deSPIRIA Preview

Atlus, the publisher of Maken X, is releasing its second Dreamcast title this fall. Titled deSPIRIA, the game is being developed by Dennou Eizou Seisakusho, the creator of Dark Messiah on the PlayStation. The game is an RPG that takes place in the year 2070, when an Osaka-based organization known as the Church has come into power 22 years after WWIII. The game's main character, Alluah Valentine, was raised and trained as an assassin by the Church. The game begins when she boards a train to assassinate a member of a rival organization. Unfortunately, the train derails in a tunnel and crashes while Valentine is on it. The game is played much in the same way as the PC games Myst or Riven, where a CG-rendered movie shows the player moving from one area to the next.

You take on the role of Valentine and investigate paranormal incidents, including the mysterious train crash. You'll use Valentine's special psychic abilities to progress through the game, and you'll be able to engage in two distinct types of psychic feats - the mind dive and the mind battle. The mind dive is used to read other people's minds and obtain information they might not be motivated to share with you. Sometimes you'll be able to use the mind dive on a particular location to pick up psychic residues of people who may have been there recently. But the mind dive's success is not always guaranteed, and if you attempt to read an unstable or insane person's mind, the mind dive is dangerous. The other feat is the mind battle. The mind battle is an attack that will be used when you fight enemies. You'll be able to summon up to six psychic monsters, referred to as "minds" in the game, and use them to help her attack her enemies. Each of the minds also has a distinct mind ability that can be used as commands during battles. The type of mind you'll be able to summon varies - some will be used for healing or non-offensive tactics, others will be purely offensive.

The game uses the standard element power scheme found in most RPGs, with one small exception. Instead of fire, water, wind, and earth, deSPIRIA uses elements of the mind - love, death, curse, and absolute. Each element is either weaker or stronger than the next, with the exception of absolute. The absolute element overpowers all others.

No US release date for deSPIRIA has been announced yet, but it's scheduled for a September 21 release in Japan.