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Spectrobes will beat Pokemon Diamond & Pearl to the American gaming market by four to six weeks or so. That’s lucky, because the details aren’t entirely the same, but this is Pokemon in most of the ways that really matter. It’s a monster-breeding RPG with however many dozens of creatures to collect and develop.

The big difference here is a 3D action combat system, which cans the traditional turn-based RPG battles for the chance to run your monsters around the playfield at will. Unfortunately, that’s not as much fun as it ought to be. Spectrobes is hampered by some downright weird design decisions, and for something you’d think would be aimed at a younger market, it’s confusing enough that even veteran gamers might wonder which button does what.

Digging in the Dirt

The game begins simply enough, as a pair of cheerful Japanese cartoon heroes touch down on an alien planet. There, they find two varieties of monster to deal with: the Krawl (the bad guys), and the Spectrobes (the good guys). Our heroes have to gather up an army of Spectrobes to beat back the Krawl before predictably bad stuff happens.

To put a fine point on it, the Spectrobes don’t actually live there. They’re fossilized under the ground, and have to be dug up and brought to life before they’re particularly helpful. Half the game is exploring and gathering up more monsters before it’s time to go pick a fight.

Finding new monsters is the focus of a little touch-screen archaeological mini-game. Out on the field map, echolocation reveals where useful items and fossilized Spectrobes are buried. To dig them out, you use the stylus to control a set of drills and fan devices, carving away the excess dirt and rock while trying to avoid doing damage to the fossil.

Go Get ‘Em, Fido

For as much as you have to do it, the fossil-recovery mode quickly wears out its welcome. It’s a clever idea for the first couple of excavations, and then you just want it to be over with. You can’t hurry through it, because you’ll just wreck your Spectrobe that way, so there’s lots of tedious scratching away at the touch-screen in store.

Combat, however, may prove a bigger problem for some. When a battle begins, the player is flanked by two monster allies and controls the party as a unit. Moving the main character around the 3D battlefield moves the two monsters in the same direction – they only break formation when ordered to attack, which they do independently when you press either shoulder button.

Moving in unison like that would be clumsy even if all three characters had identical attacks. They don’t, of course – some have short-range attacks, some have long-range moves, some throw themselves bodily halfway across the screen. When you have three enemy targets to keep track of at once, plus energy gauges to manage and charge up, combat in Spectrobes can get positively dizzying.

It doesn’t help that the game…well, doesn’t offer very much help. The first battle begins with a dense, confusing rundown of all the different controls – movement, attack commands for both monsters and the main character, charging instructions for different energy gauges, and so on – briefly displayed across the DS screens. Then you’re just thrown to the wolves, left to fumble around with the commands until trial and error reveal what might work well.

Down That Lonesome Road

On the other hand, the first rounds of bad guys aren’t very dangerous. Working out on them reveals some basic attack combinations that’ll keep you alive long enough to learn all the ropes and develop a bigger collection of monsters. It also helps that the main player character isn’t always an ineffectual scrub. When the game begins, he’s a third wheel, practically helpless in comparison to the monsters that flank him, but eventually he picks up the ability to defend himself and attack in concert with his monster sidekicks.

At about the same time, the game reveals more diversions besides digging up fossils. Training monsters takes place in some fun stylus-driven mini-games, and in the obligatory merchandising tie-in, special code cards help them evolve into more powerful forms. As for the monsters themselves, they’re not a bad-looking lot. Although they’re not shockingly distinctive compared to the familiar Digimon/Yu-Gi-Oh school of “almost like Pokemon, but not quite,” they’ve got some personality in both their 2D portraits and their 3D fighting forms.

In short, this is a fun take on the breed-and-battle formula, one that does its best to break through difficult ground. This isn’t the first time an RPG has had trouble with the challenge of team combat in real time, and to its credit, Spectrobes comes up with an unusual way of attacking the problem. It probably won’t make anyone forget about Diamond & Pearl, but there’s room for more than one pack of monsters on the market.

Article by: D. F. Smith
Video produced by: Eric Acasio