Microsoft has had some amazing gems in their games catalog, one of which was announced to be receiving a remake in this newest console generation. That game was Phantom Dust. Released on March 15th, 2005, the action/strategy game was developed by Microsoft Game Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios and Majesco for the original Xbox console. To be honest, I had never heard of this game until very recently. I even missed the reveal of the Xbox One reboot somehow.
Unfortunately, its developer, Darkside Games, has been closed, and the game’s development is shaky. Once I read about the premise of the game, however, I had to find myself a copy, and it took me about two weeks to find one off of an internet auction site. I was very pleased when I got my copy. I popped it right into my Xbox and was swept away to a very different, very barren world.
The story has a somewhat different take on the post-apocalyptic genre of gaming. In this world, a mysterious poisonous dust has plagued its citizens. This dust wiped away everyone’s memories and created horrible demons on the surface. This caused all the survivors to go underground. The dust didn’t only have bad effects on the world. It also created Espers, people who can transform their will into energy (much like Green Lanterns but without the ring). These Espers go out onto the surface looking for ways to be rid of the dust and to find all the lost memories. This is where a group of Espers find you and your companion. You’re both found in a pod and taken back underground. Your pod mate Edgar is obsessed with his locket, and the picture of the girl found inside that he seeks.
Once settled, you begin your training with various missions that people send you on. You learn to fight, learn to defend, and learn a little about yourself. The one thing I disliked about the story telling was the fact that the game doesn’t provide a smooth tale. Instead of being taken mission to mission by walking around the world or normal story beats, you have to seek out people to give you missions where little tidbits of story are revealed to you. The choppiness takes you out of the narrative; at least that’s what it did to me.
The controls are fairly easy to learn. The left stick moves your character (Alpha) around the world, and the right stick controls the camera, but not very well. What’s even worse about the camera you control is that it is inverted and you cannot change it in the options; it’s very hard to get use to. Once you start running around the world, glowing orbs appear: red and blue. Red is an attack mode and blue is a defense mode. When you run over these orbs, you hit the face buttons to assign them, and once you push that face button, you use it.
These powers use Aura points and once you run out of Aura points, you have to run around the map and recharge them. It recharges fairly fast during battle. To lock onto an enemy, all you have to do is click on the right trigger–they can be anywhere on the map and you will be locked onto them. Once you’re locked on, you can just unload and take out all the baddies on that map. Doing this earns you credits and memory boxes; both of which you can use underground.
The graphics, while dated, still hold up pretty well by today’s standards. The cut scenes look nice and blend in pretty well with the gameplay graphics. The game has a nice steam-punk feel to it. The characters are well designed, and you don’t get too confused with who you need to speak to next. The backdrops to the world are pretty boring though and you’ll find yourself getting lost very often underground because everything looks the same and the map is useless. It doesn’t tell you where to go either–it just shows you the layout and what section you are in with no labels or anything. The over world backgrounds also look pretty bad; they’re all the same. Had the backgrounds been more dynamic, it would have made this game even better than it already is.
I’m very glad that I discovered this game, but I’m also sad that the remake or reboot is now on shaky ground. I will play this on my Xbox One if it ever comes out, but I’ll settle for my original Xbox for the time being. I like the world that this game is set in; it’s different than most end of the world games. The controls, while very different, also work very well within the world and the game. If you have an original Xbox and the patience to search for a good copy of this game, you should. It’s definitely worth your time and investment.