PSP Critic Reviews

Spectral Souls is food for the TSRPG fan's spectral soul, but more mainstream-style fans may feel left out in the cold by the game's mad-depth, complexity and difficulty level. On the upside, those words are music to hardcore fans' ears.

While its choice of platform is question, if you were dying to have play a strategy RPG on the road, you don’t have to wait any longer.

The game features some really good concepts, but much of these could be easily overlooked because of the load times and slow-down.

It’s like the song says, “Load times killed the video star.” In this case a well-planned, well-executed RPG caught in a cluster of technical idiosyncrasies.

To summarize, this is not a game for everyone; it has its load times and a learning curve that can throw the average user at first.

If you can get past the snail pace caused by loading, there is a truly great game here just waiting to be tapped.

I'd like to recommend Spectral Souls for such an occasion, but unless you're a hardcore SRPG junkie, it might be more frustration than relaxation. [Oct. 2006, p.65]

Strategy titles are already known for their deliberate pace, which may mean that strategy gamers, with their large reserves of patience, will be better equipped to deal with the load-time interruptions, but the effect is very disruptive to gameplay.

It's almost like a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome. On one hand, you've got the worst load times found in the entire PSP library, yet you've got a decent game underneath this mess that, while not reinventing the genre in any way, seeks to provide the game with an entertaining experience and it's a struggle I don't believe many people will be able to deal with.

Even the most patient of strategy nerds will be hard-pressed to maintain interest in Spectral Souls. [Nov. 2006, p.146]