Spectral Force 3 takes place in fantasy world of Neverland, detailing the First Neverland War.
Game play is sort of a cross between Dragon Force, Suikoden, and Final Fantasy Tactics. The game takes place on a continent at war with many kingdoms constantly fighting back and forth for domination of all the other kingdoms. As the leader of a group of mercenaries, players watch the conflicts progress on a 2d world map and in the meantime take on jobs from kingdoms or people.
The jobs from the kingdoms tend to advance the main plot and feature voiced story scenes consisting of 2d art stills with dialogue boxes back and forth. The jobs from people are just side-quests to get money, equipment, exp, or recruit new characters. In sort of a Suikoden way, the game starts the player off with only two party members and throughout the game they’ll have to build up their mercenary army themselves. The game boasts 150 recruits able characters that can all be used in battle. Also similar to Suikoden weapons can be upgraded to the next level by the blacksmith and characters in ones party can be talked to (sometimes leading to new quests) while at the main base.
After choosing a quest, players enter a battle. Attacks are based off an AP bar that recharges each turn. When attacking, players can choose to mix up between weak/medium/strong attacks (all costing different AP) and special attacks. Once the attacks are started, the character keeps going until they run out of AP and then they wait until the next turn. Adding some depth to the system there is also a combo situation that lets other characters in the party act out of turn to create combos, various skills, and all powerful rage attacks. Overall it’s a solid system, but it’s also a bit slow and uninteresting.
Maps in the game tend to be boring with the focus being on the enemies having large numbers and large HP. The AI isn’t very good, as it just goes for the nearest character with the lowest amount of life. So what you’re left with are battles that are slow and take a while but are also shallow and repetitive. Its not a bad game, and its certainly not a horrible game like some of their other titles, but Spectral Force 3 is a tough game.