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One of the most beloved RPG series around, Arc the Lad, has recently made its first appearance on the PS2 with Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. How did it handle the transition? Quite well!
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The world in Arc the Lad is segregated between the strange creatures called Deimos and humans. The two species try to avoid each other, and they don’t get along at all. But, a struggle for valuable spirit stones (which provide the humans with energy and allow the Deimos to cast powerful magic) brings the two worlds together and chaos erupts.
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The game follows two main characters, Darc and Kharg. Kharg is a human from the country of Yewbell, which has recently been battling the Deimos. After discovering he is in possession of the powerful wind stone (or, at least half of it), Kharg embarks on a journey to find the other four stones and keep their power out of the hands of evil. He’ll face hordes of obstacles, learn much about his mysterious past, and battle an evil emperor bent on domination in the process.
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The other half of the wind stone belongs to his brother, Darc. Here’s the catch: Darc is a Deimos. Being born of a human mother, Darc has been rejected all his life as a “Deimos wannabe” and lives a sad, pathetic life as a slave. But, Darc cannot escape his destiny, and when corrupt Deimos come looking for his wind stone, Darc discovers the existence of the other four stones and vows to use their great power to unify the Deimos and destroy the humans!
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Throughout the game you’ll switch back and forth between the two characters and their party of allies. The characters are really interesting, and their struggles and emotional hardships will really get you attached to them. There’s a lot of depth to each character, and they all have their own unique personalities. This is easily my favorite cast of characters since Suikoden III. This great cast of characters ties together an exciting and emotional story, which will keep gamers glued to their PS2 for hours and hours.
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The gameplay is pretty simple in every aspect, but it’s also lots of fun and hard to put down. During a character's turn a shaded blue area represents how far they can move. Once you’ve finished moving you’ve got a variety of options to choose from, such as using special skills/magic, using items or attacking. Where you decide to place your character can be pretty important. A straight attack from the front often gets blocked or dodged, but attacking from the back will prove very effective. Also, if you position your characters just right you can often hit multiple targets in a single attack.
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Each character has a different attack range depending on their weapon. A character with a bow and arrow will have a long, but narrow range, while a character with a sword will have a short, but broad range of attack. Spells, skills and items also have a range, so you’ll have to move around a lot and pay attention to the distance between you, your allies and your enemies.
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As a character gets hit, a tension meter will fill up. Once this meter is full they can do a very powerful combination attack with any nearby ally. After beating monsters around, characters will level up and gain SP. Leveling up does the usual increasing of stats, such as Max HP, and the SP can be used to learn new skills. Once you’ve gained enough SP new skills of higher levels become unlocked, and by distributing the SP you can learn those skills. Each character has a variety of skills, and you’ll have to choose between saving up your SP to learn the most powerful and very expensive skills, and learning a variety of cheaper, but less powerful skills. Spirit stones power your skills and magic, serving as your MP. You can buy spirit stones cheaply at stores, or pick them up after killing monsters. The weapons system in Twilight of the Spirits is also interesting. Instead of buying new weapons you instead buy equipment for each character and equip it to their weapons. Each character can have up to three items equipped to their weapon, and three accessories equipped to themselves. Between the variety of equipment you can attach to your characters and weapons, and the many different skills you can choose to learn, your characters can become pretty customizable. The whole thing is pretty basic, but it works very well.
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My only real complaint with the battle system in Twilight of the Spirits is with the items. When a monster dies it often drops items, such as healing herbs and gold. Now, dropping items is usually a good thing, but unlike most RPGs you don’t automatically pick up items when enemies drop them. You actually have to walk over and pick up the items to get them, and if you kill all the enemies before you manage to pick up everything, you lose it forever. You end up having to use a character's turn to walk up to the items and pick them up, but the entire turn isn’t completely wasted. You can still attack and use skills/magic from the spot you pick the items up from, but it’s often a pain to spend extra time wandering around picking up items while monsters are trying to kill you!
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The world of Arc the Lad is full of colorful and beautiful environments. Everything from dungeons to towns look spectacular, and there’s a lot of detail in the game, from blazing fires to spell effects. The characters are also very well designed, and feature some very interesting and unique looks. Cinematics are of high quality, but the characters move very unrealistically. For whatever reason, characters can never sit still and their arms are always flailing around like they were on fire. Aside from the disturbing character movements during cinematics and other times characters talked, movements were done pretty well. Animation picked up a lot during combat, and characters moved convincingly.
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The soundtrack is very good, and features a variety of tunes. The soundtrack will further pull you into the drama of the Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits experience. It’s worth mentioning, that there are several tracks in the soundtrack that reminded me a LOT of the original Grandia. That’s a compliment, of course. There is also a good deal of voice acting, which is of high quality. More variety would’ve been preferred, since I sometimes grew tired of hearing the same few lines during combat, but what the game offered sounded great, and the voices fit each character well.
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Twilight of the Spirits is a fairly linear game, and you’ll go from city to city following a straight line that connects them. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you, but I will say that the random battles were done very well. If you feel like getting in a battle and spending some time leveling your character, all you have to do is click on one of the dungeons on the map and you’ll encounter a battle (of course, there are scripted battles too). You can keep going to these battles as often as you want, and if you decide you don’t want to fight you can easily run away. This will allow gamers who feel like getting right to heart of the game to continue with the story and avoid the battles, but will also give obsessive fans who love to fight the chance to get their fill.
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Arc the Lad is an excellent RPG, and it appears that the series is definitely heading in the right direction. Although no game is perfect, there were very few aspects of Twilight of the Spirits that I did not enjoy. Fans of the Arc the Lad series, and anyone interested in spending the warm days of summer cooped up in front of their PS2, should definitely give this game a shot.
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