Procrastinato

User Score
7.3

Presentation - 7.1
Gameplay - 7.8
Value - 7.4

I purchased Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits recently, not knowing it was fundamentally a SRPG at heart -- and I like SRPGs.. alot.  I had heard it was a "good RPG", etc. but no one had ever bothered to really explain why it was good, and I don't often read reviews for older games which I purchase on a whim.

I was pleasantly surprised.

This, now aging, PS2 title (released in 2003) has held up pretty decently over the years -- not anything spectacular, but its good -- and if you play a lot of older RPGs, you understand what exactly I mean.  Its not so old that its outdated -- if Cattle Call took the game, and made a HD version, it'd be a worthy game in this day and age, and that's not something that can be said of a fair number of RPGs of its age.

The game boils down to adventuring, via a simple map interface, and 3rd-person environment exploration / puzzle solving, combined with SRPG combat in a constrained, but no-gridlines environment.  Characters can move a certain distance per-turn, attack in a certain arc, at a certain range, depending on the attack chosen, etc.  There are no tiles here.  Gameplay is turn-based, and ordered based upon character attributes, and standard RPG attribute fare here governs the combat -- strength and physical defense ability, accuracy, magic offense and defense, hit points, etc. are all here, and they work exactly as a reasonably experienced RPG gamer would expect.

Battles occur, basically, while navigating.  There are random encounters, but no more than one per "map link" traversal -- typically there are 2-3 of these links, and hence battles, to be traversed between each critical story arc element (and save point), and the player needs to gauge his/her use of certain resources -- namely spirit stones (known in most RPGs as "mana") -- to survive in a decent enough state to reach the next save point, or supply location.

The story... is pretty decent for a JRPG.  The plot is good and relatively mature (racism and war are the primary focus of the story), and the character development, while not overly deep, is good enough.

The music is great.  I don't feel I can truly describe it -- some of the sadder pieces in the game are really moving -- especially since they are often placed well within a situation that, were it real life, would be pretty darn tragic.  I get the feeling that, if you've played previous Arc the Lad titles (which I have not), some of these situations might bring back some pretty fond/sad memories of past gaming, and characters, as they appear to be referenced on a number of important story occasions, and fit well within the mythology of the game itself.  As I have stated, I haven't played any previous Arc the Lad titles, but... as an appreciator of RPG tragedies, I get the impression I'm going to thoroughly enjoy the whole series. 

The sound effects are nothing special, and the voice acting is a little weak, but honestly I just kept the music cranked, and the sound fx low, and was quite happy.

I found the game a little on the easy side... about the same difficulty as most SRPGs, frankly, and no bosses, besides the last one, were really overly difficult.  The relatively weak boss fights are really my only complaint with the gameplay side of things, but the final boss is, at least, a worthy opponent.  The SRPG gameplay really has a lot to do with the difficulty of the game, I suppose -- most of the game its more challenging to be efficient than effective, such that you can afford spirit stones, and better gear -- its only at the very end, where you have no reason to hold back with resources, where the difficulty level gets ramped to a daunting level, on a per-fight basis.  The game is never really easy, but there is no "middling hard" either.  Just "moderate" at the beginning, to "a little easy" toward the end, and then "dang, this guy is really hard!" -- three times for me, with the final boss.  The other bosses were barely bumps in the road of regular gameplay, but the regular gameplay itself was decently fun.

Recommended to those in the mood for a last-gen SRPG/JRPG mix, especially if you like some believable sadness in your story, with musical accompanyment.