Arc the Lad Collection

"As they say, two's company, three's a crowd..."

Arc the Lad Collection is a massive box set that at one time cost more than a Playstation console. Is it worth it? A resounding “Yes”, overall. The box includes Arc the Lad parts one through three, Arc Arena (an adjunct to Arc II), and for the eternal fanboy, a “making-of” disc chronicling both the original production and more recent localization, a gorgeous hardcover manual, and an “Omake box”, containing punch-out standees of all major characters from all three games, analog control stick covers, and a memory card box. But enough of the commercial, on to the review...

Arc the Lad
The origin of the 2D turn-based combat strategy-RPG fantasy series introduces Arc, a young lad, fatherless, setting out to find his destiny, facing off against an ages-old menace, gradually increasing in strength to challenge the ultimate evil... Sound familiar? Ever played an RPG? Well, they say there are only truly seven stories in the whole world, or something like that, so it’s no surprise that it plays on this oh-so basic theme that we’ve come to know and love. Yet even built on this, Arc the Lad handles the motif in a fresh, original way, so it never feels like you’re just going through the motions. The major enemies, story-wise, are generally human, with believable motivations. The heroes are extremely varied in their personalities and abilities, and each one’s character is fleshed out fairly well, so it’s easy to empathize with them.

Graphically, this is 2D done right. The characters are not overly pixelated, and are animated well enough that you can clearly make out their actions. Though squat and round-headed, the characters are better proportioned than the common super-deformed look. The environments are not overly exciting, sometimes looking kind of flat, but given their existence largely as a grid to plan your movements about, they do not need to be emphasized in this type of game. Items and equipment have individual icons, which are relatively clear. Where the graphics are kind of sad is in the cut-scenes. My understanding from the making-of CD, however, is that this was the first RPG to include cut-scenes with better than in-game graphics, so it deserves some kudos just for that, but really, the movies are slow, boring, and kind of washed-out.

The game’s sound established a new plateau as well. Each character has recorded voice tracks that differ for attacking, finishing off an enemy, getting hit, dying, blocking, and for every special move. The voice acting suits each character well. Of course, it’s all in Japanese, though some English as spoken by non-English speaking Japanese actors, but this only adds to the coolness for us western gamers. If they dubbed it, I think it would have sounded ridiculous. The music was too jazzy for my taste, especially in the field (i.e. between battles) and a little high-pitched, so if I had a headache it would make it worse.

The gameplay is, of course, where the game shines, due to the variety afforded by the unique characters. The battles proceed at a good pace: not too slow, not too fast. The variety of actions is astounding. Each player character has up to seven unique spells or special moves, all in theme with the character. This variety keeps in-battle strategizing interesting throughout. Moves are obtained in different ways for different characters. For example, one character has to find new instruments to get new moves, while spell-casters learn them by leveling up. Different characters have different ranges of motion, jumping ability (determines height they can climb in one turn), throwing and catching power, etc, that grow as the character levels up and can be affected by equipment. Actions are selected using an 8-way iconic interface that, once you get used to it, lends a certain rhythm to inputting actions.

The game progresses mostly linearly, but towards the end you gain more freedom of movement, and can choose to pursue several side-quests that can earn you special items and abilities. Yet despite this, the game is pretty short, clocking in at only about 10 hours to get through the main storyline. If you pursue the side quests, which can get a little long and tiresome after a while, you can get the playtime closer to 20 hours. There was a time, perhaps, when this was an acceptable length for a game of this nature, but the history of RPGs has set a standard of 40+ hours that makes this a little disappointing. One other weakness of the game is that your movement is extremely limited in the field, often giving you no control whatsoever. I can only recall one area that you could walk freely in. Also, the pace between battles is painfully slow at times, such as every time you board or disembark from your airship, whose dawdling docking sequence could have been done away with. Most of your between-battle movement is done on a literal map, selecting only the country you want to go to next. Finally, the game ends rather abruptly, and if you didn’t have the sequel on hand, it might leave you oddly frustrated and quizzical that that’s all there was.

Arc the Lad II & Arc Arena
This installation is the pièce de resistance of the collection. Graphically, there are no significant improvements over the first game, with the exception of the cut-scenes, which are vastly improved. The soundtrack is still pretty jazzy, though slightly less annoyingly so than the first game. The strong points of the first game remain: the variety of characters, the individualization of each one’s abilities, the way this plays into strategy in battles, the pace of battles, and the voice tracks for each character. One thing that is taken away is the iconic graphical interface for choosing commands during battles, being replaced with a simple menu system instead. Also, the number of characters that can enter a battle is now less, so you can no longer have every character participating in the same battle. The additions to this game, however, really set it from the first.

First, the cast of characters is more than doubled from the first game. This game is a true sequel, and picks up shortly after where the first game ended. The point of view of the story, however, is entirely fresh, beginning with a new hero experiencing the political situation that was revealed in the first game in an entirely different way. For instance, the heroes of the Arc I are portrayed as villains, due to the propaganda machine of the political regime we saw forming in the first game. A new cast of characters is introduced slowly, and the previous heroes come into the picture bit by bit. Due to the ability of one of the new characters to tame monsters, you can expand your roster even further by including them in your party, where they can level up and improve their abilities in the same way as other characters.

The game is also enhanced by the addition of a job system, where you can visit guilds in every major town and pick up a variety of tasks to perform, earning merit points and bounties. These jobs give you invaluable opportunities to develop your characters, and flesh out the game world significantly. Jobs are not always easy, and you will not succeed at all of them in all likelihood. The only drawback is that in pursuing jobs, you can lose track of the main storyline at times. Other gameplay additions include the ability to move freely in towns and on maps and the ability to level up items and equipment, and also combine some of these into more powerful items, or add additional effects at smithies. The number of items, weapons and armor in this game is phenomenal, and can get frustrating since you have a limited number of slots to hold them (though we’re talking around 40 slots).

Arc Arena, an adjunct to Arc II, further broadens the gaming experience by providing a forum to build up your captured monsters in variety of tournament battles. You can spend lots of time in this side-game, and can earn many important items that are only available in this way, then transfer these to the main game using a memory card. The two-player mode lets you pit your monsters against a friend’s, as well as trade monsters with others.

The major selling point of Arc II, though, is that it clocks in at an astounding 70 to 100 hours of gameplay , depending on how many jobs you undertake and whether you pursue the side quests or not. These are quality hours too. The story remains riveting, the action endures, and it all leads up to an amazingly satisfying finish, after a truly challenging final boss.

Arc the Lad III
They just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could they? Sigh... After the amazing experience that is Arc II, this last chapter is sadly disappointing.

Meant to take the series into 3D, the graphics end up less appealing that in the first two installments. The animation lacks the depth to provide a real 3D feel. The spell effects are unimpressive, and the battle grid seems really blocky compared to the first games, by which I mean that movement feels stilted and choppy. What’s saddest, though, is that when you run into characters from the first games, you’ll really wish you hadn’t, because they look so terrible in comparison to their earlier configurations. The game attempts to present characters in more human proportions, but with the characters who were initially designed as shorter and rounder, they look more like muppets. The new characters for this game don’t share this absurdity, fortunately.

Speaking of new characters... Alec, the new hero, and his friends annoy more than they endear, especially Lutz, who is about as cool as his name sounds. His constant attempts at joking, false bravado, and inappropriate vocabulary are supposed to be part of his appeal, but instead just make you wish he’d grow up and stop bothering you. Other characters seem to express their character flaws too often for too long also. There are many, many scenes where the dialogue is interminable and leave you repeatedly pressing the advance button to get through it as soon as you can. They are all meant to be young, so the characterization in that respect is appropriate, but they dwell on their insecurities and ego defense mechanisms far too much for player enjoyment.

In terms of gameplay, Arc III picks up on the job system of its immediate predecessor and expands it into the central element of the game. The story advances primarily through jobs, but it doesn’t do so quickly enough. Many times, the party has to dawdle in a region, engaging in various battles for different purposes, just to get the key job that pushes the story along to appear. Decent variety in jobs exists. Though most involve a battle, many have other objectives, requiring memory, quick button pressing, or occasionally a small amount of thought. The amount of dialogue that accompanies each job, though, quickly becomes tiresome.

Item combining also makes a return, becoming a vital way to produce new items, weapons and armor. However, the combining system is very rigid, resulting too often in junk items. Successful combining requires you to identify certain specific patterns in successful creations, but even this only gets you so far, and your valuable items are used up quickly trying to discover new ones. You’d think that since one of your characters is supposed to be a weapon combining genius, she’d give you a little help. Monster ranching appears again, but in card form this time. Monsters can be transformed into cards and summoned in later battles.

Generally, the battles are too easy. Your spells grow quickly in strength, and are obtained simply through leveling up. Very few battles present a challenge to your survival. Monster summoning generally wipes out your enemies quite easily. Your MP stock is low at the start of the game, but you will soon reach a point where you can cast powerful spells with reckless abandon. Battle quality is also reduced from Arc I and II. You can now only have 4 characters fighting at a time, down from 7+ from the first game. Though each character has different attack spells, their effects are very similar for the most part.

The inclusion of voice tracks for different character actions remains, and the voice acting, though sometimes annoying, at least fits the characters, who are also annoying, well. Unfortunately, they either couldn’t or didn’t try to get the same voice actors for characters from the first two games, and the difference is glaringly painful. Occasionally a previous character will join the party for a time, but they are much less fun in battle than they used to be, losing many of their prior abilities.

In this third installment, it is a lot harder to care about the characters or events. Arc II finished with a bang, but Arc III enters, overstays and goes out with a whimper. It would have been better to keep the good name of Arc the Lad intact, but someone just didn’t know when to quit. In this case, the third time was definitely not a charm.

Summary
Arc I shone in its memorable characters, wonderful variety of their abilities in battles, voice tracks, and its treatment of a 2D world. Battles were riveting, called for actual strategy much of the time, and added to the storyline. Musically, it left something to be desired, and its cut-scenes were atrocious. Also, the abrupt end after relatively few hours was a little dumbfounding.
Score: 8/10.

Arc II took the best of Arc I and expanded it into a vast, deep, truly memorable experience, compounded further by the inclusion of Arc Arena. The storyline and characters set a gold standard for what an RPG should be. Its only shortcoming is the possibility of losing sight of the main story in the pursuit of perfection in the job system.
Score: 9.5/10

Arc III, though a little interesting in its treatment of the aftermath of the events of Arc I and II, was sorely disappointing after the last game, presenting no real advancement and some falling behind in terms of graphics, gameplay, voice acting, and character development.
Score: 6/10

Overall, I give the collection a 9/10, reflecting the overall satisfaction with the gaming experience, and the appreciation of the high-quality extras included, meaning the hard bound full-color glossy manual, the “making-of” CD and the Omake box, not to mention the fantastic localization by Working Designs.

Rent or buy?
Ah, the eternal debate. As much as I loved the experience of playing this collection, I know it’s not for everyone. For this reason, and given the price of the whole package, I would encourage anyone to rent first. Play Arc I for a couple days, and if you like what you see, by all means go out and get your own copy. Arc II’s length alone makes repeated rentals to get through the game unfeasible.

Props to Working Designs for this ambitious project, on which they took a risk and delivered a fantastic package, to the benefit of hardcore gamers across the continent. At the time of Arc the Lad’s original development, States-side Sony wanted nothing to do with 2D games, choosing to emphasize the leap made by the Playstation from previous consoles, and woe be to hardcore game afficionados. Fortunately, the Japanese market was still wide open to good games regardless of their particulars.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/03, Updated 07/20/03