Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits

"A Decent Attempt at an RPG, but not very Good"

So you wonder why I didn't like Arc, right? Yeah the storyline is original and interesting, with separated twins as parts of rivaling races. Yeah the graphics and sound look good. Yeah the battle system is interesting and takes some skill. ALAS, this game is pretty sub-par. And here is why...

Story: 6
Yes, the story is very inventive and sucks you in after a few hours. The main characters, Kharg and Darc are pretty likeable and you certainly feel for them. As for the rest of the characters, they are simply weird and I ignored them for most of the game. The character interactions are also very boring and I found myself getting easily bored with the characters in many parts of the game. Also, I really hated that the game (semi-spoiler) always hinted at Kharg and Darc combining to form a super-duo, but they never combining until the final boss. So though the plot sucks you in, the game eventually spits you back out feeling like an fool.
The other characters in the game were just annoying too. From Bebedora to Ganz, the game flowed with 30 second dramatic sequences and cheesy moments that made it seem like a joke. Also the game was just rife with quick, unrealistic betrayals. Your helpful friends leave you and rejoin the group within minutes, and before you know what to do you are saying to yourself, ''What?!''

Gameplay: 7
Wow, this game was not very good to me during as far as gameplay goes. The battles are fun for a while, but when you go for 3 hours without a battle, then get into 10 battles in a row, you go crazy. I did like the way the game progressed, but level gaining was tedious and since I didn't really connect or even like many of the characters, I really did not like fighting in battles.
Another gripe would be how whenever you fight a big battle and get psyched about playing with Kharg, OH...now it's time to play with Darc, or vice versa. It drove me nuts having to constantly readjust to playing with each character, since they each have their own style.
There are good parts about the battle system. For one, it takes skill, but not a genius, makes battling actually engaging. Plus I don't love the random battles as much as seeing your character run into situations with enemies. It feels more realistic and sensible than having the screen explode and random creatures appear on the screen.
The lack of mini-games and dungeons makes you feel like you're playing a movie though, which I DO NOT like at all. every time you get done with a specific sequence, you a shuttled off to do another fetch quest or the game pushes you somewhere else, or even worse...you change characters. Whatever it is, the game won't let you do anything on your own or just PLAY.

Graphics/Sound: 9
This I can not complain about. The only problem was the choppy voice acting, which ruined the dramatic scenes in the game (spoiler again) (i.e. Darc's emotional meeting with his mother, which cut sentences in half). Other than that, the graphics are amazing and the music and sound is very good. I thought the character designs were great, and though you grow to not like the sound bites that the characters say before almost every attack, they sound good and the voices fit the characters nicely.

Replay: 4
The low replay value isn't really that much of a factor since it is a RPG, so playing it through once really cuts down on wanted to spend ANOTHER 30 hours playing the same thing. There is a very small amount of stuff you could do after you beat the game the first time, and none of it is worth going back to do it. There are some battle arenas and extra fights, but they're not that great and you probably got some, if not most, of them the first time through by just playing the game.

Final Review:
This game had potential at the beginning, but the gameplay was frustrating at many times, and the characters are even annoying at some points in the game, rather than what I enjoy in RPGs, which is developing with the character and liking anything that they do. Also, the last 5 hours of the game killed the entire mediocre game for me. The last 5 hours are full of melodrama and cheese, along with a terrible final dungeon, with more annoying tedium and ANNOYING battles than any game I've ever heard of, and even some other things to gripe about.
The game is not AS bad as I make it sound, but I decided to highlight mostly the bad stuff since I am definitely not recommending that you play the game. It's 30 hours of my time that I wish I had spent playing Final Fantasy or Zelda.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/04