Arc the Lad

"Working Designs' darkest days right here."

Arc the Lad…where to start? I guess I will start this review by saying that I really did give this game a chance. In fact, I gave it more than that. When I started playing this game, I said to myself “Man, this is going to be a great game,” I really wanted to like this game and get into it. As the game started, I felt just that. The game started off pretty great. I thought battle system was pretty unique, though it looks a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics (not sure which game came out first though) and the game just seemed fun. But around the same time that my seventh hour of game play sunk in, I found myself hating this game more and more every second that I spent in front of it. I guess this isn't a terrible game and it might be worth investing in depending on what type of game you like, but it just doesn't compare to other RPG giants or even other games like Lunar from the same company, Working Designs.

Arc the Lad was released only in Japan, never brought here to North America (fortunately and unfortunately), however it can be found in the North American release of Arc the Lad Collection, which also features three other games of this series and boat load of bonus material (it's really quite cool!). In this game you play as Arc, who possesses the power to stop the impending destruction of mankind. Arc, along with his friends Kukuru, Poco, Tosh, Gogen, and Iga, must quest to unseal the power of the Ark. This game is relatively short. The first time I beat the game it took me right around fourteen hours of playing, and that was with a good amount of unnecessary training.

A good portion of those fourteen hours went into fighting. When asked about the battle system in this game, I give a shrug and say “Meh”. The best way to describe the battle/armor/magic/weapon systems in this game is to compare them to Final Fantasy Tactics. As I said though, I'm unaware whether FF: T or Arc the Lad came out first, so I won't make any claims of copying. This game has the grid system in which you move your characters around on a grid style map depending on how far they can walk per turn. Using items, casting magical spells, and using items depends on where you are in relation to enemies and companions. For example, if you are using a ranged magical attack, there is a certain range in which you can cast the spell and a certain range until that spell is useless. Your ranges for any action and enemy ranges are displayed with shading grids on the map.

Each player is equipped with multiple magical spells. The spells are pretty standard. They cost MP to use, and if you don't have enough MP, you cannot use them. One thing that is different about spells in this game is that instead of learning new, more powerful spells, your old spells just gain levels and become stronger. Your spells will gain levels at certain points when your character gains a level, regardless of how often you use the spell or if you've ever used it at all.

There really are not armors or weapons per say, only accessories. This fact makes the games battle system seem extremely lame compared to other RPG's. I mean, no weapons or armor? Come on! And even the accessories are pretty lame. Before every battle you are asked if you would like to configure your accessories, which was a nice feature however. These accessories will increase slightly some of your attributes, or make you immune to poison, sleep, etc. I was also disappointed in the fact that there was really a holy grail of accessories that is extremely hard to find like the Excalibur II from Final Fantasy IX or the Goo King Sword of Breath of Fire III. Had Working Designs added this, the game would have seen a lot more replay value and play time from the average player, as things like this are usually fun to try and get.

Enemies themselves have very lack luster designs to them. There are only about ten or fifteen variations of the same enemy, each one no different from the last except a few minor physical differences and statistical differences. There are a few bosses, not very many, who also don't have very exciting designs. When a character dies in battle, an elaborate scene appears where the character is beamed up, I guess you can say. It's really lame.

The thing I hate most about the battle system is that once one character gets a slight edge over the others by leveling up, that character will most likely start to get farther and farther ahead of the other characters in terms of levels and stats. This is what happened when I played this game, and my strongest character turned out to be around level sixty, while my second strongest was around thirty. Since the battle scenes are extremely boring and not very fun to play, leveling up your straggling characters is more of a chore than any fun at all.

At the end of a battle, a screen will come up showing each characters performance during the battle. This screen will show how many enemies each character defeated and how much experience that character gained, and this results screen will also tell you what items you received during the fight.

There isn't a whole lot of searching to do in this game. The map is not a free-roaming map, meaning that there are only certain places you can go to in them. Rarely do you do any actual exploring in this game, rather the storyline and sequence of events is kind of given to you without you having to figure out any puzzles or do any exploring or anything that takes an ounce of brain power. It is really quite disappointing.

Storyline/Characters
This section of the game is no doubt its downfall. I can deal with the games lacking graphics and the flawed battle system, but this game is just terrible in terms of storyline and character designs. From these parts of the game, it's obvious that Working Designs wanted to focus on the worst part of every RPG, the battles.

When I play games like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, and Lunar, famous RPG's, the main thing that separates these games from Arc the Lad is the fact that they have tremendous storylines. Those games have storylines that I think would be multi-million dollar hits at the box office, hell I'll even admit that some of them bring tears to my eyes. Arc the Lad on the other hand, doesn't seem to focus on a storyline and focuses more on having your characters battle it out with monsters continuously. Generally the storyline in this game is very predictable and very boring. I even rolled my eyes and sighed in disgust at some parts, just because they were so predictable and lame.

The storyline is also very straightforward. There wasn't a second in this game where I didn't know where to go or what to do. As I said above, there are no towns to explore, or castles to loot, or even grasslands to roam around on. In this game you only go from point A to point B to point C and fight some monsters in between.

Arc the Lad is role-playing game. You play the role of different characters. You are supposed to envision yourself as one of these characters and put yourself in their shoes. I cannot do that with Arc the Lad. The characters in this game are just plain terrible. I played the whole game through and I know very little about each character besides obvious things. I don't know their personalities well and I just can't get interested in them. The characters are very one-dimensional and flat.

Graphics
Being that this was an early release for the Playstation and being that it was Working Designs first shot at this series, the poor graphics are acceptable, but that's really stretching things. The graphics in this game look more like a pretty advanced set of SNES graphics. There are very few movie scenes, and when there is, the graphics in them don't differ a whole lot from the normal game play graphics. The shading done in this game was not very subtle. In fact it was quite obvious and looked very unprofessional. Some parts also seemed to have very blocky animation that wasn't smooth at all. For example, when taking off in your air ship, the door closing, the propellers, and the ship taking off, are everything but seamless.

Audio
The audio is definitely this games strong point, however it's nothing to shout about. There are a few cool tunes, but generally in this game music is pushed aside to make room for…well nothing it seems. The music isn't very prominent in this game, and you won't find me humming any tunes from this game. I feel the same way about the sound effects. They aren't very special and are your basic sounds seen in other games. One unique feature about the game is that there are minimal character voiceovers. When your character misses or picks up an item, they will shout something in Japanese. I don't know what they're saying, but it is a pretty neat idea.

Game Play
I won't say much about the game play in this section since I described most of it up above. If I had to summarize the game play in this game in one word it would probably be “obsolete”. While it's nice to see an RPG that doesn't take fifty hours to complete, it would seem that a lot was sacrificed to achieve such a short game.

Replay Value
Absolutely not! I've played this game just once in order to write this review, and I definitely won't be playing it again. For what is offered in this game, I can name fifty RPG's that have greatly improved on anything in this game. Like I said, everything in it is obsolete. I suppose if you aren't into RPG's too much, this game might have a little more replay value since there is a lot of fighting, but this game just doesn't offer what RPG titans do.

Final Words
Over the few days it took to write this review, I've been trying to decide what number grade to give it. At first I thought, six is a good score. Then I though, “No, I've given sixes to much better games, better make this a five.” After writing the entire review though, I realized how many bad things I've said about it, and I'm sure I could write at least another five hundred words on flaws in this game and finally decided that this game definitely deserved a four. After playing Lunar (also from Working Designs) I had high hopes for this game and really wanted to like it. But as much as I hated to say, buying this game was a big mistake. I'll probably never play this one again, and I can only hope that the series gets better.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/14/06