I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR THE SHITTY IMAGES THERE ARE NO GOOD ONES FOR THIS GAME.

This is the story of a little boy in 2007 who was obsessed with Pokemon. The games, the tv series, the cards, the figurines, plushies, books, etc. he loved it all. One day while watching cartoons on the Disney channel the little boy came across a commercial for a Disney- licensed game called "Spectrobes" and it looked like Pokemon. It looked A LOT like Pokemon. Its hype was everywhere, from Disney World demos and promos of the game to the game getting a web series on Disney's website; the game looked amazing. The boy begged his parents for it and he received it as a gift to entertain him on the family road trip. The game was fun for awhile until one boss completely stumped him and he gave up on the game forever... Well, actually the boy is now a grown man and finally beat the game.

Spectrobes is an action RPG developed by Buena Vista Games aka Disney Interactive and was clearly meant to cash in on the hype created by Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. The game's main draw was that in order to obtain the many creatures you can collect and battle with in the game you must dig their fossils from the ground and awaken them first.

These features are in reality just gimmicks meant to utilize the touch and mic capabilities of the DS and to their credit, it works well. The game obviously did a good because it spawned two sequels: one for DS and the other for Wii. The game delivers what it promises, but the rest just goes downhill, for the most part, not to say the game is BAD, it's not, but it does take many missteps. I'm gonna break up the review in a Pros and Cons list of sorts.

Pro- The Story

Much more grand and inflated compared to a typical Pokemon game, Spectrobes takes place in the fictional sci-fi Nanairo Solar System where two Nanairo Planetary Patrol officers, the young and hot-blooded Rallen, and the also young but more level-headed Jeena get a distress signal from a planet while on a routine mission. Rallen heads to the surface of the planet to find a capsule containing an old man who has been in cryogenic sleep for decades. The man wakes up and reveals himself as Aldous who escaped the destruction of his star system caused by the organisms know as the Krawl. Aldous informs both Rallen and Jeena that the Krawl can only be fought back by utilizing the power of Spectrobes; ancient creatures now fossilized beneath the earth but can be reawakened and trained with the right technology. With Spectrobes at his side, Rallen now has to save his star system from the Krawl by finding their nest and destroying the vicious Leader Krawls. A simple and cliched story but much more involved and more like an actual story compared to Pokemon.

Rallen and Jeena are typical anime cliches and honestly aren't really special, but for a kid's game, it's good enough. Rallen is especially cringy because he has a catchphrase, but it's not a normal catchphrase like "Believe It", it's "Iku ze". That's what he says in the English translation of the game. "Iku ze" is Japanese for "let's go" and they didn't translate it to "let's go" they left it as "Iku ze". Why did they do this? Because "Let's Go" is not cool enough? Is Rallen a weeaboo? He speaks English the entire game, why would he spout Japanese randomly?! It's weird. Other than that the story serves its purpose. It's not deep or interesting, but it tries harder than most.

Con- The Core Gameplay

It sounds like fun in the beginning but it gets old REAL fast. This section is gonna be filled with mini pros and cons so pay attention. The core gameplay consists of Exploration, Excavation, Awakening and Raising Spectrobes, and of course Combat.

Con- Exploration

There are about 7 planets to explore in Spectrobes each with 1-3 areas for a total of 12 areas to search for fossils and goodies and fight enemies.

This sounds well and good except that these areas are extremely LINEAR. There are no secret areas to find and the only real incentive for going off the beaten path is to find more things to dig up.

NPCs in areas have no personality and are only there to act as tutorial tools or fill space. The closest things to secrets I can think of are the rare Spectrobes and minerals that can only be found in certain areas and the game does not give any clue where they might be.

There are also the large vortexes hidden around where you can do a battle rush arena for prizes, but the prizes suck and the battles are a bore. It also doesn't help that the environments look dull and uninspired and what clever additions they do have is overshadowed by the repetitious nature of the assets and visuals. Nothing like Pokemon.

Pro and Con- Excavation

Let's go over the good: the actual process of digging. You start by bringing over your baby Spectrobe and use it to scan the ground until a sparkle appears (Be aware that NOT all Spectrobes can find BOTH fossils and minerals so choose wisely if you can't find any of one or the other don't panic, the game is not broken just choose a new Spectrobe). Clicking the sparkle takes you to a screen where you tap to go through layers of dirt until you see your prize, mostly obscured by the soil. What you can dig up are Spectrobe Fossils, Minerals, and Cubes. Minerals are what is used to feed and strengthen Spectrobes while Cubes are tutorials. Yes, you have to FIND the tutorials. The existence of Cubes is a con because some can be hard to find, basically withholding information from the player is a big no-no. Depending on what treasure awaits you must use different tools to help you successfully dig up your prize without smashing it. From the excavation shop you can buy a variety of tools to help you dig stuff up but you honestly only need 2: The Medium Drill and Giga. It is cool that the game provides diversity when approaching excavating tools (you can also use the mic to blow the dust away) but the fact that the rest are useless and only 2 are needed is ultimately a big fat CON. The goal is to uncover the object until the meter in the corner is at least 95%, but be careful because you can break and lose your prize. Minerals and Cubes are not easy to break and the Giga is extremely useful because it automatically 100% digs up minerals and cubes you have already dug up before in a second, rendering all other tools useless.

Fossils, on the other hand, are fragile and must be treated with care and the Medium Drill comes in handy because it is perfectly balanced to uncover fossils without damaging them really fast, which is important because if you recover a fossil with very little damage you can get a Custom Part. Custom Parts are a BIG PRO because now players have OPTIONS and can customize their Spectrobes and can increase their strength in combat (Be aware that not all Custom Parts can be found by digging some are only obtainable through card cheat codes). This system for digging is all well and good except one thing: It takes up almost 100% of playtime. You are gonna want a lot of minerals so you will be digging every chance you get in this game are the chances are PLENTIFUL. You also gain EXP and Levels for digging but what they do, I don't know. I HOPE YOU KIDS LIKE DIGGING BECAUSE THAT IS ALL THIS GAME IS! Repetitious and tedious in long run is what makes the Con side of the excavation system.

Pro and Con- Awakening and Raising Spectrobes

You get a fossil and put in a machine and scream at it to wake it up. Sounds cool but in practice is really stupid. You don't just say "wake up" and the task is done, no that would be too easy. You have to hold your voice for 3 seconds at the right volume to awaken a Spectrobe. You sound stupid while doing so too, so please AWAKEN FOSSILS ALONE.

What is cool though is the Color Awakenings. you can change the color of the Spectrobe by adjusting your voice to a certain pitch. This adds more variety and customization options to Spectrobes plus Custom Parts. I calculated and it creates a total number of 396 Color+Part combinations.

That is a huge Pro. But don't get too excited because there are only 44 Spectrobes that you can actually use to fight (not including cheat codes and Geos). After you awaken your new buddy you give it an inappropriate nickname and now you have a Child form Spectrobe. There are 3 Spectrobe forms: Child, Adult, and Evolved. Child Spectrobes can't fight but are used to scan for fossils, minerals, and cubes in the ground. In order to advance it from Child to Adult, you need to feed it minerals in the Incubator.

The Incubator can hold up to 8 Spectrobes at a time, 2 in each chamber. To feed your Spectrobes you simply grab up to 5 minerals from your stash and drop them in. This is where things get wonky. You have to place the mineral perfectly beside the Spectrobe you intend to feed or you risk its roommate stealing the mineral for it self. This is annoying because different Spectrobes require different strategies to advance them to the next stage. All Spectrobes are required to remain in the Incubator for an unspecified amount of time which can be from 30 minutes to 5 hours depending on the species. Some only evolve when a certain stat is at a certain level requiring you to feed it specific minerals. Others need to be at a certain level to evolve. This was extremely confusing for me as a kid and resulted in one of my Spectrobes becoming underpowered because I had no idea that Adult Spectrobes also require time in the Incubator to evolve. I was so used to just fighting things to level up and evolve. These complex requirements are a tad annoying and are a Con in my books. You would think that now that you have an Adult Spectrobe that it would be more beneficial to have it fight to grow, but you are WRONG. Combat gives significantly LESS EXP than feeding a Spectrobe Minerals in the Incubator! So why FIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE!?

This is a game BREAKING problem and the biggest one in the game in my books. A new player can easily breeze through the game by keeping some Spectrobes in the Incubator and feeding them Minerals until their Level 128. HUGE CON.

Con- Combat

The Krawl are in these black vortexes that are sometimes idle but are inconvenient places, forcing you to walk in and fight. Or the vortexes will chase you and don't stop forcing you to eventually fight. Reminds me of Okami a bit but once the fight begins you are gonna throw the game away. So you have Rallen in the middle and his Spectrobes on both of his sides facing 3 enemies. They approach and it's time to fight. Rallen is GARBAGE, as stated in the Story that human weapons SUCK against the Krawl and therefore Rallen sucks too. His attacks are really just meant to stun an enemy and prevent it from attacking. The Spectrobes are controlled by a meter in the bottom which fills over time (it also affects Rallen's sword and gun weapons but those are useless) and when full one Spectrobe can attack.

You press either R or L to attack and depending on the species your Spectrobe will either attack right away or an ABXY prompt will appear with the following options: Attack, Charge, Follow, and Wait. This prompt is annoying because every option that isn't "Attack" is worthless. Wait makes you Spectrobe stop moving, Follow makes it move again, and Charge is the same as Wait except your Spectrobe does a little humping animation. What sucks about this is that "Attack" is mapped to the X button which means that if you are quickly trying to attack to may accidentally press A instead and make your Spectrobe hump the floor and stop moving.

Holding A charges a special meter (maybe that is what "Charge" does but I don't care) which when filled to a certain point can alter your Spectrobe's attacks and makes them do more damage or adds an AOE. Charging the meter full and pressing R and L together performs a combo attack which plays a cutscene and does a pitiful amount of damage to all enemies and basically resets the battle, placing everyone in a start position. After a certain part of the game you can charge the meter full but press X instead and use a Geo Spectrobe which summons a powerful Spectrobe that does a powerful attack, dealing massive damage to all enemies, but can only be used once per battle (and is the only way to break the final boss's shield).

This system sound alright but honestly it is just you placing your Spectrobes in front of the enemy and pressing R or L and it is BORING. Half the time you might miss because of how weird you move in the battle arena. The worst part is that normal enemies are 100% OPTIONAL. That's right! You can beat the game without ever fighting anything other than bosses. How? By holding SELECT to RUN AWAY. You know how you can't run away from Trainer battles or sometimes can't run from wild Pokemon. Spectrobes doesn't feel like challenging the player, it lets you waltz on through without a scratch. That is DUMB. This is LAZY. This is the OPPOSITE of good game design. Not like it matters to you though. The reward for winning a battle is a piss poor amount of EXP and cash (Gura) that is used to buy better Armor and Weapons for Rallen, but like anyone would ever use them. That is another Con; the cash not meaning shit after you have the Giga and Corona armor. Oh did I mention there are Types like in Pokemon creating a rock-paper-scissors dynamic between Spectrobes? No? Well, the game forgot too. Spectrobes can be either Corona (red), Aurora (green) or Flash (blue) and honestly, I have NO IDEA how they work.

Maybe the Krawl have one of these types too and using the right Spectrobe adds extra damage and using the wrong Spectrobes mean the Krawl resist damage. I think that's how it works, but honestly, I don't care. Battle system is a joke and a Con.

Pro- Soundtrack

Pleasant but not amazing. I can hum a tune or two but that's it really.

Pro- The Spectrobes Themselves

I really like some of the designs on these guys. They look like nothing you would see in Pokemon and that's why I appreciate the work put into them.

Conclusion:

Spectrobes is more trouble than it's worth and honestly, if you are super interested, I'd say try the sequels. I haven't played them myself, but there must be some improvements so please, let me know how they are in the comments.