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All Glam and No Substance

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have never written a review before, but I feel that I must warn off anyone thinking of getting this game before they waste 30-40 hours of their life. This is one of the least enjoyable games I have ever played. The worst thing about this game is that it is just intersting enough to keep you playing, while never giving any real satisfaction from the experience. The voice acting is absolutely terrible, the characters personalities seem to come right out of some cheesy teen flick, and the endless battles quickly become tedious. There are NO NEW ARMOR OR WEAPONS in the game, period. They try to make up for this lack with some lame weapon upgrades, such as a damiond coating, that must be equipped to improve each characters attack power. Really, how do you apply a daimond coating to a sword? There are barely any treasure chests at all to find in this game, and most just have spirit stones and the same items you buy in the shops. The game is super easy until the final boss, whom I had to spend hours leveling up to defeat. Finally, the story could have been interesting if the dialouge between the humans and deimos had not been so completely unbelievable and two-dimensional. Any comparisons between this game and Shining Force or Final Fantasy Tactics are purely aesthetical, as those two games are some of my favorites of all time. In any area other than graphics this game falls far short of those two. Apparently gaming companies these days are under the impression that some pretty graphics and a bunch of animated cut scenes make a great game. Sounds kind of like Hollywood.

A Little Long Winded

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 23 / 26
Date: December 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

On a world that depends on magical energy for it's motive power two races vie for control of the scarce source of that power - spirit stones. Humans seek them out to run their maachines, and the Deimos, or demons, seek them because their very nature is magical. Children of a rare Deimos/Human relationship two brothers who were seperated at birth are drawn into a web of conflict that makes them mortal enemies - each raised by a different race, each sworn to defend their own by killing the opposite. Kharg and Darc are their names and this is the story of how they discovered that there are even worse enemies out to destroy them both.

The game is a standard RPG in format, but shifts the player back and forth between Darc's demon quest abd Kharg's human one. As the game builds the player can select characters for battles, and chose how individuals will develop skills. The plot meanders back and forth across the face of the world in carefully orchestrated fashion, the only variable being how many random conflicts one finds. You need a large number of these, since money and spirit stones are extremely scarce commodities. So hard to find that their acquisition will become the primary fixation of the game.

The reason for this is that you have to stop fighting and actually pick up your winnings during the battle, rather than receive a lump sum payment. As a player who likes to acquire new weapons and skills, I found this irritating - too often you leave a titanic struggle with almost nothing to show for it. The other big flaw in the game is that it is completely linear. The game makes sure that you always do the right thing in the right order, which limits its replayability. Many people are comfortable with this kind of game, but I find that, once you taste freedom, you don't want to head pack.

But most of my issues with Arc the Lad have to do with playing it right after playing Final Fantasy X-2. The result is that I became acutely aware of it's shortcomings. Of course, FFX-2 was created to be an extravaganza, and Arc the Lad was developed to be something less - just another decent, playable RPG. Thus the plot, which is really adequate for an RPG, comes of as glaringly tepid and character development seems sketchy and archetypical. Yet, had I played this a year ago I would have liked it much more. In any case, Arc the Lad is quite playable, even if it fails to meet the compelling quality of some of the releases of the past few years.

Tries to achieve, but simply falls flat.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: February 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Arc the Lad:TOTS could've been a great RPG, but it's held back by its clear shortcomings, and simply turns out mediocre.

The Good: Good dual-character switching storyline, some interesting characters, strange battle system.

The Bad: Many boring flat characters (with the exception of Darc and Maru), Incredibly predictable and cliched storyline, drags on for far too long, battles become boring, takes a long time to get into, mediocre graphics, lame soundtrack, terrible spirit stones system, no new weapons to get.

In the end, Arc the Lad could've been so much more but it simply isn't. It's not worth the time nor the effort. Skip this RPG.

Not bad...as a stand-alone.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: April 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In comparison to Arc the Lad I & II, this game was disappointingly typical. It's a little drawn out, with a very predictable plot. A real disappointment after the amount of fun I had with the first two, and the Arena.

It's an OK game in itself, minus the fact that the voice acting is atrocious, but if you're looking for the fun packed into the original two, don't buy it. If you want something to vaguely amuse you as a game, go ahead.

good but not keeping up with hack

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 10
Date: July 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

this game is good but u should go with hack the bad thing about arc the lad is for one the battle system is very boaring and the game is hard to understand but waht it does have is good sounding rpg music and the graphics are pretty good but overall it gets 3 stars because at least they tried but i should say save ur money for the hack series much better game.

Could have been executed better.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Overall this game has a good story and many surprises. However the graphics, battling system, and the characters are flawed. First let me begin with the graphics, they're not the worst I've seen, however they certainly aren't the best and they can look a bit cheesy (An example would be Kharg's pony-tail, it is a bit weirdly shaped). The same thing goes for the voice acting and battle voices (thank God you can turn them off). After a while I began to notice that all of the cut scenes went on too long. If not, they were uncalled for. Whenever you hear someone speak during a cut scene, their dialogue is cheesy and overacted because of the poorly-chosen voice actors. I wish I could have skipped them even though they contained "important" story information. However, the game doesn't present the option of skipping them.
As for the story, this game is about the clash of two races (deimos and human) fighting for an energy source (spirit stones) and the dominance of the world. In the game you start out as Kharg, a human prince who lives in a boring little town named Yewbell. His mother, the queen of this town, has kept many secrets from him, such as the whereabouts of his father. There's a strange stone lying around his house and when Kharg comes near it, a wind spirit comes out and speaks to him.
After going on a few quests the story switches over between main characters to Darc, a half-deimo living in Orcoth, a deimo ruled city. Darc has been enslaved by Geedo a giant toad-like woman who treats him very badly. However, Geedo is not the only one who treats him badly, everyone in Orcoth does since he isn't a full-blood Deimos. Darc came here with his father (a full-blooded deimos). He was being chased by Drakyr (winged monsters) and died immediately after the chase. Darc hid his father's remains in the ruins of a church adjacent to Orcoth. His father was carrying a mysterious stone that Darc also hid in his grave. The stone calls out to him sometimes and it says that he is the spirit of the wind.
The story of this game is probably the best aspect it has to offer. Unfortunately, the game designers didn't exploit their good story-writing and even punished you for looking into the story. I say this because the cut scenes are really hard to watch without gagging, or at least putting your television on mute. I can't stress enough how bad the voice actors are (they're about on par with Power Rangers). Another problem that plagues this game, is the story presentation (text boxes and cut scenes). Text boxes in my opinion are a poor way of presenting the story. It isn't very entertaining to read text over and over, when you could be battling demons or doing some other activity. Another thing games do is that they make the string of text boxes go on way too long, this game is no exception. So really this game (and many other games that are not careful about how they use their text boxes) force you into skipping through them and after a while become an annoyance (unless you are the most patient person on Earth). I used to see cut scenes as a happy medium for story presentation because they're more entertaining or impressive. I say this because they are more visual like a movie rather than a book. However, once again I've been proven wrong by Arc the Lad just because of how poorly they're executed.
The battle system is flawed because of just how annoying it is to battle. Instead of magic points there are spirit stones which you have to buy instead of recharging them. All of your character's regular attacks are somewhat ineffective to kill the enemy, (however the enemy's attacks are also pretty weak). So you're forced to resort to special skills/magic if you want to make even a dent in the enemy's defenses. I would have no problem with this except that these skills cost a lot of spirit stones and spirit stones cost money. That means that you will be running out of spirit stones pretty often. 75% of your money will have to be devoted to spirit stones, if you make it a habit to refill your character's magic reserves often. Another flaw in the battle system is just how long it takes to go in and out of battle. You could spend twice as much time going in and out of battle than in any other RPG, (Final Fantasy, Earthbound, etc.). Instead of random encounters or enemies running up to you on the map, you engage in battle every time you go to a location on the map that doesn't have to do with the story. For example if you go from Geedo's house to Orcoth, there's a midway point in between them that's not part of the story that you have to go through to get to Orcoth. So that means that every time you go to Orcoth, it inevitably leads you into a battle.
Since there isn't much motivation to train your characters (I've never found a boss I really had to level up for), you'll spend more time fleeing than actually battling, unless the battle is required for you to advance in the story (a.k.a. quests). All of the quests get repetitive after a while since they're the same two layouts over and over again. The first quest layout is set up like this - insert location here, insert enemy here, insert available characters here, insert story here, go to location X with characters, fight enemy, advance in story, repeat. Second layout for quests don't have anything to do with battling. All you do is look for triggers (such as talking to a particular person) that are very hard to find. At times you might be forced to look at an online guide (buying a guide for this game would be a waste of money).
Another annoying aspect of this game is the characters. Almost all of the characters are poorly fleshed-out or they overreact in every emotional situation or they're whiny or weak in battle or just plain stupid looking or all five put together. In my opinion, having likable main characters is essential to all games because you're stuck with them for the whole game and have to follow them around, and watch their reactions to story events (however stupid they may be). Even if you can see past the flaws in the characters you notice that they all have really weird names (Kharg, Darc, Desimo, Delma, Paulette, Lilia, Choco, Maru, Volk, Tatijana, Bebedora, Diekbeck, etc.). In my opinion, this game has a good story, but everything else is poorly done.
Final Grade: C-

Good game, combat gets very repetitive

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The story to this game progresses quite nicely and alternating story lines add to the interest. The combat, however, becomes quite repetitive after a while and starts to detract from the game. The use of voice acting is also quite inconsistent, with some cut-scenes using voice and others using text in seemingly the same sorts of situations.

OK on its own... big let down for fans

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I own all of the Arc the Lad games and have played through 1 & 2, I still haven't bothered beating three. When I heard this game was coming out I had to own it. We bought it and I started playing. First impression was, "This game is awesome!" but after playing for a while I lost my enthusiasm. I went ahead and finish the game and now I have a slight distaste for the game. I'll explain what I liked and what i didn't.

The best part I would say is the battle system. It is a tactics turn based system which is true to the original Arc the Lads, but it adds a three dimensional element to it which makes it even better than the originals. The game looks really nice too. The stages and towns look beautiful and the world maps are again reminiscent of the originals.

The things I didn't like were the story and the character and the ending. The game focuses around two brothers who are both half human and half daemos. One is accepted by humans and the other isn't accepted by anyone. This would be an excellent setup and it added to my initial enthusiasm, but as the game went on I started to empathise with Darc and the Daemos and despise Karg and the humans. I still had to play as the humans though for what is at least half the game. The two teams only come together for the final stage and never resolve the conflicts between them. I found that annoying. The game ends with human and daemos still hating each other and the "spirits" gone. Since both human and daemos have great need of the spirit stones it is suggested that the "twilight of the spirits" might lead to war. I felt like that should be the real beginning of the game rather than the end.

For the people who have been following the series there is no data load from three. You don't see anyone from any of the original games at all, though they are mentioned occasionally. Anything related to the earlier games felt more like an Easter Egg then anything important to the plot. I wouldn't mind any of this if they were planning on continuing this series in the same way they did Arc the Lad 1 & 2, in fact that would be awesome, but I don't see them doing that.

Just as itself this game could only be called decent, but when paired with the original three it couldn't even be called that. I can't say the game isn't worth playing, but be prepared to be disappointed often by the anti-climatic plot.

good but not keeping up with hack

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: July 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

this game is good but u should go with hack the bad thing about arc the lad is for one the battle system is very boaring and the game is hard to understand but waht it does have is good sounding rpg music and the graphics are pretty good but overall it gets 3 stars because at least they tried but i should say save ur money for the hack series much better game.

Arc is back!.. Well... Sorta...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: November 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A lot of people compare this game to Final Fantasy... I have no idea why THIS IS THE ARC THE LAD SERIES NOT THE FINAL FANTASY SERIES. So let's see this game as it is... as in... not final fantasy. Before they came in ATL through ATL III tied in so well. As a matter of fact you would swear ATL and ATL II were the same game, only a continuation. This game doesn't exactly do this... sure there are references to make you know that the other games haven't been completely forgotten but it just doesn't tie in as well as the others. As a matter of fact we have some variation in enemy's names and towns which stayed the same on the games 1-3. This will disappoint people who have played and loved (like me) the first games. People who haven't played any of the games from the Arc series won't catch the references to the earlier games and may enjoy it more thanks to the lack of disappointment. I am not saying anyone who has played the early games wont' enjoy this game, it is a good game. Graphics are excellent (that's right Chris the graphics were EXCELLENT). But as we all know. Graphics don't the game. It is almost essential that an RPG has a good story and this one has a very good one. It is pretty original, and the way we see both sides of the story was absolutely genius. The dialogue was good, besides Kharg's cheesy lines (I just consider it part of his personality) and the voices are awesome. As in all the ATL games the battle's a good one, it's debatable if the battle system has been improved or not, but it's still an awesome system. The characters are awesome, especially on the Demios side. []Deimos' existence didn't really make sense because it seemed as if they were saying they came to be after ATL but I hadn't' seem them in any other games, or even them being referred too... But I guess I said it doesn't tie in as well as the other games. If you read my ATL collection review you know that I love Tosh.... But Tosh lovers will have to simply settle with his unnamed grave. Awesome game. Good character development (especially Darc), good graphics, good battle system, this makes a good... nay. Awesome game.

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