Phantom Dust

Phantom Dust is a video game that combines elements of third-person shooters with collectible card games. The players takes the role of the unnamed protagonist, an Esper that can control the Dust that covers the earth to use in combat. The game is divided between combat stages and non-combat gameplay that includes interactions with non-player characters, reviewing and optimizing the Skills in their Arsenal (the equivalent of cards in a collectible card deck), and obtaining missions that lead to combat situations. The player may have the opportunity to select a non-player character to assist in combat.

In combat, the player, their ally, and their opponents use various skills, powered by Aura, that are collected around the level as the match proceeds in order to take their opponents' health bar to zero. Skills typically require 1 or more Aura points to activate. The player starts with minimal Aura but can increase their maximum capacity by collecting and using Aura Particles from their spawn point. When a skill is used the Aura is temporarily drained from the player but will recover slowly up to the maximum capacity.

Skills include attack moves, defensive moves, restorative elements, and buff and debuffing skills. Skills themselves fall into 5 Schools describing the type of damage or effect they do, and the amount of damage that they deal or protect against; each School has general strengths and weaknesses to other Schools. Skills are generally one-shot; once the skill is used, it is removed from the combatant's loaded skills and lost for the rest of the match. However, some skills have two or more uses and other skills can be used indefinitely.

If the player falls in combat they will have to retry the mission. Surviving combat can earn rewards such as in-game money that the player can use to improve their Arsenal. An Arsenal has a maximum of 30 skills and will have a limit on the number of Schools represented by the Arsenal; for example, a player will start the game with an Arsenal limited to 2 Schools, but can later gain Arsenals that can utilize more Schools.

In Earth's far future, the surface has become an uninhabitable dust-ridden wasteland, forcing the remains of humanity to take shelter underground. Some humans are Espers, gifted with the ability to control the dust, allowing them to survive the surface for limited periods. All humans lack much of their memories, and with no records for how Earth has become this way, Espers are sent to the surface to find artifacts of the past and to seek out the fabled Ruins, the only shared memory all humans have.

One day, a team of Espers from the main human underground complex find a pair of capsules in one of the ruined structures, containing two men: the player protagonist and a man named Edgar. Both lack memories like the rest of humans, and have Esper-like powers. Edgar wears a locket with a picture of a young woman in it, his only connection to his past. The two agree to help explore the surface. During one mission, the protagonist and Edgar encounter Freia, a freelance Esper. Edgar realizes she is the woman in the locket photo, and feeling a strong connection to her, leaves with her. The next time the protagonist encounters Edgar, Edgar claims that the protagonist had betrayed him sometime in the past and fights against him.

Later, the protagonist encounters Freia alone, and after battle, recovers a memory box that has stored a set of memories that have been lost. In this case, the box shows that Edgar was an astronaut from a time prior to Earth's desolation. He flew too close to the event horizon of a black hole, and though the trip was only three days to him, he found that 10,000 years had passed on Earth due to gravitational time dilation, humanity having wiped itself out long ago, leaving the empty Dust-filled planet. Edgar found he was able to control the dust to a point where he could create self-aware human constructs, including Freia, his girlfriend before he left Earth, and the protagonist, his best friend.

On seeing this memory, many of the human characters, realizing they are just constructs, are unable to hold themselves together and disintegrate; the memory box was meant to be kept from them to prevent this self-awareness from happening. A second memory reveals that Edgar became pessimistic after creating the illusions of humanity; he sent out a large wave of energy that wiped most of the memories of those illusions while instilling the memory of the Ruins, a site that he and Freia last saw each other before he left for space. Freia later provides another memory box that shows that Freia had tried to stop Edgar before he could release this wave, and the protagonist came to help. He and Edgar got into a large battle that rendered both of them in a coma, upon which Freia placed them in the capsules to protect them.

With Freia having provided this last memory box, she believes Edgar has no more use for her, and her construct disintegrates. A furious Edgar confronts the protagonist, but loses out in the end. From the fight, the protagonist learns that this Edgar is himself a dust-made construct; the real Edgar's body succumbed to the dust ten years after returning to Earth, but before passing away, had created a dust-clone of himself to continue to recreate humanity from the dust. The clone was flawed with overly pessimistic manners, and instead of rebuilding the Earth, sought instead to destroy it. When the Edgar dust-clone learns of this, he too disintegrates, leaving the protagonist as the only remaining character.

The protagonist, now aware of Edgar's goals, begins to start to rebuild the Earth as the original Edgar wanted after burying the real Edgar's skeletal remains. The final shot of the game shows the protagonist walking into the desert, leaving a trail of footprints in the sand that suddenly fade away.

By 2004, Microsoft had not found great success with the Xbox console in Japan compared to the North American and European markets. To try to cater to these audiences, Microsoft developed games that were designed towards Japanese audiences with the potential to bring these to Western markets if they were successful.

While early development began, Microsoft Game Studios Japan were shown an early development demo of Gears of War, where Yukio Futatsugi noticed the use of normal mapping, and decided to use it within Phantom Dust.[3]

Phantom Dust was revealed alongside Blinx 2 in June 2004 at Japanese press events.[4] Lead director Yukio Futatsugi and his team developed an English version concurrently with the Japanese version, and the English localization was included in the Japanese release.[5]

A United States release had originally been planned until August 2004, when Microsoft announced the U.S. version's cancellation, but left open the possibility of U.S. sales if Western demand was high enough.[5] In December 2004, Majesco and Microsoft signed a deal to bring Phantom Dust to North America.[6]

In June 2013, Futatsugi expressed interest in making a Phantom Dust sequel, possibly using Kickstarter for funding.[7]

Phantom Dust has received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic, with an aggregate score of 81 for the Xbox version. The Xbox release was given an 8.5 out of 10 from IGN who have praised it for its "spectacular" graphics and "incredibly deep" gameplay. 1UP, awarding the game an 85 out of 100, said it "scores big points for offering the most strategic Xbox Live experience available". Many reviewers, including GameSpot, have noted the game's low purchase price of $20 as a bonus, especially in relation to its high gameplay content.

The original game had very poor sales; in Japan, its first month sales were only about 6,000 units, and in North America, only about 50,000 units were sold.[21] The remastered version had seen more than 1 million players after the first month of its release.[22]

• Phantom Dust at MobyGames