A wonderful game that may remain unacknowledged because of load times.
Spectral Souls, originally released as Shinki Gensou: SSII Unlimited Side, is a Strategy RPG of a more traditional nature(which may be pleasing news to those who were confused by Idea Factory's other PSP release: Generation of Chaos) that takes many elements from other RPGs and tweaks them to their own likings and fashion.
Spectral Souls narrates the story of a war that's occurring between the Neverland and Simba armies through historical points, and eventually factors in a third army, all full of their own units that come with their own specialties and backdraws. If you're a fan of the old-school RPGs, the status increasion system will be nothing new to you as you have complete control over what stats rise upon rising your level of experience.
The aesthetics and soundtrack are all top-notch, offering some great, colorful visuals in landscapes, character portraits, attack animations, items and a wide variety of music used in the appropriate scenarios. Sound all are very befitting of the actions they accompany.
The archive of equipment and skills in this game are simply overwhelming, branching out from several different equip types for each class and hundreds of upgrades for each, as well as a deep and intuitive synthesis system. While the skills list as is provides enough combat options, the real outstanding aspect is the Charge ability, where you store about 3-6 attacks per unit for every unit on your team and have a designated unit trigger the chain execution, making every character unleash their 3-6 attacks for some amazing combos that can accumulate to 150 hit chains or even more! Problem is, the enemies all have their own ways of racking up on huge combos too, meaning the player must plan these strategically or leave themselves open to deadly blows.
Which brings us to the actual challenge aspect of the game. Spectral Souls is hard. Really hard. Main story missions and post game alike are full of overpowered enemies that can waste away at your party members and have you quaffing recovery items by the dozen if you're not careful, and they won't hesitate to jump one single unit until death and use the map to their advantage. The AI in this game is almost way too good. Add this to the three-turn permanent deaths that all fallen characters are subjected to and you get one horrendous fortress of challenge that may have you abusing save/load constantly.
Luckily, the technical aspects of Spectral Souls are not one of your enemies. There are tutorials for just about anything, readily available from the overworld, everything controls smoothly, and the game is very user friendly. That brings us to what is quite possibly the only flaw in this game. Load times. Load times are definitely everywhere, but to be completely honest, after the initial "Whoa!" of the first half-hour, it's not all that bad, and are really no bother 10 hours into the game.
If you're a fan of the aforementioned Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, you may be dissapointed to find that the character creation is not present in Spectral Souls. Since Spectral Souls is focused so much on storyline and character development, the aspect of having a bunch of generic units with no backstory or character just was not gonna fly. Luckily, between the three armies you are given, you get a lot of party members, and will more than likely suffer from having way too many to level up.
Through all the high-priced items/equipment and overly-intelligent enemies, the saving grace for the player of this horrendously challenging title is that there are a number of "Free" areas to visit where you can participate in battles as much as the player wants without having to progress the story. These are particularly helpful for increasing stats, gaining money, and honing your handle over the chain combo system.
Since the character creation and classes are not present here, in their place is a promotion system which, upon a unit meeting certain requirements, will give him/her access to a trial that can determine whether or not they are ready to be promoted and gain their respective benefits.
Alongside the dark theme comes a lot of character that builds alongside your players with conversations that are often humorous and reveal much about the characters, their relationships, friendships and qualms with each other, their reaction to happenings and other characters and how they change throughout the adventure. For lasting appeal, there's many images in many galleries to unlock, as well as a considerably large amount of post-game content, providing much to come back to in this long-lasting adventure.
All in all, it's a near-perfect strategy RPG title with an almost unparraleled sense of balance and depth, hindered only by a short-lived bother of load times which some people may not last long enough to overcome. For those not instantly put off by the load times, Spectral Souls is a solid title with very deep mechanics in everything it does that has a lot to offer that no other handheld Strategy RPG to date has pulled off, and is an overall great experience no RPG collector should be without.