can set up combo attacks, which give you bonuses to damage and experience earned. All characters attack with skills, but by tapping the R Button, you can execute a Hold Attack, which lets you stack up multiple attacks until you're out of action points. If you combine combos (okay, Charge Attacks) and Holds, you can deal absolutely insane amounts of damage. There was some nice thought put into the Charge and Hold systems, too; a slash and a fireball attack get their own name, just as a pair of slashes or a dash and attack. The number of combos is impressive, but none of those really matters when you have to deal with loading screens as you back in and out of menus to coordinate attacks.
