Arc the Lad: End of Darkness

"I was hoping for more from this series!"

Arc the Lad: End of Darkness is the latest game in the Arc the Lad series, coming out roughly three years ago and two years after the previous Arc the Lad game, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. I was fairly excited to pick up Arc the Lad: End of Darkness (referenced as EoD from here on), as I really enjoyed Twilight of the Spirits (referenced as TotS) and was hoping for another good Arc game. Did EoD live up to my own personal hype?

Story: 5/10

The story in EoD is probably one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever seen. It progresses very slowly, and to understand it you have to understand roughly how the game is structured. In the game you are a bounty hunter of sorts, taking on jobs for a guild and citizens in order to attain a higher ranking within the guild, similar to the bounty hunter side-missions in Arc the Lad 2. The major difference here, and part of the low score, is that this is the entire game in EoD, not just a side-mission. You start off as a new recruit, obviously, and work your way up 5-6 ranks. Now, without going into too much of the gameplay here, the only story missions you get are at the end of each rank, so you can see how the story is stagnant. And even than, the story just isn't very good. After experiencing a wonderful story from TotS, it really saddens me to see EoD fall so low.

Gameplay: 6/10

The gameplay is quite different than every other Arc the Lad game. Instead of being a tactical game, like the others, it is more of an action game, letting you actively control your characters and perform combos and magic attacks to defeat your enemies, similar to most action-adventure games. The only problem here is that unlike most action-adventure games your character feels clunky and clumsy. For example, you have a run button but you will almost never use it, because if you run into a wall, boundary, or even another character you will fall down wasting several seconds of your times. The combat is stale as well, consisting of your character performing a combo and knocking an enemy down, waiting for the enemy to get back up, and than repeating the process. In fact, it is better to just hit the attack button and watch the first attack of your combo, wait a few moments, and than repeat your first attack over and over as it is quicker but makes your character look stupid. Some special attacks can be learned, which are neat, but there is so few of them that they hardly worth mentioning. The magic system only lets you equip up to four spells or special attacks to a shortcut bar to use, and you are given a mp pool which will tell you how many more times you can cast spells or use special attacks. This system is decent, but worthwhile magic spells are rare and the stronger ones are difficult to acquire.

Edda, and every other character, can equip certain parts to augment their stats, and even synthesize new ones. The synthesis process is more or less worthless, however, as they don't provide hardly any guidance on what parts you need to bring, and I've found the good parts are too hard to obtain to be worthwhile. I should also mention that you can acquire character cards of numerous other Arc the Lad series characters which you can activate. Once you do, you can play as that character in any guild mission. This is a great concept, as there are many memorable characters in the series, and getting to play as them in an action-adventure setting is unique. Unfortunately most of the better characters are only obtained later in the story, or through a random drawing which means you may be waiting for quite awhile before you get to control who you really want to.

Overall, the gameplay is decent, but these numerous flaws just overshadow any enjoyment you can get out of the game. Some of the non-story missions were fun to play through, but you will constantly be deprived of true gaming enjoyment by some stupid gameplay feature. Almost every single aspect about the gameplay in EoD could have been vastly improved. It's really a shame that this passed through testing without more refining.

Graphics: 7/10

The highest score you will see on this review goes to the graphics, which are decent but definitely nothing beyond average. The character designs look pretty good, even with the vast amount of characters that they put in the game. Some of the human enemies look a little ugly, and they definitely like to reuse character sprites for different enemies, as well as only make one different design for any given enemy type. At least the animations all run smoothly. The various locales your characters will fight in all look decent, ranging from plains to snowy mountain tops to sewers. Most of the same places that you saw in TotS will return, as the timeline Edda fights in is only a few years after the events of TotS.

Music/Sound effects: 6/10

While I found the music to be ok, I couldn't get over the lack of voice acting in the game. As you put the disk in and wait, you'll see a trailer for the game where everyone is talking, but as you play through the game all you get is text, text, and text. It seemed pretty weak to me, to advertise voice acting like that and than go on to make a silent game. Even during the rare voice acting sections, the voices didn't seem to match the characters mouth movements. Did they reuse the Japanese animations? All I know is that it looks bad. The only time I really enjoyed the voices was during the missions when they would talk while fighting, although a majority of the time it was them commenting on how they really weren't hurt after they feel down from running into something. The sound effects are decent, nothing really out of the ordinary.

Re-playability/Extras/Multi-player: 6/10

Yes, EoD does have multi-player capability. But, as far as I know, I believe their servers have been shut down for quite awhile (similar to Resident Evil Outbreaks servers). Even if they were open, I think the amount of people who would be using them would have to be a niche group, as there are so many better games out there to play. Of course I think the same about re-playing the single player game: why? It is a pretty neat concept to include all of the other Arc the Lad characters to control, but as I mentioned before obtaining your favorite might prove to be a hard task.

Overall: 6/10

One of the worst scores I've ever given overall, and in any individual category (for the story). I had really hoped for more from the Arc the Lad series, but this is what I got. Hopefully this review will help you on judging whether or not it is worth it to pick up EoD, but if you decide to you should find it in the bargain bin at your local game store. Hopefully their next game will be much better. Have fun and keep playing!

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/08

Game Release: Arc the Lad: End of Darkness (US, 06/14/05)