Anyone thats read a review of an Idea Factory game, whether its a review of a Spectral Force title, a Spectral Souls title, or a Generation of Chaos title, would have a good idea going into Spectral Force 3 Innocent Rage for Xbox 360 that the game is not going to be all that good. Idea Factory games are basically the equivalent of doujin or unprofessional homemade games except they have just enough money and exposure to get them actually released on consoles. That doesnt necessarily mean the games are terrible (wella lot of their games are), it just means that the games dont tend to have the shine or gameplay depth to stand up to the big company RPGs and that in order to enjoy them one needs to go in not expecting much and Spectral Force 3 definitely holds true to that concept.

Graphics
Being on the Xbox 360, one might expect SF3 to have mind-blowing graphics never seen to date in an RPG. One might expect HDR lighting and shiny surfaces like [EM]Enchant Arms, or high polygon characters like Tengai Makyou Ziria. But no, the only thing Spectral Force 3 has to show for being on the Xbox 360 is some extremely tiny fonts. In truth, the game doesnt even look good enough to be a current PS2 title and instead falls closer to something from the early Dreamcast years. The image quality is nice and clean, but theres just nothing impressive about the visuals at all. Spells are bland little bolts and explosions, attacks are just standard swipes with red lines behind them, enemies are incredibly low-polygon and environments look about on par with Nippon Ichi games and Nippon Ichi describes their graphics as PSOne level in their interviews. So from a technical standpoint, Spectral Force 3 is likely the worst looking game on the Xbox 360.


Whenever you see those words you should run

Awesome (or not) tactical battle action - Video
From an art standpoint its definitely a bit better. The character designs are fairly weak and amateurish and the anime cutscenes are almost entirely stills that are panned across, but somehow they do seem to get the job done in telling the story and moving the game. Overall compared to the 16-bit looking sprites and low-res art in their PS2 titles, SF3 is still a marked improvement for Idea Factory on the visual frontits just that its bad compared to every other game on the system.


Low-budget anime scenes tell the story Sound
Music in SF3 is fine. Its not one of the most amazing soundtracks out there, but the tunes get the job donewell besides the parts where they end and then theres a 5 second pause of silence and then they begin to loop again. Voice acting is surprisingly very poor in sound sample quality despite Xbox 360s DVD9 format having more than enough room for a game like SF3 (speaks more about Idea Factorys recording studio than DVD9s most likely). All major story dialogue is voiced, while side events such as talking to fellow party members and in-battle dialogue is not.