Phantom Dust

Phantom Dust is a video game that consists of 0 releases

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Phantom Dust is a strategy game where players assume the role of a man suffering from amnesia attempting to solve the mystery around a strange dust that makes people lose their memories. Also contains an Xbox Live online component and splitscreen play.

Overview

Phantom Dust is an action game exclusive to the original Xbox, produced by Microsoft Game Studios Japan, but published in the US at a budget price by Majesco. It was never released in Europe. Though all actions in the game take place in real time, this title shares many elements with trading card games, in that your characters abilities are determined prior to the battle by a user-created 'deck' of sorts, making it very replayable, especially over Xbox Live. Despite a solid critical reception, its quirky gameplay and relative lack of exposure doomed it to quick obscurity. It is on the Xbox 360 backwards compatability list, though it suffers from minor framerate problems, and occasional freezing.

Plot

Phantom Dust takes place at an undetermined point in the future, where an unknown cataclysm has forced humanity underground. The world's cities lie in ruins, but all people have no memory of where they came from or who they were. The surface is choked with a mysterious dust that, after prolonged exposure, causes people to lose their memories. It is also populated with unknown monsters, hostile to anyone they encounter. But this dust grants some humans mysterious powers with which to fight back. The protagonist (who the player gets to name) is found on the surface by a party of humans, alongside another man named Edgar, who carries a locket with a picture of him and a woman from his past. As you go to the surface on various missions to aid the underground society, you come to discover the truth behind the state of the world, and who you really are.

Gameplay

Phantom Dust is an action game. Players must attack each other to deplete the others' life, without running out of life themselves. Each battle in single or multiplayer consists of a single match in an arena. Players can be teamed up (in which case, a player can save their downed partner), or engage in a free-for-all.

The wrinkle that makes Phantom Dust stand out is the skill system. Each player has a starting spot in an arena, where three skill capsules will spawn. By standing over a skill capsule and pressing a face button, that skill is assigned to that button, and can be used in battle until it is overwritten or depleted. Skills are used to attack or defend, help or hinder, or perform various other odd tasks that change the face of the battlefield. After a skill is taken, time passes, and then another spawns in its place.

There are 300 skills in the base game. Skills are collected in the in-game shop, and a player can customize his own set (known in game as an 'arsenal') of thirty skills as they wish. Skills are divided into five schools, and arsenals can only have a certain number of different schools inside. Skills also require different amounts of aura to use, so aura particles must be placed in the arsenal to increase the player's aura capacity.

In many ways, the skills are analogous to cards in a trading card game like Magic: the Gathering. You purchase them in a store, and different skills have different rarities. They can be traded online. Skills serve a number of different roles, at different costs, and each serves its own role in battle.

Phantom Dust is divided into two distinct modes.

Single Player

In this mode, the player takes on the role of an unnamed protagonist. You run through humanity's small underground city, finding people and taking missions to the surface, while slowly being introduced to the underlying mechanics of the game. New kinds of skills are slowly made available as the game progresses. When the player gains the ability to create their own arsenal, they get to purchase skills and customize them for the missions they fight, as they uncover the mysteries behind the world and the remaining people who live in it. And as they complete missions, they earn credits with which to purchase more skills.

Multiplayer

Phantom Dust is also playable against other people, either in split-screen, through System Link, or over Xbox Live. Skills can be purchased in a special Xbox Live shop. There are standard teamplay and free-for-all modes. Players can also compete in a quick-play mode, where they are randomly assigned a premade arsenal by the computer. On Xbox Live, players can be quickmatched against another player, or choose optimatch to scroll through available games. Due to the low retail sales of the game, there are very few people left playing online, but it's still possible to find a game. New players should keep in mind, though, that those who still play online have had a lot of experience with the title, and are very, very good. Even for those who have completed the singleplayer (a prerequisite for getting all the base skills), the learning curve can be steep.

Since the game's release, two skill packs have been issued as DLC over Xbox Live. These skill packs make tweaks to a number of existing skills in the game to enhance game balance. Each skill pack also adds 40 hidden skills to the game, which can only be earned by winning matches over Xbox Live, and are issued at random after certain milestones are reached. These packs increase the game's total skills to 380.

General Information Edit

Game Name	Phantom Dust
Platform(s)	Xbox
Publisher(s)	Majesco Entertainment
Developer(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Genres	Add a new genre Action Adventure Role-Playing (RPG) Strategy
Themes	Add a new theme Sci-Fi Steampunk Post-Apocalyptic
Original US Release	need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	know the real date?
Aliases