Arc the Lad: End of Darkness

"This series seems to be going backwards"

The logical rule in most game series is that as the series progresses, technology gets better, graphics get better, and overall good series are suppose to at least hold their own over previous games.

Sadly with the "Arc the Lad" series of games, with "End of Darkness" being the newest one, we see the exact opposite trend. The games keep getting worse. And this new release is the cream of the crop when it comes to a bad rpg. This game wouldn't even be a good example of a good rpg for the PS1, much less the PS2. Its obvious that the developers dropped this onto the "B" team of developers, those new guys who aren't working on the A games, but are stuck in a back room fixing bugs for the good games, and working on their own RPG in their spare time to show what they can do.

Anyway, on to the review (thank god a short one)

GRAPHICS: 4 / 10

Quickly you will see the graphics aren't even close to up-to-par with PS2 graphics, and fall into the PS1 category of detail. They are "average" rpg graphics, blocky terrain, sucky (yes, that is a adept description of most of the game) character graphics, lots of old graphic engine polygon creatures. There are a variety of spell and special ability effects, but while colorful, they again aren't anything to talk about. Many of the towns are cute but any game with towns rendered in blocky sections isn't pushing the envelope. Character movement is uncomfortable and stiff, generic running graphics, very hard to aim (unless you lock onto a target first), and hard to judge distances from foes in tight corners. Bad camera angles.

SOUND: 3/ 10

As plain as the graphics are, the sound is even worse. There are some generic background music scores that have nothing to do with the area you are in, and many are SOoooooooo bad you have to turn the sound down. You'll notice right at the beginning some of the rotten music. Once you play for a hour you'll encounter the very bad "oriental" music at one point. Then you will want to shoot yourself. There is no character talking, just text bubbles. The battle music and special effects are simple and plain. Just ... plain...rotten...sound.

PLOT: 3/ 10

Is there a plot? You'd never know it, with all the side-quests and missions you have to do. Much of this game involves the use of quests and missions in order to raise your Hunter rank. Sadly most of these missions are generic in nature and have nothing to do with the story or character. Thus, they take away from the plot and story. You'll go out and do a few killing missions to gain experience and when you are done, you'll go "mmm what the heck was I doing before". Instead of putting the side missions into the plot-line in some way (similar to FF tactics) they just have them out there to do when you want. No stable plot and no stable story line.

GAMEPLAY: 4/ 10

There isn't much to actually playing the game. When your character fights in a battle, he only has 1 basic attack button with 4 moves. hit, hit, hit, big hit. Thats it. push the button 4 times for the 4 hits. Wow, how exciting. You do have to adjust your fighting some vs certain foes, since some might attack before you do all 4 hits, so you'll do hit hit, dodge, hit hit, dodge. Again, Wow, how exciting. With the push of the R2 button you can bring up a "special move" menu, which you can fill with magic cards to perform special moves, healing, magic, etc. But as with most of the game, most of the special moves are worthless. Early on you find some different kinds of rocks you can throw. You put them in the special move menu. You fight a monster and try throwing rocks at it. 9 out of 10 miss since they only have a certain range, the monster is moving, and you don't have any "homing" rocks. And as I said before if you aren't locked on to a monster first, you usually aren't pointed in the right direction to hit it anyway. After fiddling around with various distance attacks, I settled for area attacks instead, since they are easier to hit things with.

You have a variety of extra characters you can play with also, which you gain mostly by finding those characters as "cards" and bringing them into play. Most of them you won't even use at any time. You can't form a party with them, you can only use them during your side missions, and in general they are basically the same as your main character. Will you ever use them? I didn't much.

My final topic in this category is the cards. The game combat and item system consists of cards. Each card represents a item, or a spell, or a ability, etc. Thus if you want to wear chain mail, you equip your chain mail card. Why? because they couldn't figure out a hook for the game, thus they turned every item into cards. Why not just equip chainmail armor, instead of a chainmail armor card. Why not just put on a armor amulet, instead they make it a armor amulet card. How stupid. You can also combine some items into stronger items, but this requires much experimenting, and most of the items early on you can simply buy in the store. Ok, you can take a leather armor (500g) and light metal (150g) and make a chainmail armor. Or you can simply buy the chainmail armor for 800g in the store. Its quicker to just buy it.

REPLAY VALUE: 2/ 10

Replay? Heck I had a tough time just gritting my teeth and playing through the first time, why would I ever want to play it again? To listen to the bad music again? To watch the characters talk to each other in pictures? To hit-hit-hit-big hit another monster to death? No thank you. Thankfully I picked up the game for about 10 bucks in a discount store, so its ok. About the price of a rental.

RENT OR BUY:

Well you know by now, rent only. This game is not worth buying, but if you find it for about 10 bucks in a store you might decide to pay for it. Personally I would suggest paying 20 bucks and getting a great classic PS game instead, you'll enjoy it much more.

Thats about it. Not much of a review, since its not much of a game. It just doesn't have any good qualities. Well, it does have one, your sidekick. But thats it.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/18/06