"I love Arc the Lad games... shame this isnt one of em"

First off let me say that I am a lover of anything RPG, I considered the first 3 (well... 3 and a half) Arc the Lad games to be some of the most unique and entertaining games I\'ve ever played. This review might contain very minor spoilers that you would find out within the first hour or 2 of the game. so be warned.

I can only wonder what the developers were thinking when they made this version... any ways, onto the review

This game is set long into the future of the Arc universe, dramatic changes have effected the planet and a race of intelligent monsters called the Deimos co-exsist with humans and are constantly fighting with each other over the valuable natural resource Spirit Stones. Humans need them to power their technology, and Deimos use them as their life-force....It is rather important to mention that you do NOT need to play the first 3 Arc games in order to know what\'s going on in this one, there are not a lot of references to them.

Game play 8 : The game play is fun, I admit that much. the controls are incredibly easy to learn and just as easy to master. The difficulty is at most \'\'easy\', so easy that if your a total newbie to rpgs you can get a hang of this game real quick (and thats a good thing, a lot of rpgs these days are not very kind to new gamers)

Story 3: This is one of the big weak points of the game in my opinions. It is a very typical and overused \'good vs evil\'\' plot. Two brothers who don\'t know about each other, one is good, one is evil. Each has their own goals in life however at the same time they both want exactly the same thing (even if they don\'t realize it).. very poor planning there.

Graphics/Sound 6/3 : Graphics are certainly well done. The characters are all unique looking and at least some thought was put into making them special and memorable (except Darc\'s skirt... what is up with that??). The magic and special attacks are cool to look at too. Sound.... well... the voice acting was great, I love games with a full script like this one provides. However the battle phrases will quickly get annoying after the first dozen times you hear them. And trust me.. you will hear most of them several dozens (if not hundreds) of times. Thankfully you can turn them off. The cut-scenes didn\'t seem to flow smoothly enough, there was always an awkward pause at the end of every line and it made it seem broken a lot.

Play Time/Replayability - 6/1 : Playtime is very short, most people seem to beat it within 35-40 hours, some have gotten more, some have gotten less. but that\'s still far to short for me... This game has no replayability. though it does feature the awesome New Game+ option (made famous in Chrono Trigger) but it does not provide you with anything that makes playing through the game a second time worth it.

Buy or Rent? I say rent it twice, you might not be able to beat it during the first rental period, but you\'ll most certainly beat it during the second, and you\'ll have saved yourself close to 40 bucks that you can spend on a game that has more game play to it (like dynasty warriors 4 for instance). don\'t buy it.. its far to short to add it to your collection, but I most certainly say you should rent it. its a great game you don\'t want to pass on... weird how things work out.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/03