Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (ATL), was one of the few games I purchased when I wanted my PS2 to have a little exercise and not collect dust.  I know there were plenty of RPGS out there that I haven’t touched yet and this was one of them.  I never played any of the previous ATL games before, so this would be my first experience playing the series.

            ATL’s story line is roughly based upon two characters:  Arc and Darc.  Which you play both their storyline’s and ultimately near the end, their storylines come together.  The world is based upon two major factions:  Humans and Deimos (which is like a breed of demons/mutants).  Humans and deimos never got along and are always at constant war with each other.  Without ruining much of the storyline, you start off as Arc doing various tasks for his garrison (or army).  As the story progresses, you learn more about the deimos and who they are and what the human side think what they’re up to.  Eventually, you’ll play as Darc, who is the main deimos character.  The storyline for Darc plays similar to Arc’s storyline (only the other way around).  Both characters find out about the power of the Great Spirit Stones and the one who collects all five will have ultimate power.  Naturally, Arc seeks this to rid the world of all deimos where on the other hand, Darc is seeking this power to be the leader of all deimos.  What happens when these two storylines collide together?  Well, you’ll just have to play the game to find out!

            The game’s battle system is quite an interesting one.  As it is both an RPG and real time strategy game (RTS).  So it’s similar to that of Final Fantasy Tactics although not as slow.  At first, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy this because it felt a bit slow paced and a bit complex.  But after the first few fights, I picked up quite quickly.  The battle system is overall fair, and unlike FFT’s monsters do not level up as you do and if a character gets eliminated you don’t risk the chance of losing them FOREVER.  Similar to Tactics, you have movement points (based upon the character’s stats and the terrain) and your action points.  Just like a real time strategy game you can also use the environment to your advantage (such as blowing up an explosive barrel at range to damage your enemies) and at times you may actually have an objective to accomplish (such as protect this person from dying).

            Unlike magic points (MP) which is used in traditional RPGS, characters use something called spirit stones.  These stones are used for spells and characters abilities (such as a sword slash).  You can buy spirit stones from vendors and apply them to your characters.  Each character can hold a certain amount of stones.  The RTS part kicks in as you have to manage what stones you have, you cannot recover what stones you use (most of the time) so you have to carefully decide when to use your abilties and spells.  Enemies will occasionally drop gold and spirit stones, however, you have to walk to it physically and pick it up.  So if you walk to some gold to pick it up you must then make a standard action (similar to that of RTS or D&D 4.0 game) or pass your turn if your character cannot do anything.  If a character has used some of their spirit stones they’ll get back what stones they used.  If they have the most they can carry, the stones are then applied to the pool (total stones you currently have that’s not being used).

            Leveling up is also interesting, as characters level up based on what abilities they use.  You do gain more experience points though if you defeat an enemy.  However, you can level up just by using a spell of cure on one of your characters.  Perhaps the only downfall of the battle system is it might be a tad slow and you cannot run away in mid fight.  You have the option to run away prior to the beginning of the fight (when you select what characters to participate in the fight).  It doesn’t hurt the game too much as most of the fights you cannot run away from are the vital ones (storyline ones).

            This game reminds me of FFT in another way because of the map system.  There’s no regular world map.  You go thru various map points and of course if the area is hostile theres a chance you might hit an encounter. Overall the game is great anyone that likes RPGS with a RTS twist, should check out Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits:

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Graphics:  .850/1.000:  Graphics for some of the fights were a tad bit bland.  The game is clear and crisp though.  Everything is understandable and not confusing.  Finding objects to proceed in the storyline were sometimes difficult to find due to the graphics but nothing tedious.

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Sound: 1.000/1.000:  Great sound track to the game.  I really liked it.  The music really helps to make some of the battles go more smoothly.  The characters voice overs are also very well done.  They’re somewhat repetitive in battle and you can turn them off but that didn’t bother me.  It was funny and cute hearing the little demon puppet girl saying “I’m Bebadora! Tee hee!”, then smacking the monster with her broken doll.  Or hearing the little girl Choco saying “Isn’t Choco strong?! RAWR!” and her punching out a monster.  It’s just cute in an evil way.

Control: 0.900/1.000:  Moving your characters on the map screen and on the towns/dungeons are easily navigable.  Some of the menus at times got confusing for me (especially figuring how to apply spirit stones to other characters).  But other than that, understanding the controls and menuing system is pretty self-explanatory.

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Storyline: 1.000/1.000: Perhaps this was the game’s STRONGEST point.  If I could rate this higher, I would!  About halfway thru the storyline, you can pretty much tell what the relationship is between Arc and Darc.  It felt so good that I called it down the middle when they finally revealed what was so special about the two characters (I’m NOT saying anything; you have to play the game!).  Even if you do not like the battle system, this is one storyline that makes you want to finish it to see what actually happens.  From the start of the game, to the climax, and until the credits are rolling.  It’s a wonderful well told story!

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Gameplay:  0.900/1.000 Perhaps the only bad side of this game was the battle systems occasional slow pace.  Overall the game is also very linear, however, there are numerous of side quests you can do thru out the game.  Some people may not like the fact that you cannot run away in mid-battles.  However, for ‘grinding up’, you have the option to run away every time and it’s a successful escape, so this does not really hurt the game.  It may though feel like a complete waste of time if your about to lose a fight that you cannot run away.  This game requires you to use your brain; it’s not your standard ‘tap buttons all day RPG fight’ type of game.

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