Lord of Arcana Impressions

So, last month Square-Enix released a game from their new series (a very short one, I hope) called Lord of Arcana. To most people, it's considered a Monster Hunter rip-off. I see some MH elements in the game, for sure, but... Monster Hunter wasn't the first game to involve crafting equipment, multiplayer, real time action gameplay, etc. They've been spread through hundreds, maybe thousands, of games long before MH existed. Some people fail to realize that for some reason, but I digress. Anyway, I bought the game off the PSN once I received an email from Sony saying it was added and figured I'd give it a try. I played the Japanese and American demos (only through the introduction dungeon, mind) and figured it would improve later on, so why not give the full game a try? In the end, I decided the game shouldn't have been worth more than 5 bucks... and that's me being generous.

Note: In this "review," I do not plan to compare this to Monster Hunter. This is an entirely new game from Square-Enix and I'm grading it on its own. This is also me just letting off some steam after wasting my time with the game, so don't expect anything "professional-like."

So, the story. You have amnesia. You slay monsters to get magic. That's it, really. After finishing Chapter 1, I stopped caring for the story. It's not impressive unlike SE's many other games. Maybe I missed something by not finishing Chapter 6 (when I finally quit)? Even so, it couldn't have been amazing. This coming from someone with an open mind.

The gameplay, it's your typical hack and slash. No big, I love swinging giant weapons at monsters. Square to attack, Triangle for specials, you eventually get magic. Smells like a JARPG. Well, it's worse than the usual. The lock-on system hurt me a lot more than help. "Look at me locking on to the monster, ready to dash attack it! Oh, look... I somehow completely missed my attack and moved ahead of the bugger. Thanks, lock-on system!" Lock-on is necessary to do finishing blows to monsters and melee duels (I THINK that was the term for the mid-fight button mashing) on bosses, too. I noticed they gave a much better chance of dropping items when you do them, so you have to suffer through the awful thing to save yourself some farming. That's only a small issue, though. It takes absolutely no skill to kill anything in the game, but it takes an awfully long time to.

You fight monsters by getting into encounters with them like almost any RPG. You're thrown into a battlefield with one or so baddies, you kill them for items. You spam basic attacks, throw in battle arts, maybe some magic, they're dead, you pick up your loot, you move on. Attacks are INCREDIBLY slow/clunky and the damage you cause will always be poor. It shouldn't take 3 full, slow strings of combos to kill an enemy I fought at level 1 while I'm level 16. Who wants to waste their time fighting minions when there's a boss at the end of the dungeon waiting to be slain? Oh, about "wasting time," there's a time limit with each dungeon run. Reasonable time limit until you realize the game bullshits you at bosses. Let's explain that now.

Bosses: big baddies with lots of health that can hurt you. A lot. Typical. Lord of Arcana goes too far with this. My very first boss (past the intro dungeon) was a pushover. His attacks were slow, incredibly predictable, and nothing impressive. The problem? I was doing next to NO damage to him with each attack. Square-Enix basically added in artificial difficulty by giving the bosses absurd health/defenses and us shitty weapons. There was absolutely nothing for me to craft in the weapon/armor shop, so I was literally stuck spamming 4 damage with each hit on the boss. How dull. His weak point takes more damage (not by much), but you can't lock on to it without a certain ability I didn't find necessary. Why? There were much better abilities to pick from. I probably would have taken just as long without my attack boosts. Thanks for making me waste most of my time pressing square three times, then triangle, dodging, and repeating for an awesome 20 damage total, Square-Enix. When a boss is ready to die, you're forced through a string of QTEs (quick time events; think half of God of War's content) where you press certain buttons before the time is up. If you fail, you need to hurt the boss more and then try again. If you succeed, the boss is dead, you take their loot, you strut your shit, and then repeat everything all over again.

The boss problem never changes. As I mentioned earlier, I quit at Chapter 6. I fought plenty of bosses in that time and they never got better. Health was still an issue, my damage was still an issue, but eventually they added something much more annoying; the mini status you see in most Final Fantasy games. It was a great way to burn through several minutes in a fight either trying to recover from the status by chasing a moving sphere thing while running slower than a tortoise or being a man and fighting... doing 1 damage in the process. The game's story was definitely made with a full 4-person party in mind. I never had a chance to play through the multiplayer because I couldn't stand it after finding the only other person in the world to get it. Obvious exaggeration, but the lack of infrastructure online play means you're stuck convincing people to buy this awful game or finding them over Adhoc Party/Xlink Kai. I couldn't do that to my friends.

The visuals of the game aren't bad. It's obvious Square-Enix tried making a "dark" atmosphere. For the PSP, the graphics are amazing (until you get into fights; the monsters don't look impressive). Not much else to say here, really.

The leveling and crafting system. Leveling is your basic kill monster, get EXP, level up, repeat. You can also level weapon proficiency to learn more skills and whatnot. There are 5 or 6 (derp) weapons to pick from. All of them clunky as hell (you can test each one when making your character). I like the weapon prof idea. The tutorial dungeon had you pimped out in levels and equipment. After that, you lose everything. I couldn't wait until I had everything again. Then I realized that weapon proficiency caps out per chapter. If you're having trouble on a boss or just want to suck less, too bad. You need to progress through the story with complete shit for abilities before you can get good ones. I don't mind it too much considering the more you progress through boss-like monsters, the more experience you should have. It makes sense, in a way. But at the same time, I find it completely stupid that I'm eventually gaining nothing from monster encounters. Base levels seem like nothing more than for show, so that was all I had convincing me my character was really sucking less when leveling up. As for crafting, it's nothing special. You have the materials for an upgrade, piece of armor, etc.? Cool. Use them to make whatever it is you wanted. Don't know where to get an item, but notice you need one or two more of it to make something? Look it up; the game doesn't help with that. It also doesn't prepare you for future upgrades because it doesn't even tell you they exist until you already have the major materials for it. This would be fine if weapon upgrading (not just making) didn't suffer from this also. Then again, why does it matter if you already don't have the major item? Ah well.

This was less of a review and more of me bashing the game, but it deserved it, honestly. It's bad. If you like this game, you're a bad person. I hate you. /sarcasm

But really, I couldn't find a single thing I liked about this game after I started playing. There was no difficulty, the crafting system was lacking in content (yeah, you can't make much), the battles didn't feel smooth at all, boss design was incredibly lacking (slow moving, same basic attacks performed repeatedly, stupid), music was average, visuals could have been better where it mattered... I regret buying this game 100%. It was nothing but Square-Enix's poor attempt at a new series. Maybe later games will fix all of the problems I had with it, but I sincerely doubt it. If there are people out there that really enjoy this game, good for you. You're doing what I couldn't, and I SERIOUSLY tried to enjoy this.

They do get points for adding a guild lady with cleavage. Flat, pixelated cleavage.

Anyway, that's it. I obviously don't like the game. I don't think adding a rating would mean much as it's fairly obvious it would be incredibly low. I will not check this for grammar or spelling errors, but I might come back and add in pretty pictures if I care enough to.