Five years ago on the original Xbox, a game like Spectral Force 3 would have been a huge deal. The Xbox was a barren wasteland for JRPGs, and fans would have gobbled up anything out of desperation. The Xbox 360 is a different beast, however. We have a number of solid RPGs with many more on the way, and have earned the right to be a bit pickier. Frankly, Spectral Force 3 just doesn’t quite cut it. Find out all of the details here in our full review.
Quick Hits
- Title: Spectral Force 3
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: Atlus
- Developer: Idea Factory
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: SRPG
- Pros: Solid gameplay
- Cons: Last-gen graphics and sound; high price; weak story and characters
Spectral Force 3 starts off with a clichéd anime cutscene and from there travels the safe and easy path of being fairly straightforward. You play as a group of mercenaries in the world of Neverland where the 10 major powers are at war with each other. You are free to fight for whoever you want, and your actions affect the politics for the rest of the game. Each group offers up different party members for you to use, which gives the game surprising replay value since you’ll want to experiment with different combinations of characters to see how they fight alongside each other. The characters and story outside of battle, however, aren’t all that interesting. The concept is definitely cool, but the global politics kind of take a back seat through most of the game, and the drama between the characters in your party isn’t all that compelling.
Gameplay
Atlus
The gameplay in Spectral Force 3 is definitely the bright spot of the game. At first glance, it seems like a traditional turn-based, strategy RPG. When you dig a little deeper, you find that SF3 has quite a bit more to offer. In most battles, your team is greatly outnumbered, but you have a couple of tricks up your sleeve. When party members are standing next to the same enemy, for example, you can use team assists where you’ll both get to attack. Also, as your characters take damage and inch ever closer to death, they actually become far more powerful. This gives the game a far different pace and feel than most SRPGs because you can stay on the offensive most of the time rather than really worrying about health. In fact, the only character that you really need to worry about as far as health goes is the healer character Diaz. He can heal other characters as much as you need to with no mana or magic gauge to worry about, but he can’t heal himself. Instead of potions and items, the game uses equipment to boost the stats of the characters. Again, rather different from most SRPGs. The only other thing that really needs to be said about the gameplay is that some of the battles are a bit overly long. You are always outnumbered to begin with, but some battles actually have enemies respawn right in the middle. The combat is definitely the best aspect of the game, but when battles approach 45+ minutes it starts to lose its luster.
Graphics and Sound
The presentation, on the other hand, really fails to deliver. The graphics and sound look more like a PS2 game than a next-gen Xbox 360 title, and with gorgeous looking RPGs on the horizon it is hard to really get excited about Spectral Force 3. Bland characters and simple environments are the name of the game here. The sound is particularly bad with bad music, simple and repetitive sound effects, and poor voice acting.Bottom Line
Atlus
All in all, Spectral Force 3 is a fun enough game that it will keep fans of strategy-role-playing-games entertained, but beyond that niche there is very little appeal. It looks and sounds like a last-gen game, and even though there are some interesting twists to the gameplay, it all starts to feel a little stale long before you reach the end and the story and characters aren’t strong enough to keep you playing. Also, in terms of pure value, Spectral Force 3 is a pretty hard sell at $60 with the mass of truly next-gen JRPGs on the horizon. Give it a rental.
