Luminous Arc

"This game ignores about 10 years of progress in the SRPG genre."

Final Fantasy Tactics. It wasn't the first SRPG but it can be argued that it was the first SRPG to be great. Other games created the genre and got their feet wet before Final Fantasy Tactics. Some were great and became prolific. Games like Tactics Ogre and Front Mission did amazing things. Others weren't so great and faded into obscurity. A certain Tenchi Muyo! game comes to mind. And yes, my reference to an early 90's anime does have merit. I'll get to that in just a second.

To bring all this to a point: While Final Fantasy Tactics is by no means the father of the genre, it is the common reference point that nearly all fans of the genre have here in the United States. It's also a game that is a decade old. Is it wrong of me to expect that a brand new SRPG like Luminous Arc be at least as good?

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Visuals: Dissapointing

The Nintendo DS is not a gameboy advance and it is high time that more companies realize this. The visuals in this game give me less of an idea of what is going on than many gameboy advance games that have a similar presentation. Compared to other Strategy Role Playing Games on the DS causes Luminous Arc to suffer even more. Grainy characters, nigh static back-grounds, no effort at all put into the animations for attacks or to differentiate between various weapons (one sword looks just like the rest of them), terrible animation for spells, and an absolutely absurd 'death' animation that makes it impossible to maintain the suspension of disbelief while you play leave me with a sour taste in my mouth.

Much of the anime-style artwork used for cut scenes is impressive...sadly, if you see one big-boobed anime character you've pretty much seen them all. No points for something that everyone else can do.

Beyond that, there are actual visual glitches that pop up now and then. Nothing that's going to crash your DS or look like an NES game that needs to get blown but it's there. For shame.
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Sound: Initially Surprising ; Eventually dreadful

There is voice acting in this game. A surprising amount of it. When I first started playing I took my time to listen to what these characters had to say. This kind of thing is neato for about a minute. After that I want to be PLAYING my game, not listening to it (Is there some rule these days that you must wait half an hour before you get to play any game? Enough with the epic story intros, let me freaking play!)

After the voices cease to impress me I turned them off and was left with...the most generic music I've ever heard. Honestly, I'm listening to it right now and I can't think of a single thing to say about it that will convey what it sounds like. The music was obviously written seperate to the game development as no one piece of music does a decent job of attaching to any individual event in the game, be it battle or cut scene. It's almost as though the composer was told to leave the room and make a battle theme. Then he came back, gave it to the coders, and was told to leave the room again to make another track. If he even so much as asked what the game was about or to see the script he was beaten ruthlessly. Poor guy.

As for the rest of the sounds effects....meh. It's your typical SRPG fare. Generic chopping sounds and bloops and blurps for spells. I won't knock this game for sucking at what all SRPG's suck at.
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Gameplay: Down right terrible but there is a single bright spot

Read the back of the box. The game does a great job of patting itself on the back doesn't it? The developers were so proud of the 'three control schemes' that they put it as a selling point on the back of the box. 'Wow! You mean I can use the stylus OR the D-pad! Gee whiz!'.

They should have been more proud of putting out a decent product. The game suffers from intense lag in battle. Every time one of your characters comes up in turn order expect to wait a good 2 or 3 seconds before you can do anything. Is the game loading something? If so what?

This game is horribly menu based and there are no ways to fast track any commands. Expect a lot of tedium from this one. What do you want to do? Do you want to attack? Who do you want to attack? You want to attack this guy? Are you sure? Do you want to face a certain direction? Really? Did the developers pay a homeless guy to play-test this game? Did they bother to listen to anyones input?

Much of this game in unintuitive. You'll have to figure out when you're allowed to access certain menus. The shop system is a disaster that tries too hard to mimic better systems without putting for the effort required to make it work.

Level grinding is annoying in this one. It takes a similar map driven progress system ala Final Fantasy Tactics. Only scratch the variety of settings and all battles, even the generic level building ones, are completely static. No random encounters. Would it have been that hard to write the one line of code needed to say '3 random enemies of a similar level to the party placed randomly in the level'?

This game DOES however have online play. And it's really good. Like...for a person like myself who hates online play...I was impressed. The online play doesn't vary that much from the single player game but it's well organized and you're rewarded simply for playing. Even if you are trounced by an enemy you have no business challenging you'll still be given experience and items. Four of the Five points I'm giving this game come from this feature alone.
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Story: Remember than anime reference I made?

I was big into anime when it first started showing up in stores here in the States about 10 years ago. Gundam, Ranma 1/2, The Slayers. Back then it was easy to be in love with anime because it was new, it was different, and it was all good. Companies like Viz and Pioneer only brought over the good stuff. Then they charged $25 per 30 minute VHS but that's besides the point. Nowadays anime is rubbish. Any company will bring over any piece of crap that Japan produces pausing only briefly to do a shaky job dubbing it. This game is a result of this mentality. The entire story reeks of predictable and lame anime garbage. All of the usual suspects are there: The untested but soon to be legendary young hero; his dreary mentor; the mysterious magic girl; the womanizing cool guy who is slightly older than the main character. Jesus, this game is so predictable and cookie cutter that it made me want to take a bath with the toaster oven.

Beyond the characters, the actual tale is just as lame and vapid. A great evil was defeated a long time ago. A group of heros has been assembled to keep the peace. But not everything is as it seems. The hero will team up with mysterious young magic girl to solve the 'mystery'. There was NOTHING in this story that drove me to keep playing. I didn't want to know what was going to happen in the next town. I didn't want to know the outcome of the next battle. I had no reason to keep playing save for learning enough about this game to write a scathing review.

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Final Fantasy Tactics was made a decade ago. It wasn't perfect but it was the start of something great and it laid out the foundation for countless good games. That's why I use it as kind of a benchmark in this review. I don't think that it is unfair to expect an SRPG produced ten years later to be anything more than at least on par with Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm not saying it should be the same game. Only that it should be as thoughtful, well produced, polished, and (need I say it?) fun.

As things stand right now, I'd direct someone to chase down a PSX copy of Hoshigami before I'd recommend this game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/07