Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits

"Arc finally reaches the European shores with an awesome rpg."

As I live in the third world of the video games (Europe), I haven’t had the opportunity to play the previous ArcTheLad games, but as a hardcore rpg fan I have read a lot about them and I have seen some chapters of the Anime, which is based on the first two games, so I can see that this fourth instalments has nothing to do with the previous ones in terms of plot and characters.

As it is usual in Europe, the PAL version of the game has a different name, here it was called Arc: Twilight of the Spirits, and while this is something completely unimportant and it is true that is a more accurate title, rpg purists like me are not going to be happy with that, and it is true, that is not funny, but I am going to shut up because this probably going to be the first and the last ArcTheLad game in Europe, so better enjoy it right from the beginning.

Story 10/10:
While I have to admit that everything is fairly cliché (there are quite a lot of clichés and dialogue we have seen million of times), what makes the plot so great is that there are tons of unexpected events, Twilight of the Spirits works exactly in the opposite direction than that incredible disappointment that was Wild Arms 3, in that game, when something cool was bound to happen, then suddenly everything goes back to normal, this is not the case, here, every time something interesting can happen, it does, and when you think nothing is going to happen, something suddenly does. I was surprised because the story was better than expected, and I was expecting a good one. The only thing that the game lacks and that could have been a great add to this wonderful plot are CG scenes, or even better, anime sequences, because sometimes, when something important happens, as there aren’t video sequences, everything is shown using the game’s engine, and so those events are not as spectacular, they are very cool, but not as cool as they could have been with animated scenes, too bad.

But overall the plot is superb, probably the best cliched plot I have ever seen, and what makes this game a winner.

Graphics 10/10:
While not a match for Final Fantasy X, they very well made and with quite a lot if little but nice details everywhere like footsteps on the snow, the grass moving because of the wind, birds flying over the threes, fishes under the water... this can be easily seen when the characters arrive in a town called Cathena, and specially in Milmarna, this last one is one of the most beautiful towns ever seen in a video game, that is for sure. The characters also have some nice details, like the movements they do while casting a spell, or when they gather something in the floor, for example Darc, one of the main characters, holds his sword with his mouth and then bows down to get the item, with little things like this the game looks really nice. The characters faces when the game uses a first person view are also pretty well made, again, they are not Final Fantasy X quality, but it is easy to see what they are thinking, they can smile or get surprised and the way it is done is quite good. And one of the key elements here, we can’t change the view or any crap like that. Great.

What I didn’t liked is the look of some the characters, they are not anime style at all, some of them have an anime feel, but they have nothing to do with the ones of the previous ArcTheLad games, and even less the anime, and at the box cover and the instruction booklet the two main characters look terrible, I don’t know why they decided to change their look, but that is not good.

Music 7,5/10:
Oh!, this was a big disappointment, the music is far, extremely far from being bad, because it is beautifully orchested, with plenty of variety, and a quality that can only be considered as top notch among the top notch, but the problem is that it is not catchy enough, so maybe it excels in terms of quality, but it is hard to remember, so you will not find yourself humming all the songs while walking on the street like we used to do with other games. Deserves a high rating because it is extremely well done and there are lots of tracks, but it is easy to forget.

The voice acting is surprisingly good, far from remarkable and some characters sound better than others, but overall much better than a lot of games out there and never really bad excepting maybe during some cut scenes, but overall good. The only thing I disliked was Tajtana’s voice, because when she says “so you want to die”, man, that is the most sexy voice I have ever heard in my life, but then, all the other things she says are with the ugly voice of an old woman, too bad. Anyway, something I would like to thank to Sony is that the didn’t removed the option to hear the game in English in the PAL version, because I tried the game in Spanish, and those who can’t speak this language have no idea about how incredibly lucky they are, the voices are so awful that battling is a true behemoth task, I’m serious, this is not a stupid complaint, all the voices, aside from being terrible like never before, all of them are very similar, it is like if there were only two or three guys dubbing it. And the same happens in any other language aside from the English one, it is like ten times worst than the English dub of Grandia II, so imagine how bad it is. Thank you Sony, really, thank you.

Gameplay 9/10:
The gameplay is a mix between traditional rpg and strategy rpg, it is not all that flexible, and some people will find it a bit slow, but as an hybrid, the gameplay is excellent.

The combats are mostly predetermined, we can still engage combat whenever we want at certain spots on the map, but if we follow the story, we can’t choose whether if fighting or not most of time (unless we return to some of the areas we have already cleared). Some may not like this way of playing, and I didn’t liked it that much at the beginning, but as the plot was getting better and better, and I only wanted to see what was going to happen, I ended up enjoying this system a lot, maybe it is not as good as the typical one, but works perfectly here, in fact, I think that sometimes there are not enough battles.

The combats are long and slow, we have a lot of characters and the enemies often come in very large groups, but they are fun and interesting, because we will have to use some strategy, each character has an attack range, so we will have to try to hit as much enemies as we can before the attack, or see if it is better to use magic, or try to hit them from behind to do more damage, and so on, even the spells and abilities have an attack range.

The Spirit Stones are what we are going to need to use magic, we can buy these stones, but the best way to acquire them is by defeating enemies, each character has a limited number of spirit stones to carry, but we can store up to 999 stones in the party’s bag and use them whenever we want excepting while we are battling. This system works very nicely, because we will obtain quite a lot of stones and we can be constantly using magic and abilities, there is no need to save points only for the most important battles or the bosses or anything like that.

To acquire magic and special abilities we need spells points, we will obtain them together with the experience after a battle, and in the menu screen we can activate different abilities depending on the quantity each ability requires, it is more or less the same system Grandia has.

The spells and special abilities are a bit disappointing, they are very effective and we will be constantly using them because the Spirit Stones system works perfectly, but they are not all that impressive, all the spells and abilities are pretty lame, they are all very simple, with just a few sparks here or a little flash there, nothing like Grandia II for example. But well, they work fine, and that is the important thing, but they could have been perfect with (much) more impressive visual effects.

Something that works pretty bad is the weapon and armor system, because first of all we can’t buy new weapons, and then, while we can see if what we are buying is better, that is only without one of the accessories you already have, so maybe you buy something just to find out that it was better what you already had, it is hard to explain, but this is a very weird and annoying flaw because in the end you will buy equipment you don’t need quite often.

The only let down the game has in my opinion is that it works too much like an strategy rpg when it comes to explore, what I mean is, once we get to a new area, normally something happens there (automatically), we fight or do whatever we have to do, and then we are ready to leave because there is nothing left to do, we can go and explore once we are done if we want, but there is no need to do that because there is nothing left to do, in a typical rpg first of all we have to explore, then something happens, and then we leave. And this is even more disappointing when we see the cool world that was created for the game, there are places that we are never going to visit and that look superb. This problem is not as bad as it sounds, but is disappointing in the end.

Replay Value:
Another weak point, because while the game is long (it took me more than forty hours to beat) there is barely any replay value, in fact, I tried to go back sometimes to see if there was something else to do but it wasn’t, well, yes there are some small secret here and there and there are Arenas with special items in some places, but true secrets like in other rpgs sadly cannot be found here, too bad because I wanted to keep playing when it was over.

As a result:
Sony’s decision to take this game to Europe was an incredible surprise, and unlike what happened with Wild Arms 3, Twilight of the Spirits is an amazing game from the beginning to the end, in my opinion it lacks ambition because it could have been more spectacular with such a deep and interesting plot, and the gameplay is disappointing sometimes, as well as some of the characters, and it lacks replay value, but with such an engrossing plot, who cares?. Twilight of the Spirits is truly a must.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/04