System: Playstation 2
Developer: Cattle Call
Story:
This is the story of twin brothers who were separated as babies and grew up living two very different lives. One was raised as human with a hatred of Deimos. The other raised as a Deimos "wannabe" raised to hate humans. Both humans and Deimos use Spirits stones in their society and want to control all the Spirits stones so the other doesn't get them. Both species want to wipe out the other and Emperor Darkham wants to take advantage of those dark feelings and rule the world himself. Unfortunately, there is a higher power pulling the strings behind the scenes called the Divine Ruler (who later turns into the Lord of the Black Abyss). Can the Deimos and humans put their differences aside and join forces to defeat evil and save the world for both species? You'll have to play the game to find out.
Story Score:
Characters:
There are 2 main characters and parties that you control and play. The story moves back and forth between the brothers and their stories. The supporting characters for both policies are pretty similar so both parties play pretty much the same. The hatred for Deimos from the humans; and humans from the Deimos is built up for believable. The reasons why Darc (Deimos brother) hates the humans and wants to rule the Deimos over the humans and why Kharg (human brother) wants to protect the humans from the Deimos are understandable from the things they've gone through in their lives. When the brothers finally get together and meet each other you're hoping for the best but things don't turn out that way for a while.
Each character has a personality with likes and hatreds all around. The parties are so similar that it would have been nice to have a little bit more differences between the human/Deimos counterparts. when you get to the final boss the best characters to take in to the battle are not the ones you'd think of at first. When your parties combine which characters you take in to battle make for some interesting exchanges in dialogue.
Character Score:
Game Mechanics:
The battle is a turned based but allows for movement so characters can get behind enemies to do more damage. That means you need to think about where/how you're going to attack but also where/how the enemies are going to attack as well. It is sort of open world with the player deciding where they want to go next. There are extra areas that are not required by the story but can be accessed for experience and loot.
There are four functionalities that I would have liked to have had. 1) I would have liked the ability to save when I'm on the world map. You can only save at designated save points so if you venture too far away from one (or you're hurting and in need of help badly) you've got to figure out what spot on the map has a save point and then work your way back there. You can always escape a battle and not fight if you don't want to but it's annoying to backtrack a way to save before you get to a new area.
2) the camera is fixed in battles. There were so many times that I wanted to swing the camera around to get a better look at the battlefield. Maybe it was to make sure I'm directly behind the enemies (some enemies are hard to tell) or maybe it was to see my character better because they were behind a bunch of other characters or obstacles. Since you can't do that, lining up the perfect shot was difficult at times.
3) There are too many skills to learn. I did a bunch of grinding in this game and yet I still didn't learn all the skills that my characters could. I even had a character or two that didn't learn all the star levels either. I tried to use those characters as much as I could, especially towards the end, but they never did earn much experience or skill points compared to the other characters. When I finally decided which ones I was going to take in to battle I was worried that they weren't a high enough level to really be that usefully. While I'm all for games giving you lot of skills/things for your characters to learn I think they should all be attainable by the time you reach the final boss and without having to grind to learn them.
4) comparative inventory management. I would have liked a better way to compare new equipment with what I currently had. The best way I could find was to take an item off and highlight the new item to see how much it increased/decreased stats and then do the same with the item I had one. I know there was a replace option but the info it gave me wasn't enough for me to feel like I was making an informed decision.
Game Mechanics Score:
Art Design:
The art design seems very simple by today's standards. This is a Playstation 2 game and the system wasn't as powerful as gaming systems are now. I do think it holds up very well and is not jarring to the eyes to look at it. Just very simple and clean looking with very little embellishments to the scenery. The colors were vibrant or muted, depending on the environment and didn't fall in to the cliché of matching the elemental attacks that each character could have (i.e. water attack = blue clothing, etc.). I think it looked good and didn't interfere in the game play even if not inspiring.
Art Design Score:
Overall Impressions:
I'm so glad I went back and replayed this game so I could finish it. The story has a nice message and the game play was fresh and allowed for experimentation so you could play any way you wanted to. It's a game that holds up in all categories and I think should be played by everyone that wants a good experience. It's not ground breaking or phenomenal in the game industries but very much worth a play.
Overall Impressions Score:
If you want to see how badly I played the game here's a link to my YouTube playlist for Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits
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