Phantom Dust
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| Phantom Dust | |
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| Developer(s) | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Majesco |
| Designer(s) | Yukio Futatsugi |
| Release date(s) | March 15, 2005 |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen (T) |
| Platform(s) | Xbox |
| Media | DVD |
Phantom Dust (ファントムダスト?) is a video game for the Xbox console. It was developed by Microsoft Game Studios (Tokyo) and licensed for release in the U.S. by Majesco. Phantom Dust is a card-based action/strategy game in which the player collects skills (over 300 total) and takes missions to attempt to discover why Earth is in the condition it is. Players construct "arsenals" similar to decks of cards and then use them to do battle against other players. The game incorporates strategy and action elements in to a game that requires both mental and reflexive skill.
The game supports Xbox Live. It debuted with a budget retail price of $19.99 and remains a cult hit.
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[edit] Sequel
Information was released that there are plans to make a sequel. This sequel is not in production at the moment, and when it is started is still unknown. While the sequel will feature the same elements of gameplay as the original, it will not be named Phantom Dust 2. Also, it is said that the new game will feature a different theme, but no specific details have been released.
[edit] Playing style
The game is viewed in thrid person with a freely rotating camera, although enemies can be centered in the camera's view (a direct line of sight is not required) for greater accuracy. Skills are mapped to the four face buttons (A, B, X, and Y), and can be used with that button or overwritten with another skill. Each of the environments is naturally suited to a particular style of combat and has a variety of destructible objects and other environmetnal hazards or advantages (like jump pads) to build an arsenal around.
[edit] Story
The story beging with a band of humans fighting their way to a pair of capsules suspended on an arch over an arena-like structure. A narrator describes the state of the planet; Earth is a wasteland, with its inhabitants suffering from amnesia and living underground to escape the mysterious dust that covers the surface. The Espers, a humans able to control the dust to create a variety of skills, go onto the surface to search for the Ruins, a memory embedded into the minds of everyone livingunderground.
Two men are taken from the capsules. One is the protagonist, who the player controls throughout the game. The other is Edgar, found with a locket containing a picture of a woman. They find that they are also Espers and join the search for the Ruins in the hopes of finding out who and what they really are.
The woman in the locket, Freya, is an independent Esper who tries to stop the protagonist from returning to the surface. Edgar, feeling a connection with her, eventually leaves the rest of the group and joins with Freya. After one particular battle with Freya, the protagonist receives a special memory box (a data-storage device for capturing images and sounds).
From the memory box, it becomes apparent that Edgar was an astronaut who had been sent to the event horizon of a black hole far away from Earth. Upon his return, Edgar discovered that, due to his travel at relativistic speeds, the three days he had passed in his ship had translated into over 12,000 years on Earth. In this time, Humanity had destroyed on itself, totally ending civilization as he had known it and covering the surface with a mysterious dust. Alone with his thoughts, Edgar learns that he can control the dust to a certain extent, and begins to remake civilization from out of the ashes with his newfound powers. He is eventually able to create Freya, his girlfriend at the time he had left for space, and then the protagonist, who had been his best friend. The rest of the world before followed shortly after.
Upon seeing this, many of the illusions Edgar had created were unable to will themselves to exist any longer and disappeared; the box was kept from the rest for fear of the same thing happening.
Another memory box reveals that Edgar had unwittingly embedded the image of the Ruins (the last place he had been with Freya before he went into space) into the minds of the illusions he had created, and released a massive wave of energy that caused most of the surface world he created to be destroyed and the memories of the people to be erased (with the exception of memories of the Ruins).
Upon finally defeating Edgar and a new copy of Freya (as well as an imitation of the protagonist), the player learns that Edgar's human body had been unable to process the dust and eventually broke down. Before he died, however, he created a double for himself, to maintain the world after he passed on. Humans are extinct on Earth, and only the illusions that the last human being had created carried on their tradition.
[edit] Game Play
Each player begins a battle with a level of 0 and 20 health. The object of the game is to reduce the enemy's health to 0; the most common ways of doing this is by dealing 20 or more damage to them or by forcing them to use up all the skils in their arsenal, which causes their health to slowly deplete. Each player begins with all four face buttons randomly filled with skills from their arsenal (these can be swapped once before the game starts without penalty) and a skill available at each of the player's spawn points. After a skill is collected from a spawn point, another randomly taken from the arsenal will fill its place. By using and overwriting the skills he or she uses, the player attempts to gain the upper hand and eventualy destroy his or her opponent.
A player's Level represents his or her capacity tostore Aura, the energy used to create skills. Level is increased by using Aura Particles, a single-use skill common in virtually every arsenal. If a character's Aura capacity is not full, it will regenerate over time until it is; however, the more Aura the character already has, the longer it takes to gain an additiional point.
In multiplayer games, all the human characters from the story mode are available for selection. Some can jump, while some are able to cartwheel in order to dodge attacks.
[edit] Arsenals
A player's arsenal is an assortment of thirty skills, selected by the player, to be used in battle. Skills are bought online or in the store in the single-player mode. In order to create a new arsenal, an arsenal case must be purchased in the single-player mode; only fifteen arsenal cases can be carried at a time. An arsenal can hold either one, two, or three schools. The more schools able to be contained in an arsenal, the slower the rate of Aura recovery is. One- and three-school arsenals are more expensive than two-school arsenals.
[edit] Skills
There are six different types of skills: Attack, Defend, Status, Erase, Special, and Environmental. Every skill has a "cost", which is the amount of Aura required to use it. The cost can range from 0 to as high as 8. In addition, each skill displays what its ideal range is, what type of path its projectile follows, and its effects; these can be reviewed in-game by pressing the d-pad in the direction of the assigned face button. All skills are either infinite- or single-use, though some single-use skills can be used again under certain circumstances.
The types of skills are as follows:
[edit] Attack Skills
These deal direct damage to an enemy, provided they are not blocked by a piece of terrain or a suitable Defensive skill. Attack skills are varied in their forms and effects, from a generic fireball to firing eight lasers simultaneously to raining needles from the sky. Attack skills that successfully deal 3 or more damage to an enemy willl knock them down (and potentially out of the arena, dealing a further 3 damage). Each attack skill has a listed STR value, which indicates how much damage it deals, though some have an STR of X, meaning it is variable (holding the button down for longer or dealing damage dependent on an enemy statistic are just a few examples). Attack skills can also have added effects, such as "freezing" an enemy's kill buttons or causing the enemy to be knocked down. With a few notable exceptions, attack skills cannot damage enemies when they are flashing or have been knocked down.
Attack skillls, unless otherwise noted, will travel directly towards the enemy. Most have a certain degree of homing. Here are some other types of paths that attack skills can follow:
Parabola: These skills, as their name suggest, follow a parabolic path to the enemy. They are useful if a barrier bis blocking your line of sight or if you are higher than your target.
Crawl: These travel along the ground towards the enemy, usually with greater speed and homing than basic attacks. They are difficult to see but can be avoided by hiding behind a barrier or simply jumping over them.
Fall: These skills create a projectile above the enemy and sends it down towards them. These are useful at a range and more accurate than Rain-type attacks.
Rain: Rain skills create numerous small projectiles over an enemy and rains them down over their head. Rain skills are extremely difficult to guard against but can be easily avoided simply be seeking overhead cover or remaining in constant motion.
Hole: Hole skills form a ground-based effect under everyone's feet. They are difficult to guard against and tend to do large amounts of damage, but a well-timed jump can avoid them completely.
[edit] Defense Skills
Like attack skills, Defense skills have an STR value, which represents the strength of the Attack skills they are able to block. A defense skill can block any attack skill with an STR less than of equal to its own with no penaly; any greater and the damage is still prevented, but the defense skill is erased and cannot be used again. Also like attack skills, defense skills can have a variety of different effects, from absoring health or aura to paralyzing the attacker to reflecting the attack skill. Defense skillls can also block other types ok skillls as well; with no STR, any defensive skill can block virtually any non-Attack skill.
There are many types of defense skills, all of which have slight differences and are useful in specific situations:
Barrier: Barrier skills, as their name suggests, create a barrier directly in front of the player. The barrier will block attacks from a relatively small number of angles, making it useless versus attacks from any side but the front. An enemy using barrier defenses can easily be defeated by double-teaming it, with one player attacking from the front and another from behind. However, these are the most common types of defensive skills and are still useful for nearly all situations.
Shelter: These skills cover all sides of the player and make up for the failings of Barrier skills. However, they are also more expensive and take longer to recover from, creating openings for patient oppoents.
Brush: These are functionally identical to Barrier skills with the notable exception that they change the course of a projectile rather than blocking it; this can be countered with exploding attacks. In addition, brushing a short-range skill causes the atttacker to be temporarily stunned, leaving them open to a reciprocal attack.
Absorb: These skills add to or restore the user's statistics upon blocking an attack skill. While their STR tends to be fairly low, when used correctly they can be vary powerful.
Course: An interesting combination of Shelter and Brush skills, Course skills alter the course of incoming projectiles, sending them flying in a random direction or even turning them back at the attacker. They are unique in having no STR value, meaning they cannot be broken; however, they are fairly expensive and not worth using all the tiime. In addition, they are completely useless against short-range attacks.
Reflect: These skills are similar to Barrier types but instantly reverse a projectile's course. They are able to block short-range skills but cannot reflect the damage back, giving them a slight advantage over Course skills.
[edit] Status Skills
Status skills are varied in their effects and applications; most are similar to Attack skills, but some are applied in other ways. They add a status effect to either the player or the target, which can be either positive or negative, and includes such varied conditions as added damage, reduced speed, flight, and invisibility. It should be noted that the AI in the single-player mode will attempt to block all incoming projectiles, regarless of what they do or who they originated from; positive buffs to an ally must be applied when they are otherwise distracted.
[edit] Erase Skills
Erase skills permenantly remove statistics, skills, or effects from the battlefield. While most commonly used to delete an annoying attack or defensive skilll from an enemy's current set, Erase skills can also reduce a player's Level or Aura, or erase Environmental skills from the battlefield, or even destroy skill capsules. Proper use of erase skills can reduce an enemy to helplessness, with no attacks or defenses to challenge opponents with.
[edit] Special Skills
This category catches any skills which are not covered by the other categories. Contained within are skills to restore health, teleport, levitate, retrieve skills, move capsule spawn points, convert capsules to other types of capsules, raise Level, and many more.
[edit] Environmental Skills
These skills create effects that alter the statistics or change the restrictions for everyone on the battlefield. When set, these skills swirl about for fifteen seconds, during which their effects cannot be removed. After that, the skill crystallizes and can be picked up and used like an Aura Particle, which restores the environment. Only one environmental skill can be set at a time.
[edit] Aura Particles
A typical arsenal will have at least a few of these single-use skills. Using one will raise the player's level by 1.
[edit] Schools
Each of Phantom Dust's five schools of skills have their unique advantages and disadvantages. The five schools are Psycho, Optical, Nature, Ki, and Faith:
PSYCHO: Psycho uses the force to move objects as its base power. The Psycho school contains many powerful short-to-medium range attacks, as well as a few long range. In terms of brute force, Psycho has the best attack skills in the game. They are also fairly accurate. It also excels in powerful defense, containing Psychic Wall, the skill with the highest defense rating in the game after both patches are installed (a defense of 8). Aside from its various barrier and shelter type defense skills, Psycho also contains the defense skill Reverse. This skill turns an enemy ranged attack back at them. Add that to the fact that this defense cannot be broken, and the reason it's so popular among players is obvious.The Psycho school also has the famed "7 or less aura" skills. These skills are:cluster bomb, excalibur, and rail gun.
A player using the Psycho school also has at his or her disposal a variety of attribute-altering status skills. These skills can increase the player's movement speed and attack accuracy. There are also skills a player can direct at enemies to lower their stats. A player can even give aid to allies by increasing their stats. For special skills, the Psycho school has skills that can teleport the player around the stage, or even allow him or her to levitate for short periods of time.
The school's weakness is that most of its infinite-use skills are powerful, but expensive. All too often a player will be draining precious Aura using powerful Psychic defense against weak attacks. For this reason, it's important to pair Psycho skills with another type (or two) in all but the most specialized arsenals.
OPTICAL: Optical uses light as its base power. Optical attack skills tend to be fairly weak, but there are a few skills that are uncharacteristically powerful, dealing more damage than many Psycho skills. Optical is primarily long-range, containing a multitude of low-cost, low-damage, long-ranged laser attacks. Optical has fewer middle and close-ranged skills, but they are formidable nonetheless. The Optical school has cheap and inexpensive defenses, but they are the weakest in the game. In fact, no optical defenses have a STR value of more than 4, making them easy to break...and none of them are anti-pierce. This is Optical's greatest weakness.
Optical has by far the most control over the user's level, as well as the level of his or her opponents. Many of the special skills in the school increase the user's level, and most of the erase skills are level-erasers. A multitude of strategies can be formed out of this superior control.
For many players, the theory behind Optical is quantity over quality. It's easier to spam weak attacks, rather than relying on a few powerful blows to destroy opponents. With the advent of the environmental skill Optimization (halves the cost of all skills) in an Optical deck, a player can unleash a flurry of attacks on his or her opponents.
NATURE: Nature uses the surrounding environment as its base power. Nature is arguably the most well-balanced of schools, combining multi-purpose attacks with solid defense, attribute-boosters, good erasers, many environmentals, and even healing. Nature has no major weaknesses, and is therefore well-suited for a single-school arsenal, although it can be combined very successfully with other schools as well.
Nature's attacks are decent in terms of pure power, but they really shine in side effects. Several nature skills do more than just damage the enemy. Whether it's freezing, erasing, or piercing, you can count on these skills to keep the enemy guessing. Nature defense is also somewhat tricky. In addition to normal, reliable barriers, the school also possesses several eraser-defense skills.
Nature's selection of environmental skills are very situational, and should only be used in arsenals that will certainly make good use of them. The school's status skills are powerful as well. The most popular use of these skills is to permanently increase the damage of the user and his or her allies; something that only Nature can do. Another trademark of nature is the ability to restore health upon the user and his or her allies.
KI: Ki uses your psychological stamina as its base power. A key feature of Ki is that it as no long-ranged attack skills. None. Its medium-range attack skills are also lacking in terms of power; the only strong ones are one-time use. Despite this, a good Ki-oriented deck is extremely effective - and merciless.
A good Ki player gets creative. Virtually all infinite-use Ki attacks are weak, so combat becomes far less conventional when playing with a Ki-oriented deck. One noticeable trait of this school is the power of its erasers. Most of them erase skills. The skill Lack, and the ones ending in "Slayer" are some of Ki's most powerful weapons. Although they are labeled as medium-range skills, they actually travel much further. These skills home in extremely well. The only way the enemy can dodge them is if they hide behind something. A typical combo is to use Dragon Slayer, which penetrates defense and erases a defensive skill. The player will then follow that up with a Lack, which erases all the opponent's infinite-use skills (probably everything in his or her hand). The Ki player will then launch a Heat From Void, which deal two damage for each enpty slot in the target's hand. Like the erasers, this skill cannot be dodged. Using this method, a good Ki player can dispose of an opponent quickly. This, however, is by no means the only way to use Ki's abundant erasers successfully.
Some Ki players prefer not to use erasers, instead boosting their attack power, then unleashing a flurry of melee attacks on the enemy. This is just another strategy that makes Ki effective.
For defense, Ki, has some basic brush types, and a few that are more tricky, including three absorbs, and an eraser. Ki has no shelter types, and many of the school's defenses are fairly weak (the highest defense being a 6).
For status, Ki has skills that temporarily increase attributes of the user. One skill can also increase Aura recovery permanently. Many Ki players increase their speed and attack power before striking.
Ki's environmentals are just as merciless as the school's erasers. They are situational, and each one requires an arsenal to be built around it to be effective. If used correctly, these skills can lead a player to an easy victory. On the downside, many players find Ki environmentals to be so annoying that everyone in an online game may gang up on someone using them.
Ki's main weakness is its lack of straightforward ranged attacks, and its fairly weak defense.
FAITH: Faith uses your will as its base power. This school is no doubt the most interesting, and the most risky, set of skills. Faith possesses very few short-ranged attacks, half of which are one-time use. In terms of attacking, Faith's main strength is mid-range. And a good Faith player covers this range very effectively. Faith is strange in that many skills require the user to sacrifice their own health in order to harm enemies. In return, many Faith attacks are very accurate, requiring the enemy to have strong defensive skills if they hope to compete at mid-range with a Faith-user.
In contrast with the self-harming attacks of Faith, there are also some "vampiric" attacks, which increase the user's health by the amount of damage dealt. These help to offset the pain inflicted by your own attacks. In general, Faith attacks are extremely tricky. For example, there is one attack skill that deals damage equal to the target's health minus the user's, multiplied by two. Using it, a player on the brink of death can still emerge triumphant in a seemingly hopeless situation. Similarly, there are some attack skills that only become useable when a player's health is 7 or less. These are all very powerful and aura-efficient.
Faith really shines when it comes to special and status skills. Many of them are aimed at a "comeback" situation. Possibly the most popular Faith skill is Armaros. This powerful all skill reverses everyone's modified attributes (speed +2 would become speed -2). If the enemy is boosting their stats, throw an Armaros at them to give them a run for their money! Even better, a Faith user can use the status skill Doppelganger to copy the increased stats of an opponent, then use Angel's Breath to reverse only their stats, while keeping the user's own benefits.
For erasers, Faith has a limited supply of chaotic skills that erase everyone's capsules or skills, often at the cost of health.
Faith's real weakness is its defense, which is almost as poor as Optical's.
[edit] External links
- Phantom Dust at MobyGames
- Phantom Dust Entry from the game wiki Encyclopedia Gamia.
- In-depth Phantom Dust strategy guide
