Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits
July 20, 2003
I have been looking forward to getting my hands on the final version of Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits ever since I played the preview code Sony provided us. After months and months of waiting, my patience has paid off. Not only has Sony delivered the next version of the Arc series to US gamers–they have exceeded my high expectations to become not only one of the best RPGs of the year, but one of the best games of the year.
For those of you not familiar with this series, please take a moment to read my review of Arc the Lad Collection. While it isn’t necessary to have played the original three Arc the Lad titles to enjoy Twilight of the Spirits, I highly recommend it. Arc the Lad I, II, and III packed in nearly 200 hours of gameplay and came with the excellent Working Designs Translation.
The story in Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits picks up well after the conclusion of part three. Humans and Deimos have been at war for years and they are separated with Humans on one side and the Deimos on the other side. However, both sides seek the great Spirit Stones to provide them with power for their cities and to use their magical abilities with. Both races are trying to obtain more and more Spirit Stones–even if they must invade other lands to get them. While this struggle takes place, two men who were separated at birth, both with strange birth marks on their arms, must find away to save their respective race from destruction…
The game begins with players controlling Kharg, a prince of a smaller nation, who finds his world is turned upside down by the Deimos. Quickly Kharg finds himself as the military leader of his nation and he sets out to get revenge for what the Deimos has done to his people and protect the people in his nation from any other danger. As the first chapter of Kharg comes to a close, players will continue the game by playing Darc. Half man and half Deimos, Darc has spent most of his life as a slave. While Kharg has the luxury of being with his mother, Darc lost his father as a young child and spent the rest of his life, up to this point, as a slave to a wicked witch. Darc begins his journey and by the end of his first chapter will begin to strive for the Deimos to live in peace together and destroy the humans. Eventually these two paths will cross and the two will realize that there is a force at work that will require both of them to defeat.
The story is very good. While I am accustomed to Working Designs delivering a good story–I expected Sony to just release the game and not spend much time ensuring the story was translated well. It is debatable if Working Designs would have done a better job localizing the title… However, the end result from Sony is a superb story that will keep you hooked until the end. That said, I found myself not enjoying skipping the story from Kharg to Darc after each chapter. I got very attached to what was going on and then I had to get attached to another story from the other character. While the past Arc titles had the story change from one group of characters to another, you got to spend much more time with them before switching characters. On the other hand, by switching the story from one character to another, Twilight of the Spirits stays fresh and keeps you playing.
Visually, the Arc series has been taken to the next level. That said, the graphics are not the most spectacular thing I have ever seen. There are some good lighting effects in certain areas. However, a lot fo the textures appear to be lower quality and lacking attention to detail. Besides the environments, the player models have been cleaned up a lot since the preview code. I complained about the characters looking poorly when the camera was in bird’s eye view. This problem has been corrected. While this doesn’t make up for the lower quality textures that appear in the vast majority of the title, the graphics are good enough to help keep you focused on the story.
The gameplay reigns supreme in Arc the Lad. This time around, the old grid system has been removed. In past Arc titles, players move and select actions on a series of grids that appear on the screen. In Twilight of the Spirits, players are given are range to move in, like before, except now you can freely move anywhere and position yourself in any direction. This gives players much more freedom than in past titles. However, I did find it a bit difficult to target enemies. I would really like to see developer Cattle Call include the ability to automatically select the closest enemy to you and navigate to the next closets enemies with just a button press. Another problem in the battle-mode I found was that in order to use a special skill, you have to press triangle and then navigate down to special skill. I would prefer to have a button mapped to this to allow faster access to these skills.
Also, when walking around the game world or in a battle, you are unable to rotate the camera as in past titles. This is especially annoying when in a battle. I have always enjoyed changing the camera up so I can get a better view of the enemies on screen and how I should position myself. As it stands, the player will be unable to do this… which is very frustrating. During my time with the game, I found a few enemies that were blocked by other characters or objects on the screen. This would have been resolved if we could move the camera around as we see fit.
Unfortunately, these are both problems I saw in the preview code that were not fixed before the release of the US version. Although I really would have liked to see these issues resolved, Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits is still a great PlayStation 2 RPG. I may have a few complaints about the title. But these issues can be overlooked. While it can be debated if this title is as good as Arc II, the bottom line is that Twilight of the Spirits is a fun game and should be the best Action RPG released in the US this year. If you are a fan of the genre or looking for a different style of RPG, do yourself a favor and pick this title up. It is well worth your time and money.
CVG Report CardArc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits
Rating: A+
Platform: PlayStation 2
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