Game review plus random things
Aug. 28th, 2005 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slimequestI was gone all week from our house, we had to house-sit at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
krile's mom's house while she was out of town. During this time, I ordered the newest Arc the Lad game to have something to do over there! So I'll do a mini-review.
I'm not sure if anyone on my friend's list even plays or has any idea what Arc the Lad is, but anyway, it's a long-running strategy rpg series that was one of the first Playstation RPGs ever released. There's also an anime based on the 2nd game.
Flash forward to the 5th game in the series, End of Darkness. This time around, it's now an action RPG instead of strategy RPG, and there's some online option or something. The hero looks like that kid from Captain Planet with the heart power (you know, Ma-Ti, the useless one?). And he has a monkey friend named Hemo, which I always mistake for "Homo" every time I see it on screen. There's another character, some girl named Kiliakakaialaiaka or some such, who runs around and dislikes the hero but will probably end up having his babies in the end.
Anyway, the hero can "exorcise" these monsters that nobody else can defeat, conveniently enough. Eventually the hero wants to become a hunter, who in the world of Arc the Lad is a person who basically kills monsters mindlessly for money. There are some missions where you escort some old guy around without him getting killed, oh, and kill monsters mindlessly, for money, of course. The meat of the game is you going on these missions and gaining money and reputation points, and if you get enough points you can level up your hunter class.
For some reason after every mission, this "National Geographic" screen pops up explaining the cultural or ecological significance of what you just did, like how mysteriously, there are these huge mushroom monsters that have grown in population so you can conveniently kill them for the purposes of your mission.
However, there's a couple interesting things to note about all this. First of all, this is essentially the same plot that Arc the Lad 3 had; the hero wants to be a hunter and goes on various missions, which end up advancing the plot little by little.
What's also very "interesting" is that this game's music is 98% re-used from the previous Arc the Lad game, Twilight of the Spirits. Not to mention you conveniently end up visiting many of the towns you did in that game, and they all have the exact same layout. This game takes place 5 years after the previous one, so I guess this makes sense.. almost. There are really very few new areas to explore, most of these are random maps where the missions take place.
Did I mention that this game has no voice-acting? The previous game did, and somehow this one doesn't. The characters have in-battle voices, but the storyline scenes have no voices at all. I've never seen a series step backwards when it comes to things like that, it's kind of awkward.
The biggest draw of the game is to long-term fans of the series, because you can play as 24 different characters from all the various games in the series. You end up finding cards of the characters which can be "materialized", and then you can play as them in normal missions. What's weird is that you can find cards of people who you interact with in the game, mostly the cast of Twilight of the Spirits. Instead of having them join your party or something normal like that, you end up getting some weird card clone of them to use.
Overall, the game is pretty fun in itself, but there are a lot of "lazy" aspects to how it's presented. It's fun to play as the characters from the older games, but this is the biggest draw of the game. Meaning that a non-fan would probably not find much of a reason to play this game at all, especially since the story deals a lot with things that happened in Twilight of the Spirits.
I don't know much of anything about the online mode, and since I don't own the modem for my PS2 or anything I really doubt I'll ever try it. It seems like this was a major draw for the game as well, but the offline version of the game may have suffered over it. In particular, I'm wondering if the lack of voice acting had to do with them concentrating on the online mode more.
Besides that, I've decided to just study up on Spanish on my own instead of taking an unneccesary class for it. Saves me money, plus this way I can start filling out the paperwork for the Spring semester now instead of stressing over it at the last minute :3 I'm really not that out of practise except for things like verb conjugation and things like that, anyway.
Okay, this post took me like 2 hours to type because work suddenly decided to be busy, so I'll cut things short here :o. I still need to get that picture of Bocchan off my cell phone and upload it, if I could only find the cable xD; *runs back to the desk*
krile's mom's house while she was out of town. During this time, I ordered the newest Arc the Lad game to have something to do over there! So I'll do a mini-review.I'm not sure if anyone on my friend's list even plays or has any idea what Arc the Lad is, but anyway, it's a long-running strategy rpg series that was one of the first Playstation RPGs ever released. There's also an anime based on the 2nd game.
Flash forward to the 5th game in the series, End of Darkness. This time around, it's now an action RPG instead of strategy RPG, and there's some online option or something. The hero looks like that kid from Captain Planet with the heart power (you know, Ma-Ti, the useless one?). And he has a monkey friend named Hemo, which I always mistake for "Homo" every time I see it on screen. There's another character, some girl named Kiliakakaialaiaka or some such, who runs around and dislikes the hero but will probably end up having his babies in the end.
Anyway, the hero can "exorcise" these monsters that nobody else can defeat, conveniently enough. Eventually the hero wants to become a hunter, who in the world of Arc the Lad is a person who basically kills monsters mindlessly for money. There are some missions where you escort some old guy around without him getting killed, oh, and kill monsters mindlessly, for money, of course. The meat of the game is you going on these missions and gaining money and reputation points, and if you get enough points you can level up your hunter class.
For some reason after every mission, this "National Geographic" screen pops up explaining the cultural or ecological significance of what you just did, like how mysteriously, there are these huge mushroom monsters that have grown in population so you can conveniently kill them for the purposes of your mission.
However, there's a couple interesting things to note about all this. First of all, this is essentially the same plot that Arc the Lad 3 had; the hero wants to be a hunter and goes on various missions, which end up advancing the plot little by little.
What's also very "interesting" is that this game's music is 98% re-used from the previous Arc the Lad game, Twilight of the Spirits. Not to mention you conveniently end up visiting many of the towns you did in that game, and they all have the exact same layout. This game takes place 5 years after the previous one, so I guess this makes sense.. almost. There are really very few new areas to explore, most of these are random maps where the missions take place.
Did I mention that this game has no voice-acting? The previous game did, and somehow this one doesn't. The characters have in-battle voices, but the storyline scenes have no voices at all. I've never seen a series step backwards when it comes to things like that, it's kind of awkward.
The biggest draw of the game is to long-term fans of the series, because you can play as 24 different characters from all the various games in the series. You end up finding cards of the characters which can be "materialized", and then you can play as them in normal missions. What's weird is that you can find cards of people who you interact with in the game, mostly the cast of Twilight of the Spirits. Instead of having them join your party or something normal like that, you end up getting some weird card clone of them to use.
Overall, the game is pretty fun in itself, but there are a lot of "lazy" aspects to how it's presented. It's fun to play as the characters from the older games, but this is the biggest draw of the game. Meaning that a non-fan would probably not find much of a reason to play this game at all, especially since the story deals a lot with things that happened in Twilight of the Spirits.
I don't know much of anything about the online mode, and since I don't own the modem for my PS2 or anything I really doubt I'll ever try it. It seems like this was a major draw for the game as well, but the offline version of the game may have suffered over it. In particular, I'm wondering if the lack of voice acting had to do with them concentrating on the online mode more.
Besides that, I've decided to just study up on Spanish on my own instead of taking an unneccesary class for it. Saves me money, plus this way I can start filling out the paperwork for the Spring semester now instead of stressing over it at the last minute :3 I'm really not that out of practise except for things like verb conjugation and things like that, anyway.
Okay, this post took me like 2 hours to type because work suddenly decided to be busy, so I'll cut things short here :o. I still need to get that picture of Bocchan off my cell phone and upload it, if I could only find the cable xD; *runs back to the desk*
