Spitan Spirits Expedition -in the Phantasmagoria-

[Salatzion]

The game (Spitan Spirits Expedition -in the Phantasmagoria-) have been mentioned before at the forum but I don't think anyone wrote anything about it yet. Those that haven't heard of it can read about it here http://vndb.org/v77

Since my Japanese is limited to something like a 100 words it's pretty much impossible for me to play it.
My main question are: Is it any good?

I really like some of the sub-spirits in EnA so you can see why I think this is interesting (who does not like Helion in panic every time she is surprised )

[lunarium]

Ugh, the game system is a cluster-fuck, very hard to get used to/understand. Even when you do, the time it took for some mission is almost twice that of EnA (as if EnA wasn't bad enough on long mission )
Story is.... nothing to impress about, as it's only a fandisc for EnA after all (which is all about H).
But, your mileage may varies. If you like Kouin/any subspirit enough though, by all means go for it (Kouin's design is very similar to the MC in this game)

[Xien]

Well, Spitan just really explores the side characters a little more, yeah, though some Io would've been nice. We even get a tweeeeeest later on! Isn't that great, Youtia?

[AQZT]

http://nighteye159.livejournal.com/21699.html#cutid1
http://nighteye159.livejournal.com/21407.html#cutid1

[Lynx190]

did nighteye ever end up doing the summaries of Spitan? looking at his livejournal it seems like he moved on to Seinarukana and nothing more happened with regards to Spitan. Of course, I'm not sure I really want to read plot summaries anyway considering that the characters, not the plot, are the main point of the game.

Having a hard time looking forward to Seinarukana (especially already knowing that the story is lacking compared to EnA) when I want to play Spitan so badly after EnA; curse my limited Japanese knowledge. At least AGTH works with it, but I can't really stand machine translation for dialogue, mainly only use it to assist me through a gameplay-focused game. I suppose I could use this as motivation to attempt to go back to learning Japanese again, but I just don't have the time really.

[pa3ck123]

@lynx190, i hear ya! finding time to learn Japanese might not be in time for this game.

[Lynx190]

Actually, after brushing up on grammar with Tae Kim's guide (and giving up on grinding kanji) I went ahead and started playing with AGTH and Rikaichan (SO much more useful than the garbage that is ATLAS). Goes a bit slow but not too bad, occasionally I have to gloss over something that I can't figure out, but since this isn't a DEEP story it doesn't really hurt anything. Only problem is I was hoping to pick up vocabulary as I went, but as I was warned, Rikaichan is so quick to use that I get dependent on it and not much is really sticking in my head.

The 640x480 resolution is really frustrating for the gameplay though; way too much information is crammed into the interface and the tiny kanji are almost unreadable (and since the stuff on the status screens is image-based, AGTH can't help me out. It works for the in-battle stuff if I search the various outputs but the skill info there is in an abbreviated form.) Most of the stuff can be figured out without too much trouble, but the various special properties of certain skills I'm still clueless on some (stuff like "Anti-blue" and "Recovery" I can read easily enough, but others are tough).

And damn the gameplay is as complicated as people suggested, battles drag on and on, especially when I'm worrying about my skill point expenditure all the time. It's no big deal if you're grinding at the start of a map and can just keep popping into town, but if you're actually trying to get somewhere and have to fight a bunch of battles it's tough (at least you can savescum to facilitate running around enemies without fighting). I also got extremely frustrated right at the start of the first map when I crashed right into the boss just 3 enemies in without a save (I thought it was an NPC) and got wiped out with my lvl 1 party, wasting a whole bunch of time since those early battles took me quite a while. Also there's so much customization in how you raise your characters that I'm at a loss for where to spend my points.

I really wish I had a better understanding of how the routes work; there's a (Japanese, obviously) guide linked from the hongfire thread that apparently has the information, but it's really tough to understand. I know you need the right character(s) at certain event points (that much seemed pretty obvious, was already planning on keeping the route character in my party at all times to be safe, though that causes more skill point consumption problems). But the guide seems to say something like you need to choose the right color island in each chapter; it looks like it says you need to choose blue in Chapters 1 and 2 for Nelie/Shiah route, green in 1+2 for Nim route, black in chapter 2 for Helion route. But then it goes on with more stuff that I'm really stumped on, it almost sounds like it's saying if you keep choosing that color in later chapters you get dumped back on "Normal route", which I'd have to guess is no-girl route. I suppose I could just play randomly and not worry about it on the first playthrough, but considering how long it's taking to play I don't really want to be stuck with some boring generic route.

[Lynx190]

Well I finally got a better idea how the routes work in this game, unfortunately while reading before I overlooked a vital "ない". You simply need to stick with the proper color island every chapter for Nelie/Shiah, Helion, and Nim routes (if their color isn't available that chapter then it doesn't matter which you choose), for some reason the guide makes it sound more complicated than it is. Thanks to overlooking that negative though, I mistakenly thought I had to stop choosing blue after the first two chapters, spent hours and hours on the painful Chapter 3 red island (totally linear path with lots of unavoidable enemies) only to find myself kicked off Nelie/Shiah route (and missing out on the Normal route scene for that chapter as well), leaving me with no choice but to load my game back to the start of the chapter and waste hours of progress. Blargh.

And I figured out that "Normal route" is where you get the scenes for the characters who don't have their own route; Chapter 3 is Halion/Himika, Chapter 4 is Faren, Chapter 5 is Selia, and Chapter 6 is Nanaru. Once you're on Normal route (i.e. not entering any main routes by the end of Chapter 2) you have to choose the correct island and get the event there in order to get the scene at the end of the chapter.

It's clear that Mula and Zena routes are 2nd+ playthrough only, though I'm not quite sure yet how you enter them. I think Mula route requires an event on a new island that unlocks in Chapter 2 only on 2nd+ playthroughs, then after that it doesn't matter where you go, but the boss fight every chapter gets changed to a special one for her route. Zena route has something to do with using her in battle but I'll have to wait till next playthrough to see exactly how it works.