There is no other game on Xbox as unique as Phantom Dust. Essentially, gameplay is a cross between the deck-building and card-collecting elements of Magic: The Gathering and the controls, speed, and environmental tactics of a shooter. The best part? Only worth $20 (US dollars).

Instead of a traditional complement of weapons, however, you're armed with "skills." You can carry four skills at a time, each one mapped to one of the X, Y, B, and A buttons. You begin a round with four skills that are randomly selected from your "arsenal" (Phantom Dust's term for "deck"), which may include up to 30 skills in total. Three other randomly selected skills from your arsenal also appear as glowing orbs at your starting spot. This is effectively the top of your "draw pile."

By standing on top of an orb and pressing X, Y, B, or A, you replace the skill currently mapped to that button with whatever skill is contained in the orb. The orbs disappear when picked up. After a few seconds, a new skill is randomly pulled from your arsenal, crammed into an orb, and placed back at your starting spot so that you'll generally have three new skills available at any given moment. If you burn through your entire arsenal before the duel ends, your life points begin to drain until you eventually die.

Each skill costs a certain amount of "aura" to activate (think "mana"). The amount of aura you have is determined by your level. A significant part of your arsenal's 30 slots must be devoted to aura particles, which appear out of your arsenal just like skills and are sort of analogous to "land" in Magic. You begin a duel at level 0, but each aura particle that you pick up and use raises your level by one. Your aura depletes as you fire off skills, and it replenishes automatically over time until it reaches your current level.

Each skill costs a certain amount of "aura" to activate (think "mana"). The amount of aura you have is determined by your level. A significant part of your arsenal's 30 slots must be devoted to aura particles, which appear out of your arsenal just like skills and are sort of analogous to "land" in Magic. You begin a duel at level 0, but each aura particle that you pick up and use raises your level by one. Your aura depletes as you fire off skills, and it replenishes automatically over time until it reaches your current level.

There are currently 340 skills to collect, and you can do this by either completing missions in the single-player game, buying them with game currency from the in-game store (randomly in booster packs of five or, more expensively, singly by name), or trading with other players on Xbox Live. There are 40 ultrarare skills that can only be claimed by completing various goals (such as winning 30 duels) in multiplayer. Each skill falls into one of five schools. An arsenal can contain skills from only one or two schools (three if you're willing to have your aura-regeneration rate decreased).

The skills--some of which can be used just once and some that can be used over and over again--represent a wide range of offensive and defensive abilities, plus other oddball stuff, such as being able to temporarily fly, erase an opponent's equipped skills, and destroy all of the aura particles in play. One, appropriately called mind reading, even lets you listen in on the opposing team's voice chat. It's an example of how the developers have done a terrific job of making the skills complement a video game rather than simply re-creating a tabletop card game.

Graphics are good, but nothing that makes you go "it's a work of art!" and the voice acting is fairly good. The music is good but it could really do without the violin noises in the beggining of each mission. Also, Xbox Live play is a blast if you can find anybody to play with. The storytelling is rather pointless. If it had more gameplay features for dueling, i'd give the game a 9. But this game deserves at least an 8.5.

Pros

+Dueling system is awesome
+Some cool looking characters
+Xbox Live play
+Excellent blend of card games and action games

Cons

+Main character looks like a clown.
+Violin noises
+Footstep sounds
+Bland story