Luminous Arc

"Nice Popcorn Entertainment, But Short of Being Great"

Quick Summary

Luminous Arc (or “LA”) is a fantasy-themed strategic turn-based title, with game mechanics and story backdrop bearing strong resemblances to the great PS classic Final Fantasy Tactics (or “FFT”). While it is a welcomed addition to the current DS strategy landscape, one could not help but feel that it is a few notches short of being a truly great title.

General Description

There is nothing new about the gameplay. Other similar titles will be Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis (on GBA), FFTA (on GBA) and the fairly-recent Hoshigami Remix Ruining Blue Earth (on DS). If you are unfamiliar with this genre, the next few paragraphs will hopefully offer some useful insights.

Each mission or battle is played out on a battle map. On this map (grid-format consisting of square tiles), your team (usually about 8 units) will move around and fight it out with enemies on a turn-based format.

Each character/ unit has a specific class, similar to typical fantasy titles. For examples, fighter-types have strong physical offensive power while cleric-types are more suited to support the fights from the rear. While each map may have its unique objectives, the most common one would be to defeat all opposition units.

Besides the usual HP and MP, the game features the now-so-familiar element affinity. Units and equipment are allocated element affinities and these affect actions during battles. A familiar example will be attacks causing higher damages when the attacking and defending elements are on “opposite sides”.

Each unit also possesses special attacks called Flash Drives (similar to Limit Break, Overdrive or Trance in other games) which cause more damage than normal. In addition, some characters may unlock combo-attacks known as Synergy Attacks (which brings to mind the “Triangle Attack” in Fire Emblem) which are even more powerful than Flash Drives. While these make a small difference in defeating some tougher bosses, the battles are by-and-large easy to clear as long as you keep upgrading your equipment.

SRPG veterans may moan about the difficulty level being too easy for LA. For the same reason, newer and casual gamers will not be put off by any steep learning curve. For example, the game is rather forgiving on dead units because they will be auto-revived after the battle ends. This is in contrast to some titles where the unit is lost forever.

Another example is that a unit's HP and MP will be auto-reset to the maximum whenever it levels up. For example, you have a unit with low HP (going to die soon) and with high experience points (going to level up soon). This unit could simply attack an enemy, gain the experience points, achieve the level-up and see the HP go maximum instantly. Similarly, magic-users can go all out and use their spells because once they level up, the MP will be at maximum again.

In addition, there is no need for strategy for most missions. One standard approach is to sit back and wait for the enemies to charge at you. The developers should have polished the enemy AI to make better use of geographical advantages. For me, the only tricky mission is perhaps Mission 19. This says a lot (on the lack of difficulty) because I am no hard-core strategist for either SRPG or RTS.

There is nothing much to mention on the graphics and the music/ sound system. Typical of anime-styled games delivered by the Japanese, the visuals and artwork are of good quality. Only slight problem (it may not be problem, depending on taste) is that the Witches in the game seem to all have an unbalanced chest-to-body ratio. Voice-acting (something which I am not a great fan of) is included for the game, while the music/ sound system is decent, with nothing much to shout about.

There is also a small element of relationship simulation. After each battle, there is an Intermission where the protagonist will be asked to select and speak to one of the teammates. A conversation will pop up and you would be asked to select one reply out of three. Depending on the outcome, you would be given bonus items and your relationship meter with this specific teammate (in the form of heart shape) will grow.

As I am a fan of Fire Emblem (on GBA), I am not impressed with LA's version of relationship sim. First of all, LA focuses on the protagonist. Teammates do not have their own relationship meters with each other. This hampers the growth of the story. Second, there are pre-determined “correct” and “wrong” replies during the conversations. If you choose a “wrong” answer, the bonus item will be foregone and the relationship meter will not grow (or it will grow slower). If you are a fanatic of “perfect scores” or you wish to “perfect your relationships”, I will suggest that you look up a FAQ before attempting the Intermission replies.

The tone of the storytelling is kiddish, something which we have seen commonly on the DS platform. Certain characters in the story are given childish dialogues, so much so that I wish I could just skip the entire storytelling. One guess is that there is a deliberate attempt to capture the younger market. While I am not so much bothered with this issue, I do wish that DS titles could have more mature scriptwriting which is leaned towards older audiences.

Personally, I am against spoilers in reviews. For this one, it is hard not to mention one point: Fighting an evil religious establishment is the main story backbone of LA. However, this is not much of a spoiler as this plot is revealed very early in the game. It is strange why the writers chose to use a story backdrop so similar to earlier stories told in FFT and Breath of Fire (on SNES). Then again, it is getting increasing hard to spin an outstanding story as the benchmark has been raised significantly over recent years.

While other similar titles offer the rotation system of Jobs/ Classes, this one does not offer you the option of switching. This is probably due to the story being too closely linked to each character's class type. Thus, it may be less feasible to offer a flexible class system here. Please be warned that you are not able to freely create your preferred party makeup. So, if you have a crazy idea to create a full party of 8 suave samurais so that you can unleash unstoppable waves of sword attacks at the enemies, I am afraid you are unable to execute that in LA.

Recommendation

Despite being an obvious poorer cousin to the original FFT, LA does provide sufficient entertainment due to its trialed-and-tested formula. As I am quite thirsty for a strategy turn-based title, I quite enjoy this one. Also, this surely beats Hoshigami Remix Ruining Blue Earth where the presentation feels clumsy and the crucial quick-save function is missing. Casual SRPG gamers will like LA, while hard-core veterans may want to give it a miss.

My final score: 7 out of 10. Akin to a good B-grade movie, this title delivers good entertainment but it will probably not keep you up past midnight. In the meantime, I will continue my agonizing wait for FF Tactics A2.

Ray Lightcaster

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/07

Game Release: Luminous Arc (US, 08/14/07)