Before we get to Destiny of Spirits you might be surprised who the developer is. Sony partnered with Lumines maker Q? Entertainment to develop this Vita game. Partnering with Q? Entertainment makes sense since most of their revenue comes from free to play PC games.

Destiny of Spirits plays more kind of like the card collecting and battling RPGs that are all the rage in Japan. The twist is that you use the Vita’s GPS sensor to catch spirits. If you’re in North America you’ll get spirits based on North American legends and lore. One of the spirits I caught when I tried Destiny of Spirits originated from Native American mythology. I also saw Carbuncle and Basilisk which were from Europe and a couple of youkai from Japan. A representative from Sony Computer Entertainment explained that Destiny of Spirits has hundreds of spirits to capture and trade.

The battle system has three of your spirits fighting three enemy spirits. You can control spirits by tapping on them to initiate an attack or if you’re lazy you can let Destiny of Spirits’ auto battle program do all of the fighting for you. It seems that picking the right spirits ahead of time before starting a mission is more important than managing battles. You can see the monsters ahead of time so you can strategize which spirits can exploit enemy weaknesses using the game’s five elements (fire, water, wind, wood, and metal) system.

One potential barrier is Destiny of Spirits requires a connection to the Internet to play the game. While the premium Vita model supports 3G and Wi-Fi, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan started phasing out the 3G model. Players in Japan where the game is most likely will need to borrow a Wi-Fi network to Destiny of Spirits or play the game at home. However, Destiny of Spirits is really designed as a game for travelers since your location determines what kinds of monsters you collect.

Destiny of Spirits is slated for release later this year.