Luminous Arc : Best Amazon Reviews
Having been on the market for nearly three years now, the Nintendo DS has given us innovation, new types of games, and revitalizing old genres (like the point and click adventure game), all the while providing loads of fun. Surprisingly, though, one genre has been all but ignored on this little handheld: turn based strategy RPGs. Hoshigami Remix tried to fill that void, but it's essentially a port of an old Playstation title that's too complex and unrewarding for it to be enjoyable. So, is there anything that can really fill that itch? Fortunately, Atlus has answered the call and delivered "Luminous Arc", an original game that is quite the satisfying strategy RPG.
Story:The story of "Luminous Arc" can be summed up like this. Kids that are raised from the Church, known as the Garden Children, are called up to raise arms against the "evil" Witches, who plan to kill all the people and disobey the will of God. Alph, a young, courageous youth, becomes the leader of the group, and leads off the fight to condemn the Witches. Although the story initially sounds very cliché, the plots really starts to twist early on, and you eventually learn that things are not as black and white as they appear to be. You also start to question who is really the villains in this game: the Witches... or something else?!
Overall: 9.0 Design:The main story mode is what you'll be spending the most time on in "Luminous Arc". All areas are marked on a map, and locations are marked with icons, and you move the cursor to where you want to go. The locations you visit vary up to battlefields, towns, forests, and the like. Sometimes, you may end up being forced into a battle while trying to get to your next destination. When you arrive at your destination, you either talk to some of your party, sometimes shop, or just advance to the next story battle. This simplicity with providing menus to help you along ensures that it's very difficult to get lost in this game. During battle, you can choose up to eight party members at a time. To gain experience, you can either land an attack on an enemy, or do a status enhancer or heal on your party. Movement is on a grid based board, and the movement is determined by squares. The attack range is also determined by this same setup. The battle system is very similar to that of most strategy RPGs, but it does work well here. Leveling up, though, is more determined by getting up to 100 experience points rather than a random number. This system makes it easier to determine how many points you need to earn to level up. All status of individual characters is displayed on the top, while the bottom is for actions. This makes things easier to follow, and it leaves the bottom screen uncluttered. The problem is that the touch screen controls are sometimes unresponsive, leaving you with some frustration if you use that method. You eventually decide to just use the no touch screen option in the options menu and just use the old d-pad. Although it's not much of a gripe, it would be good if the game had good touch screen controls. Either way, it's hardly even a problem for me. After battles, you have an opportunity to talk with one of your party members. You choose a response. If it favors them, their trust increases. If you talk with them enough, depending on how full their heart is, you get a special cutscene. These special scenes can be rather amusing, to be honest, and adds some depth to the whole game. All the pieces together make for a great blend.
Overall: 9.0 Graphics:Graphically, Luminous Arc is a decent looking game. The game is 2D completely, but the sprites animate quite well, and their movement helps convey some realism to the anime style characters. Cutscenes are told using still portraits that look quite good, with painted backgrounds. Their expressions change depending on the dialogue, witch helps a bit as well. Some attacks also have a bit of flash, as well. While not much here that could not have been done on lesser hardware, like the GBA, it's still quite impressive. There is also a full motion anime intro at the beginning, as well.
Overall: 8.0 Sound:Audio wise, the game is a real treat. You get fully orchastraic music, a catchy Japanese pop intro, and voice acting. While the voice acting only really happens for about 20% of the whole game, when it does happen, it's performed well, for the most part. One character I don't like, though, is Nickolai. What is his deal?! Come on!! The sound effects are appropriate and do the job. So, overall, the audio part is great.
Overall: 9.0 Overall:The game is quite an enjoyable experience. If you're looking for a great strategy RPG for your DS, don't hesitate to pick this one up. It's quite good.
Overall: 9.0The DS is perfect for tactical RPGs. It's been demonstrated to us several times. Luminous Arc is another example of a Tactical Strategy RPG that works well on the DS. While Luminous Arc really doesn't do anything different from your typical strategy RPG, it's still a pretty fun and engaging game on the whole. If you've never played a Tactical Strategy RPG before, then Luminous Arc is a brilliant introduction.
There's not much to Luminous Arc's storyline. 1000 years ago a war happened involving witches and the church. The witches lost the war. Now, there are rumors that the witches have returned, and soon the church of Luminous proves these rumors to be true. A band of people known as the Garden Knights are dispatched to take care of things. However, the problem lies in the fact that the evilest of the witches has already grown very powerful. It's not much of a story really. There's some political intrigue here, but for the most part the storyline could've been better overall. It's presented through cutscenes in which you view your characters facing one another and talking (similar to Disgaea).
The animations are beautiful, and there's even some voice acting. The keyword there being "some". Its rather sad that there isn't always voice acting, but it's more about how the game utilizes it. In the most dramatic of dramatic moments... the game doesn't have voice overs, but in a lot of insignificant moments it does. However, you are getting voice acting at least. Sometimes you just wish there was more of it.
The game is played out very simple like. You move your characters around, have them attack other units and whatnot. If you've played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, it's pretty much the same thing here. Attacking an enemy directly increases your chances of missing while attacking them from behind or from the side increase your chances of a successful attack.
Part of what does make Luminous Arc a little interesting is the use of "Flash Drives," which are more or less your special attacks. Whenever you attack enemies you'll fill up a flash gauge. When its full you'll gain a flash point. Get three flash points and you'll be able to team up with other characters to devastate your enemies. Much like the rest of the game, it's simple stuff, pretty basic.
You can control the game either by using the stylus, or by using the D-Pad. The idea of using the stylus and touch screen only sounds like a fantastic idea (after all, it's perfect for a tactical RPG), but in Luminous Arc it's more trouble then it's worth. For starters, this is an isometric 2D map and on top of that, it uses the grid system. User error is just far too great when using the stylus and moving units around. Sometimes the angle of the map will cause you to select the wrong square. Thank goodness there's always a confirmation menu, but moving around your units is not simple when using the stylus on a 2D isometric map, especially because you can't rotate the camera. There's a lot less stress in using the D-Pad. The stylus is simple, but the D-pad is, in the end, faster and simpler.
Another interesting aspect of the gameplay is that you're not drowned out in the story. The story is fairly linear, but there's not a huge abundance of dialogue between missions. In fact, a lot of the dialogue between missions is entirely optional. After battles you have the option of talking to your allies and giving them responses. What you want to achieve with this system is a stronger friendship with your allies. It's a system that helps character development a little. Sometimes your responses can yield items. You don't have to do this, but sometimes you might want to. The good news is that the game never ever forces you into these conversations. If you're someone who does enjoy character development, though, you might want to engage in these conversations, though.
On the other hand, a lot of the game feels optional. Even the main storyline at times feels optional. You always know where to go next, but the game never hurries you along to your next destination. Rather than advancing the storyline, you can battle and train your characters some more. There's a fair level of balance here, and your characters gain experience after just about any action they do. Again, though, the main storyline is pretty straight forward and linear. There's really not that much off the main path you can really do.
There's online multi-player in Luminous Arc. It isn't available from the get go, however.
On the visual side, I already talked a little about the animations, but the in game itself isn't bad looking. For the most part the landscapes and settings that you battle in are really good looking on an artistic level. Not a whole lot of 3D effects are brought out, but a lot of the anime inspired art is really good. The game is also really colorful. As far as how the game just looks, though, it doesn't look that different from a GBA game. So while a lot of the anime inspired art looks good and the landscapes look good for what they are, the DS is certainly capable of more than this.
Musically, Luminous Arc sounds absolutely brilliant. It's got a really good soundtrack with a lot of memorable tunes. The sound effects are also good and along those lines, the voice acting (when there is voice acting) is pretty good too. As noted earlier, though, there's not a whole lot of voice acting, and you wish it were involved in some of the more critical moments of the game, but on the bright side, you are getting voice acting, and some voice acting is better than none if it's your cup of tea.
For the most part, Luminous Arc is a fun game. It may not do things that differently from your standard Tactical RPG, but it's still a fun game overall and it's pretty engaging. The story isn't the best, but it certainly isn't the worst either. If you're looking for some fun, Luminous Arc delivers.
The Good +Gorgeous anime inspired art +Simple to get into; there's nothing about this game that's complicated +Battles are tackled at a good pace +Fantastic soundtrack +There's some voice acting, and it's good +There's online multi-player The Bad -A lot of user error with the touch screen controls -Very linear -Doesn't look all that different from a GBA game -There's online multi-player, but you'll be a ways into the game before you can actually utilize the function
At first most will pass this game off as a "Final Fantasy Tactics" ripoff. First of all, MOST games like this are pretty much ripoffs. Now with that out of the way on to this game.
The story is pretty silly but fun. The full voices in the game are amazing realizing its only a DS game! There is some text also but most of it is voiced and done well! The voices really fit each character and help breathe added life into them. The graphics are also pretty good for a DS game and while they maintain a strictly anime look they are both crisp and vibrant. The story won't win any awards but it doesn't need to. You play this game for the action not the story really however the story moves along well enough and keeps you fairly interested enough.
Hunting witches has been done before but this game makes it work well enough to be interesting and still fun.
The gameplay I would say is fairly easy to get the hang of and rewards the player quickly by (grinding) - which is battling over and over outside of the story to level up. Leveling up is quite cool too as you never know which level will give you a new spell to use. It reads from 0-100 and when you hit 100 you level up. Grinding in this game isn't as boring as some Rpgs/rts in the past. There is still quite a bit of strategy involved later in the game also when enemies become harder (unless you grind to very high levels). If you grind your levels up you can pretty much become quite godlike a
nd the game will be quite simple. However, if you play it straight it will be a bit more challenging.It maintains typical shops in order to buy weapons, armor and health etc. You get quite a bit of money after battles so money isn't a problem here. Grind for awhile and you'll have a lot! The other cool aspect of the game is how you can use "Vitae" which you can put into weapons to change their attributes etc. The game focuses on being linear but with this type of game you usually expect this and focus on strategy during battles.
You have the typical (spell effects) that do small to large damage depending on your level and how you utilize the spells against each other. You also get a cool feature called the (Flash Drive) which when full can unleash a more powerful attack (shown with cut scene). You can fill it up three notches by defeating enemies and can use it up to three times. One is all I've needed so far to defeat most early to mid game enemies. Also by utilizing certain extra items in your slots you can gain more magic points, stronger attack etc...
The music is also quite awesome for a DS game also. Some games just have very basic boring music but here it is quite fitting and enjoyable. However if you don't like music you can turn it down, or off. You can also pretty much save anywhere before and after a battle and can even stall a battle and save it and come back later and finish it. Very cool feature indeed!
Some gripe about the stylus controls but honestly I didn't have much problems with it but prefer using button controls.
The only two things I didn't like were how when you equip different equipment, weapons etc it doesn't change your character's appearance in game which is kind of minor but the other issue that I didn't like is how each character can only carry one weapon and only buy upgrades for that kind only. Anotherwords you can't have a swordwielder carry a bow also. It is pretty straitforward here with this part of the game and you rarely come across more than one upgrade in each town making the weapon selection pretty dull. The only saving point for this is being able to customize your weapons with "Vitae" later on.
No, its not THE perfect game but almost! Atlus put out a very solid game that is worth every penny and hopefully with the next game (be it a sequel or another like this) it will have more variety with weapons/customization etc.
For now it is a very fun game to play and one that is easy to get lost in for hours at a time.
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