Post by George Darling on Oct 24, 2008 22:35:16 GMT -8
Strategy RPGs are few and far between, and genuinely good ones are even scarcer. When I first heard about the release of Luminous Arc I was hopeful, but skeptical. The game was published by Atlus, the same software company who publishes the famed Disgaea games, which are a standard when it comes to SRPGs. But while Nippon Ichi has a green thumb when it comes to cultivating awesome SRPGs, the creators of Luminous Arc (Marvelous Interactive Inc.) seem to have an awful lot of weeds in their garden. While Luminous Arc is far from a horrendously bad game, it also doesn't soar to the heights that the build-up prior to the game's release would have you believe. And thus, with Luminous Arc 2's release just around the bend I feel it's time for a long overdue review of the first in what appears to be a fledgling franchise.
The Story:
The story revolves around Alph (no, not the 80's Muppet-like thing from space who ate cats) and his cohorts who were all orphans brought up within the church's teaching and formed into a special group of warriors known as the Garden Children. Their primary mission? To locate and exterminate Witches. What did said witches ever do to them? Not a damn thing. Prejudice, anyone?
The fictitious world in which Luminous Arc takes place is in the choke-hold of the church which acts as a government, complete with their own military. As a cover, the church is righteous and prestigious. But beneath this façade lies a darker truth. The church secretly seeks out sacred stones known as Lapistier which will allow them to take control of the world. Meanwhile they place the focus and public attention on the Witches as being 'evil' to distract from their ulterior motives.
Did any of the above sound familiar? Well, aside from the whole 'Witch' thing, the story is strangely familiar to Final Fantasy Tactics. The church within Luminous Arc seeking the mystical Lapistier is, essentially, a painfully obvious ripoff of FFT's main plot... which revolves around a corrupt church seeking the sacred stones known as Zodiac Stones, aka Magicite, aka Auracite.
In all this story falls flat. It fails to hold interest and even though a good number of details are plagiarized from a far superior SRPG, they aren't re-produced particularly well. There are far more generic plots in games out there, but there are also far better.
Between chapters to the main story is a brief (and often weird) intermission from one (or more?) of the strange Kopin creatures prominent throughout the game. These short stories are fun, and sometimes can generate a chuckle. But then it returns to the main story. What a killjoy.
And then, after I'd had a few drinks, I returned home and buried her in the back yard... *scribble, scribble*
The dialog exchanges are clearly thought-provoking enough to rival Shakespeare
Gameplay:
Heavens to Betsy, the plagiarism never ceases. Rather than trying to set itself apart with a unique battle system which could possibly make this game stand-out from others of the genre, it instead chooses to all but duplicate another game's battle system and add no innovation whatsoever. Upon your first battle in Luminous Arc you'll notice that the look and feel of everything is suspiciously similar to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the Game Boy Advance. In fact, if you ever played the latter you'll instantly know exactly how to play Luminous Arc.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most original one of all?
When you build up enough JP... err... I mean FP your character can unleash a super attack (think Limit Breaks from Final Fantasy VII or X) to wreak havoc on the enemy. Said attacks are accompanied by a completely glitchy flash of pixelated gibberish that may make you think your characters have just discovered a rift in The Matrix. I swear, the first couple of times I saw it I thought for sure that the MissingNo. from the first two Pokémon games were going to attack my party. And this glitch happens every single time you use one of these skills.
If the Flash Drive itself doesn't kill your enemy there's always the off-chance they may die from a seizure following the flashing graphic glitches
"Honey, it's happening again! Can you get me my pills?"
Battles are long and drawn-out, which can make level grinding tedious and extremely boring. It usually takes several turns of attacking an enemy (or them attacking a party member) before they finally submit and keel over. The EXP. curve seems rather strange, and I find I earn very little EXP. even from enemies of equal level to my own party. Unfortunately, there seems to have been some sort of poor planning on magic damage calculation. No matter what type of Magic-boosting equipment I give my spell casters, their magic spells always do pitiful damage. It's to the degree that physical attackers are basically your only method of inflicting serious damage on your foes.
This spell looks as though it's merely drenching the enemy. And that's effectively how powerful it is, as well...
When enemies and allies are huddled together is when the fun really starts, because the touch-screen's target panel detection leaves a lot to be desired. You can click on a target only to have it select the wrong target. You then have to back out of the action and try again, only to have the same issue occur. After several attempts you finally find the 'magic spot' to select the target you want. This is fairly irritating, and since enemies can and will merge with your party to get within attacking range, it happens quite frequently.
Good idea, group. Stay far away from that enemy, lest its chaotic aura confuse us into targeting the wrong unit over and over. Or perhaps poor programming renders said effect... but who's keeping track, anyway?
The game allows you to customize your equipment, something present in quite a number of SRPGs and RPGs in general. This process isn't really fun... nor does it require you to utilize any mini game elements to determine the outcome of the item (like Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, for example). You basically just give the blacksmith of your choosing the materials and, voila... here's your item. Unfortunately, this otherwise awesome feature is undermined by a couple of crippling issues. The first is that as soon as you unlock the ability to upgrade weapons, enemies become much more difficult. In other words, the game requires you to utilize this feature to its fullest just to keep your head above water. Second, there's only one location in the game in which you can do this, and you must walk all the way there each and every time you need to use it, fighting any random encounters you may face along the way. This is just annoying. Why couldn't it have become available in every town upon being unlocked? Or even some towns? Anything rather than just ONE location!
After every battle you can select a party member who acted in combat for an 'Intermission' segment in which they will say something and you get to respond with one of three options. Selecting wisely increases your rapport with that character, while selecting poorly just plain pisses them off. You must select the perfect answer every single time in order for them to give you one of the best items used in equipment forging in the game... a rather strict condition, if you ask me. While sometimes the best answer is as clear as the nose on your face, other times it's not so obvious.
You're just the baby school!
This game has Wi-Fi features, in theory, but any time I've ever logged on I never was able to find any other players also on Wi-Fi (what? People aren't lurking around the online channels of a subpar game?) so this feature could just be a conspiracy. My main complaint about Wi-Fi is that it's really very obscure in nature. The first time I ever clicked the option to connect it immediately said 'searching for another player' (which it never found). Well, what does that mean? Am I going to trade items with this player? Fight this player? Team up with this player? Well, unless you read the instruction booklet or an online FAQ the only way you'll ever find out is to dive in. Which is just silly. Look at how well organized the local wireless play missions are for Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions for the PSP. There's no excuse for LA's online features to be so... mysterious.
Luminous Arc has a new game+ feature, which always earns stars in my book. What, you may say? No complaints? Nope. This is just plain an awesome feature. This greatly accents the replay value of the game, and more games should use it.
Characters:
Another lackluster element of the game are the characters, and another topic of indifference for me. While the characters aren't bad, persay, most of them do fit rather snugly to overused anime stereotypes, and none of them really stand out as uniquely interesting characters because of that. The main character, Alph, is your standard coming-of-age hero who questions his beliefs and himself. Lucia is your run-of-the-mill bitch of an anime heroine who finds any and all excuses to yell and scream at the main hero. Alph's brother, Theo, is one of the most gender-bending anime characters I've ever seen. Seriously. It wasn't until they referred to him as a 'he' in-game that I was able to pinpoint his ambiguous sex. Even his voice is indecipherable.
"Guess my gender, win a fabulous prize!"
Nikolai is your typical pervert anime character who loves all of the female characters. There are several others, but I think you get the idea, so I'll leave off with just two more. The first is whom I feel to be the most blatant, vanilla stock character in the entire game: Kai. Kai is the epitome of a cliche samurai character, fighting for honor and virtue and having a calm, sometimes philosophical nature. This character was so bland that when I stopped playing this game for a few months, then picked it up again, I had literally forgotten who he even was!
It's a shame there isn't a 'Generic Stock Character' stat. Your party would each have it maxed out from the start.
The second character I'll shed light upon is Pollon-Pollon, because he's the most unique character in the game. Not only is he an anthropomorphic seal wearing a knight's helmet and wielding a shield and sword, but his bizarre manner of speech and odd dialog make him easily the most original and memorable character in the entire game.
Sadly, when all is said and done, I don't feel any attachment to any of these characters. Usually it compels players to keep going in an RPG to see the story unfold and to see what becomes of the characters. In this case, I really couldn't care less what becomes of these characters.
On the plus side, they are well designed, at least. They are all pleasant on the eyes and dressed for the occasion. Though they may be subpar in nature and personality, the character designer (Shibano Kaito) did his part and did it well enough.
Graphics & Presentation:
This is a mixed bag. The game opens with a beautiful animated intro with vocalized music, which is pretty elaborate for a handheld game and something you rarely find. The game also features voice acting - something else you rarely find in a handheld game. The quality of some of the voice actors is questionable... but hey, it's voice acting all the same. The character sprites are fair, but they're not breathtaking or anything. The battle animations are pretty bland, and many are recycled. Even the Flash Drive super attack animations aren't usually very dramatic or expertly animated, as flashy attacks usually are in SRPGs.
Environments are decent enough, but ask yourself this; are they fully realizing the potential of the Nintendo DS? Probably not since they are so similar to FFTA's from the GBA - a last generation handheld.
Graphic errors, including the above mentioned digital fuzz while using Flash Drives, are inexcusable. In addition to that glitch, white lines constantly flash across the top screen at any given time during the game. Did anyone ever even test play this game? How could such obvious glitches slipped past quality control?
Music
All things considered, the music is pretty good. The opening introduction song is very catchy and the in-game tunes are also pleasant on the ears. The music is a nice mix of serene and beautiful to dramatic and tense, depending on the context.
Not much else to say on this. The music is fine by me.
In Closing:
Ah, Luminous Arc. A game which is neither great nor terrible, yet lingers in some inbetween limbo. If you're a fan of SRPGs you may want to pick this one up. I can guarantee you'll have fun playing it, but I can't guarantee it will 'wow' you or get you excited enough to switch your wallpaper to a Luminous Arc background and create a new messenger screen name of 'Shemale_Theo'.
A big turnoff of this game was that it tried to capitalize on the success of other SRPGs which sold well rather than trying to dig a niche for itself. I think the biggest, and most obvious, act of plagiarism is that the game features large, hulking, purple, horned beasts known as Behemoths... clearly stripped straight from the Final Fantasy universe. I mean, heck... couldn't they have at least changed the color? Hopefully Luminous Arc 2 will iron out some of the first game's problems and (hopefully) try and set itself apart instead of trying to blend in. Here's hopin'.
"What is be this 'pla-jur-is-im' you say of? Is it can be eaten naow? Are it delicious?"
Story - 5
Gameplay - 5
Characters - 5
G&P - 7
Music - 7
Total Rating: 29/50
