Sometimes you go out and you'll wandering around some game store, you stumble upon a game you never heard of or if you had then it was only in passing. Such is the case of today's game, where I somewhat knew of the franchise Arc the Lad from my brother saying that these games are awesome around ten years ago. I blew it off and thought nothing more of it. Then a couple weeks ago, I was wandering around Gamestop when I stumbled upon Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits for $5. I figured I had nothing to lose so I bought it and now let's dig into Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits.
This is a game of two stories for the two main races in this game, humans and deimos or humanized monsters. On the human front is Kharg, the leader of Yewbell's Defense Corps who vows to destroy all deimos after the death of his mentor. On the deimos front is Darc, who vows to be the king of all deimos by being the strongest deimos ever and then destroy all humans. To achieve their goals, they need to find the Five Great Spirit Stones to get the unlimited power necessary. Of course things can never be that simple since the evil Dilzweld Empire also wants the stones to be the greatest country on whatever planet this takes place in.
And I just scratched the surface on the story. It has such rich themes that, while cliched, are told in ways that really fire up the imagination. The main theme is that there are two sides to every story and wow, it goes out of its way to tell it but in a good way. One of the deimos allies had his wife and child killed by Kharg's mentor who then gets killed by that deimos which leads to him vowing to kill all humans, eventually teaming up with Darc, and Kharg vowing to kill all deimos. It's also told at a blistering speed where time has no meaning. I beat this game in 34 hours and it literally felt like 8. I think the last time I had that feeling was when I was playing Super Mario RPG back in 1996 or 1997.
Now, I do have to pick apart a few flaws in this. The first off is that it's a tactical RPG with all the things I never liked. I don't like having to waste a turn to pick up an item half the time. I don't like how the guys who actually do something get the experience. I don't like having to move my characters to get close enough to attack. And no, I didn't know it was a tactical RPG when I got this. But it does play much better than other such games and it is a lot more fun to play so those gripes are pretty minor. However, on the story front, I do think at times the story moved too fast. The climax is a bit rushed and some of the villains don't achieve that critical mass they need for you to really enjoy killing them slowly. But frankly, the most severe problem is the main women in your parties, Paulette and Delma. I'll give you the short version, they are both morons with very little of value coming out of their mouths or actions.
This game is awesome! The story is great. It's told with lots of layers and very rich themes told at a fast, at times too fast, pace. The game has decent graphics and good voice-acting. It may be a tactical RPG with all its trappings but don't let that stop you since it's a better made example of the genre. Finally, while it may help to play the other games in the franchise since there are some references to them but you don't have to since it stands alone pretty well. This is probably the best totally, utterly blind buy that I got.
8/10
