Phantasmal is a survival horror roguelike title with Lovecraftian influences, and it's the first game that we've seen on Steam from New Zealand based publisher/developer Eyemobi Ltd. The combination of essentially three gaming genres is a brave, yet unique, step for an up and coming company, especially given the roguelike elements that are thrown into play. Boasting procedurally generated rooms, permadeath, stealth mechanics, along with health and sanity meters, one question begs to be asked; does this amalgamation work well together?
There's a small storyline within Phantasmal, and basically you're a guy looking for his missing aunt. For one reason or another, you've been led to unfathomable depths that continue to grow deeper and deeper as each elevator and staircase plunges you deeper into the heart of madness. Along the way you'll encounter various, and numerous, enemies through randomly generated levels; the further you progress, the more plentiful and deadly your foes will become. Along the way you can pick up weapons such as a spiked bat, wooden plank, and a pistol to fend off the monsters. Your sanity meter will go down if you stare at them for too long with your flashlight on, but if you stand in the dark for a period of time you will also start to go insane. There are sanity pills and health kits scattered sparsely about to help aid you on your journey, along with coins that you can use to buy upgrades from the vendor at the starting area.
From my experience the stealth mechanic doesn't work well at all. Supposedly if you crouch you're silent, and as long as you stay in the dark you're safe. I've had enemies charge at me despite using both of these techniques together. Their AI is also fairly terrible, given that they become stuck on stairs frequently and will run head-long into walls. I'm also pretty certain that I encountered areas with unlimited respawning monsters, and also an invincible foe. I'll also add here that the first trailer for the game (the second that appears on the store page) is very misleading, and is entirely cinematic; it is not at all how the game plays.
Now, let me say that I have an i7 6700k and GTX 1080 combo, along with 16GB of DDR4 3000 RAM; additionally my monitor supports 1080p, 144Hz resolution. For those who aren't tech savvy, basically my rig is on the very high part of high-end; my graphics card in particular is second only to a newer NVIDIA card that released a mere 3 months after my card. I'm not saying this to brag by any means, but how would you feel about buying a game that can't even hit 30 FPS in some areas on a powerful rig? Would you spend $16.99 CAD on a title that struggles to hit even 60 FPS during its core areas? Let's say the graphics are also on low, and special effects are turned off. Comparatively speaking assess your rig against mine, how well do you think yours may fare given that mine cannot sustain a suitable framerate on Phantasmal? And before you ask, yes my drivers are all up to date.
Needless to say I was beyond shocked, since every game I've thrown at my rig has hit 60+ FPS; The Witcher 3 with all settings maxed? Check. Grand Theft Auto V with everything but distance scaling maxed? Yep. How about the new Doom? Blows it out of the water. Metro Last Light Redux? Far Cry Primal? All run beautifully. Since many of the assets and designs are very similar to UNLOVED (a far superior game, I might add for those who're interested), I'm going to assume that Phantasmal runs on the Unreal engine. Though it doesn't matter what engine it runs on since it shouldn't perform this badly, it's especially unacceptable for such a high quality, acclaimed engine in particular; it's downright unforgivable. If I'm wrong and it's the Unity engine, well I'm no longer as surprised but still incredibly disappointed.
Heed the warnings of this review and all others. Aside from some of the most abhorrent optimization I've personally witnessed (and I thought Obscuritas was bad), Phantasmal has a large amount of bugs, it's even a chore to set your resolution as you cannot even see all of the options and you must select blindly, restart the game, and try again. There's also a problem with keybindings staying put. Developer, instead of giving us new rooms, how about making your game functional to at least some degree? This is an appalling mess, and one that I've refunded. I had been looking forward to playing this game for quite some time, needless to say it's a huge letdown.
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