Gameplay
Lord of Arcana is an action game that allows up to four players to fight monsters and demons some of which make cameo appearances from other Square Enix games. The gameplay is very close to the Monster Hunter series from Capcom, but this time with cinematic kills and mini-games.
Plot
Lord of Arcana takes place in a world called Horodyn, named after the land's first king. Somewhere in Horodyn lies an ancient stone known only as "Arcana", which apparently holds great magical power. Unfortunately, as well as humans, the world is home to many great and powerful monsters and beasts, which are fought by warriors known as Slayers who seek Arcana.
About 3 days before it's initial EU release, I can't hold my review back any longer.
I thought about this game for quite some time, completed a couple of quests, and though I can't say anything about Multiplayer experience (explanation below) or endgame content, I wouldn't feel comfortable with letting you buy this game without 'warning' you.
This game can be either your friend or foe, depending on how many people in your circle of friends got a PSP and are willing to pay 30 to 40€ for the game (or can use a custom firmware/HEN and pirate it).
There is no range of difficulties to choose from, which CAN be a good thing.
In most games that can be a fun experience, including balanced AI and good ingame events, but in Lord of Arcana, it is a poor thing, to say the least.
In LoA, you're basically stuck with what I'd like to call 'forced Multiplayer'.
Some may have been dedicated Warcraft 3 players in the past decade, playing funmaps and such.
If you have, you may have encountered Hero Arena or DotA-styled maps.
Games that simply NEED friends and foes aside from the AI to work.
Lord of Arcana is similar to that.
You will need to do Quests that are balanced for multiplayer sessions even though you're on your own.
Slight adjustments could have been made, but Square Enix, or better Access Games, chose not to.
There seem to be two ways to get and start quests - one being a vendor in the village you're starting at, another being the Guild Headquarters.
Starting quests via outside vendor is just fine for singleplayer.
The enemies are not too hard and not too high numbered, although they do the same amount of damage as the ones in Multiplayer. Even in the beginning of the actual game, you will be dead after just a handfull of hits.
The problem is, that you can't start all quests via vendor, but need to get into the Multiplayer-lobby-Guild to fight bosses such as Agni the Firegolem.
You can't progress without doing these quests.
Quests started from within the Guild feature about 3 to 4 times as much enemies as singleplayer quests - it's possible, but repetive and annoying, especially cause the monsters are all acting according to a certain pattern.
You can figure that, given a time limit for Quest completion, killing 4 enemies on your own instead of having friends with you to share the kills drains time and nerves.
The bosses, namely Agni in my example, have not been adjusted to the number of players upon starting the quest.
Agni is completely beatable as is, but fighting him alone will bring you a hell lot of frustration.
At this early stage of the game, you don't have any Spells, Ultimates/Summons or anything.
Just your tiny weapon, a Block-ability (if a shield is equipped) that might protect you from a Titan blow and you can roll around.
You can attack doing some combos or use the skill you start with, which might make a difference in terms of damage, but can easily throw you off balance and get you hit.
As I said, the Boss is beatable, but the thing is that he comes with the same amount of Hitpoints as in 4 Player mode.
It took me about 20 minutes to finally drop to my knees out of exhaustion.
It took 10 minutes to even trigger the first 'Melee Combat' sequence, which did cost Agni a massive amount of HP, but no end in sight.
Once your HP run out, your Hero starts limping, and the only way to get to your foe quick enough to land some blows or to avoid getting smashed is the dodge roll - Running won't be possible.
As realistic as that is, you'll be screwed without potions (you can only carry a limited amount of them with you).
Once you die, you can be either revived by using up an Sacrifice Charm from your Inventory, which are limited to 3 stacks,
or use up one of the revives you get for a mission.
If you fail, you get another life, but these revives are limited as well.
You should always consider that a revive might bring you back to full health and thus won't slow your movements down, but without potions to keep your HP up, revives won't help you much.
Patterns.
All types of monsters I encountered acted according to certain patterns that were horribly easy to read.
Every goblin will act like every other goblin would.
They will practically announce their attacks, so you won't have problems to dodge (given you aren't crowded by them).
Even Agni is acting according to his pattern.
As much as I always liked Bosses using patterns and actions you'd need to predict and act accordingly, the lack of any variety in Lord of Arcana is disturbing.
Everyone who might have played Kingdom Hearts 2 and reached Sephiroth got to see a prime example of a scripted Boss fight that challenges your wits and reactions.
Without pushing the right buttons at the right moment you'll be down to 1 HP and get killed.
Sephiroth had about half a dozen definite ways of acting, and randomly switched between them, just to get more actions after he lost enough Health.
Given, once you reached level 90, he wouldn't be as challenging anymore, but thats another story, for there are other enemies in Final Mix which would bring you to tears.
Agni, though, as well as all the other creeps in LoA, acted predictable, without any change in style or different attacks.
The golem had about 3 different attacks, all but one you can easily deal with my blocking and rolling.
The 3rd, which he spammed in the second half of the battle, was your usual 'invulnerably circling the battlefield'-move, which, once hit, would take you down and stun you.
It was not fun at all fighting on. Just the same over and over again.
This fight could have been fun, but truly, it was not, due to the long length thanks to too many HP.
Considering this was only the first real boss in the game (skipping the tutorial, which was more fun due to having a high level character), I stopped playing altogether.
The finishing moves, called "Coup de Grace" seem like a bad copy of finishers in Games like God of War or Darksiders.
You simply Press
before the time runs out and you kill.
This, though, is also a repetive feature, for the finishing animation doesn't vary either.
All these nasty goblins die in the same way...
After taking a break to fill my empty stomach and refill my joy-o-meter, let's move on to the graphics department
I feel like I've used too much words for the gameplay part alone, so let me keep this short:
The graphics are acceptable.
LoA doesn't even use the whole capacity of its UMD, which is a single-layer one anyway, and honestly, they could have done much more than what they released.
The textures are the worst part of it.
A simple cube, consisting of only 8 vertex points, can look GRAND with the right texture on it.
A well-scaled texture can add detail to an object without the tiresome need to model every single detail onto the object in question.
Your character needs a chainmail? Show that by using a texture, not by modelling every single ring in the mail.
So much for the theory.
Square Enix / Access Games, though, obviously failed in that area.
Textures look blurry, unpolished and I had a hard time recognizing any facial structure on the goblins.
While I can't argue with the character's presentation, his/her hair, face or clothes, the environment suffers from bad textures.
It is common knowledge that textures can use a massive amount of space and need to be processed ingame as well, but considering some games we've already seen, Lord of Arcana sure cannot shine.
Even at such small resolutions, developers should not underestimate the power of detailed work, for it can make the audience go 'awwwww' any day.
The CG scenes looked alright, I had no issues with them, although I haven't seen many anyway.
I liked the character creation more than that of Monster Hunter, but in the end, I have never been a fan of that franchise.
The Art/Illustrations by Amano, Minaba, Satoru, Fujisaka and Kususaga all look grand and make me wish Access Games would have at least reproduced Kususaga Rin's Goblin Fighter in SOME way - but look for yourself:
The Music is where the game is actually enjoyable.
Uematsu's music is outstanding again, the title music/song making me want to just listen to the music without ever starting the game - which might have improved my experience of Lord of Arcana, but let's not be trolls.
A shame, though, that this one and most other tracks are NOT on the 'Lord of Arcana Original Soundcollection';
although that one features great tracks by Uematsu as well, it mainly presents music of Lord of Vermillion, which LoA actually seems to be a spinoff to.
Download
What might there be left to say?
Did I enjoy my adventures in Horodyn?
Not really. I did at first; the tutorial was nice, the boss battle was alright and it had some variety.
The actual game, starting with a level one character turned me off.
Some people might consider it fun to grind. And grind. And grind. And grind and grind and grind til they finally do a nice amount of damage, get some options and encounter more types of enemies,
but I surely do not.
Grinding is a good part of RPGs, but in Lord of Arcana, it just doesn't pay off to spend hours and hours into playing something you aren't supposed to play alone.
The multiplayer might be a hell lot of fun, but due to 'bringing gamers together in real life'-reasons by Square Enix, you won't be able to play with your friends using W-LAN.
All you can do is sit together and play via AdHoc or connect your PSPs to a PS3 to simulate AdHoc.
While playing together irl is fun, it is seldom possible, especially in world unified by the internet.
First Publishers cut Split Screen from their games, and now they want Portable users to get together.
I sure wouldn't get any of my friends to spend money on such an unpolished game, that's for sure.
What I'd suggest those who still are interested in Lord of Arcana (or just want to play a weak game to brag about it)?
Get the Demo.
Get the Demo first, for savegames can be taken to the full game.
Don't spend money on this one without making sure you really enjoy pain.
Other than that, I'm out for now.
I hope you enjoyed my review, it's gotten longer than expected.
