Spectral Souls: Resurrection of the Ethereal Empires

[jeabombers]

Why hadn't I heard of this game until a few short weeks ago? It is an NIS-released Tactical JRPG, released back in 2006. I picked it up for practically nothing, and have gotten a lot of playing time out of it. Think Final Fantasy Tactics, but instead of only playing as Ramza, you play as the church AND (forgive me, I have forgotten the name of the "bad" army)... that's what you get in Spectral Souls. It is a three-party system, in which you get to see what is happening in these three parties' stories in the same time line. I'm thinking Odin Sphere must have gotten SOME inspiration from this, as Spectral Souls was originally a PS2 game. I didn't like Odin Sphere (the combat between characters was too different, and even on "easy" I had too hard of a time getting past the third branch), but the way Spectral Souls is done, it is refreshing. At first, I didn't like the idea of playing through what appears to be an already long game three separate times (what it amounts to), but I've been rather "pumped up" when I finally get each party caught up to the other.

The only knock it has, which I read in the gamefaqs reviews, is that the loading times are god-awful. Pretty much every action takes a couple of seconds to load (think the FFT remake for PSP, during the healing spells, just pretty much every action.) Thankfully, they allow for battle animations to be completely skipped, which cuts the load times by 75%, though for some, the load times may be unbearable. It's one of those things you don't notices after a couple hours' playing, unless you're in a hurry.

Nevertheless, the story is VERY intriguing (am only maybe 1/2 through right now, but am hooked.)

Anyone that is a JRPG fan, and owns a PSP should pick this up. I got mine used for $11.69 after tax (WOOT!) The only VAGUE real issue is that it was such an under-hyped game, there aren't any in-depth faqs. This game has enough depth to it that finding EVERYTHING would take forever (party searches, anyone?)

Hope maybe someone else has played this, and can back me up? If not, TRY IT!