A little background is required for this epic tale. It is pretty simple really. First, the demons use humans as slave labor. The humans got sick of it and fought back and won their freedom. The demons did not let that stand and decided to enslave the humans once again. And again, the humans fought back. In this new title from NIS America, the player controls all three armies vying for control of Neverland at the same time. Each army has it’s own agenda, and this means that you get to control how and when the story progresses. This is an extremely good idea for a SRPG (Strategy Role Playing Game). Unfortunately, as good of an idea this is, there is almost nothing fun about it.

At the start, the game looks reasonably good. The textures look updated, and the music sets the mood really well in fights and conversations. The fight music (which will be listened to most) is a cool, fast paced guitar laden track. This sounds awesome. Unfortunately getting to this music and the fights are a chore.

Upon the start of the game the load times are horrible! Be prepared to have the words “disc access” permanently burned into your PSP screen. Everything that you do requires loading. Even just a basic attack prompts the “disc access” message. Casting magic or any special move requires an even longer load time, and a lot of slowdown during the move animation.

A huge problem with loading is character movement. When you select move with a character, it pauses for anywhere between a split second to two or three seconds to load the move range of the character. This can cause major problems, especially if the player presses the X button to start the move, doesn’t see the movement range come up right away and hits X again to try to bring it up. Since the player has just pressed the X button two times you have moved your character. Once a character moves, the command cannot be taken back. This has a tendency to kill characters who are low on hit points and need to run away.

The pinnacle of bad loading in Spectral Souls is when the game has to load whenever a character talks. This is without voice acting, only text. Every time a new character says something, “disc access” is shown at the bottom of the screen for up to one second. This happens regardless of how many lines the character has. This drastically slows down game play, and frustrates the players immensely.

A huge frustration in SRPGs is when there are areas that cannot be seen by the player, and the camera cannot be moved. This is the case in Spectral Souls. There are several maps right at the start where there are enemies located behind trees, or around a corner and cannot be seen. Because of this the player has to anticipate that there is always going to be something in a blind spot, instead of being able to look there by moving the camera. This also makes it more likely that a character will get killed by something unseen.

The worst part of the game is the saving. When you save your game, the first thing the game says is that it requires a small amount of space to save on your memory card, do you want to erase something? The default position of the cursor is yes. So be careful when you go to save, you might actually erase something. After you pass this question, it asks you to name your game. At this point it shows you a keypad similar to a telephone or a cell phone, and the player must type in the name like they would on a phone. This happens EVERY time you save your game, even if you are saving over an old game.

Game play is like most other SRPGs except for the fact that there is a time bar at the top of the screen. When a character completes their turn, an icon for them appears at the bottom of the gauge. All icons move up the gauge in real-time until an icon reaches the top. When this happens, that character or enemy can act. This gives the game an interesting turn based feel.

Fighting moves can vary. Every character has AP, which is spent by moving and attacking. AP is reset every time the character’s turn comes up. Because the player can have enough AP to allow a character to have more than one attack, there are a few different ways an attack can be made. The first is a chain attack. This is where the player chains several different attacks together to form one big attack. The second is a delay attack, this is where the player again chains attacks together, but does not use them unless an enemy moves into a particular spot. This can be handy with attacks that force enemies to move. Enemies can also be captured to learn new moves.

Spectral Souls had an awesome idea to allow the player to directly control the outcome of the game. Unfortunately, the execution of this title is done so poorly, it takes literally all of the fun out of the game. Spectral Souls can be so frustrating at times that most players will find they have a hard time even getting through five minutes of play time. I know I did.