Arc the Lad: End of Darkness

"No, this is the beginning of darkness..."

[OFFLINE REVIEW]
If dumbing down and cross-breeding franchises to draw new audiences with shorter attention spans is the future of the RPG, I fear this is merely the beginning of darkness, and Arc The Lad: End of Darkness is one nail in the coffin.

I've been trying to think of something worthwhile to say about EoD, but aside from a confusing trial-and-error synthesis system and the resurrection of the tried-and-true job story tree, I come up at a loss for words. At least when Square made the “gaiden” (side-story) to FFX they put time and effort into it, streamlining the battle system and using a real mission mode that offered real variety and challenge. Namco is considerably less experienced, and their lack of finesse shows: EoD runs the exact same engine on pretty much the exact same maps (or variations thereof), uses the exact same characters and is generally – or generically and geriatric - boring to tears.

[GAMEPLAY] 4 | 10
As Edda, a generic hunter with special abilities, you'll discover the story (or lack thereof) through a series of ten action-RPG dungeon missions. While this speeds up the game as opposed to the previous Arc games (where even random battles were lengthy tactical battles), it simultaneously takes away the unique charm of the series and digresses backwards into the darkness. If you could just follow the story, EoD might get a better score: however, for every two forays into the story, you'll have to complete two or more aimless missions, as trite and repetitive as possible, followed by a test that really just rehashes more of the same. Thankfully, this means you can breeze through the game with careful planning; EoD is easily beatable within 15 hours.

Of the different jobs you can “look forward to”, there are four variations on hack-and-slash: eliminate (kill everything), arrest (kill everything, along with a specific thing), collect (kill everything on the way to finding something) and defend (kill everything in an effort to protect a specific location). And yeah, then there's the other type, capture (hit something enough WITHOUT killing it, and then press a button). Yes, it's all pretty much the same, rendered more painfully bland by having only one attack button. The only twist is in a choice between four magic/gimmick cards you can use in battle by holding down the R2 button. And all of this done over and over again: locking on with L2, sidestepping with L1 and R1, and then hammering your foes.

The only fun part of this game would've been synthesizing the items you use to do so. Unfortunately, the synthesis system is mostly luck and trial-and-error. This annoyance is amplified by its necessity. There are only so many items you can buy in the stores, and since you can't actually level up, you'll have to make stat boosting equipment and give yourself better ranged attacks to stand a chance against cheap bosses. A few combinations will be given to you by hidden Mofly creatures, but in order to beat the game, you'll have to fiddle for hours.

Finally, the game's claim that there are 24 playable characters (all cameos from previous Arc games) is true, but you'll only be able to use them in the worthless missions (non-story based) or online, which renders their actual value nil. Each does have a unique play style (most of which are similar, but all distinguished by a special skill), and it's probably the one high point of EoD, one only used online.

[STORY] 5 | 10
If the political terrorism angle had been committed to and the ideologies of Truth Sword explored, End of Darkness' story would've blown Twilight of the Spirit's very cliched plot away. However, the problem with having a mission-based game is that the main thrust is constantly interrupted by needless diversions. Rather than allowing the narrative strand to be tangled in plot, it is tangled by pointless hack-and-slash quests. So instead Edda, who for some reason is the last remaining exorcist chooses (for some reason) to become a hunter, where he (for some reason) saves the world from malademons. Choosing to ignore explanations only really works for the Bush administration; here it just exploits the gigantic leaps in logic the story takes.

The dialogue is also appalling: speech often consists of the most mundane statements of the obvious. “I'm here.” “You're here.” “Good, then let's go.” It just stretches the minutes into hours, making an already burdened fetch quest that much more frustrating. The only nice thing about the story is getting to see the characters from TotS again. There's a sense of world building and continuity; such a shame the tension between Deimos and human doesn't really seem to exist anymore.

[GRAPHICS/MUSIC] 3 | 10
Totally recycled from Twilight of the Spirits. Blocky, replete with dull colors and uninspired dungeons. Everything tends to look the same: Square's Saga series got away with bland stories and gameplay by having beautiful visuals; I'm not sure what End of Darkness has going for it. It certainly isn't the music, also mostly recycled and quickly forgotten. Put simply, there's no theme to EoD, nothing that ties a bulky product together.

[CONCLUSION] 4 | 10
Not so much a video game as a shoddily produced spin-off, End of Darkness deserves to be an Arc the Lad game even less than its predecessor Twilight of the Spirits. This is the perfect example of a redundant game, dead on arrival: it offers nothing new, does the old poorly, and runs off repetitive (and cheap) battling. The online component might offer wider variety and replay, but I can't even bring myself to play the extra ten S-class missions in the offline mode, so perhaps not. There are just far better games to waste your time with: I honestly wouldn't even recommend a rental.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/05