Arc Rise Fantasia Game Sample - Wii
30Arc Rise Fantasia was brought to us by the great, somewhat underrated folks at Imageepoch (who unfortunately went bankrupt in 2015) and was their big hurrah for the Wii: A traditional, fully-featured, challenging, and rewarding (J)RPG experience for the system that didn't rely on motion tricks and had an all-star team collaboration. It was published by Ignition Entertainment in the U.S. Just think - this game is programmed by the Luminous Arc team (Imageepoch), has design influences by "Tales of" team members (such as Hiroyuki Kanemaru for example of "Tales of Symphonia" fame), character designs by the "Eureka Seven" alum (Kenichi Yoshida), and music by Chrono Trigger alum (Yasunori Mitsuda, he also worked with Shunsuke Tsuchiya and Yuki Harada). All the influences are there and, notoriously rough voice acting (which can be silenced more or less) and difficulty curve aside, the game is pretty much a must for Wii owners starved for a classic roleplaying experience.
All that said... it's not the greatest game out there, but is a worthwhile experience with plenty to do, a few unique mechanics, more than a few familiar mechanics, and great audio / visuals (although like most Wii games, there's a strange overly pixely quality to the models... sometimes I wonder if it was as powerful as the GameCube). To quickly summarize the plot, I'll quote Wikipedia here:
"Arc Rise Fantasia is set in the world of Fulheim, a fictional large region of Earth. Creatures called "Feldragons" are causing a lot of trouble as they pass the Meridian Empire in flocks. If one is killed, the resulting explosion poisons the local area. When the empire receives word that a massive horde has its sights on the capital of Diamant, it immediately sends out an army to fight them, including L'Arc, a cool and collected novice mercenary, and his friend Alf, the beloved prince and second in line for the throne.
The game is based on political tensions between the Meridian Empire and the Turmelian Republic; a third faction is Olquina, a devoutly-followed coalition at war with the Republic and the Empire. Another central plot point is the game's 2 Laws; Real's Law and Imaginal's Law. A Child of Eesa must choose to present one of two laws that will form the building blocks of the world to the god Eesa. Also, both Real and Imaginal have Divas, who are the priestesses of their religions.[1]"
Essentially, as the story progresses, conflicts arise as to which laws to follow and it's cool that the flow of the story and future battles are influenced by the struggles to obtain Rogress, the game's Final Fantasy sort of "Summons" to enforce Eesa's will. Some battles do not require victory, but reward the player for doing so (although they are exceptionally difficult). Besides this, the game also has a fairly unique approach to combat; characters share a pool of "Action Points" and can use them to perform a wide variety of actions from Excel/Trinity Acts (similar to "Limit Breaks"), Magic, Arm Forces, Joint Attacks and more. Later battles also incorporate elemental gems that add a more strategic element and turn order can also be manipulated to a small extent like Atlier Iris 3 / Mana Khemia (though they have a superior turn system, imo).
Speaking of Arm Forces, weapons in the game all change in appearance and are unconventional in that they don't have inherent stats but skills you can unlock with weapon points to mix and match between preferred weapons. Different skills have different shapes and you can unlock a Weapon's "secret skill" by filling the whole grid. Magic is also different, as you can pay to upgrade different features and the magic itself is limited by usage and level, similarly to the very first Final Fantasy game or various Suikoden titles. You can make one character perform multiple actions in battle, but it's usually to your benefit to spread actions evenly.
There's plenty more to round out the classic experience however... you can take on quests, use a flying ship, buy alternate looks for characters (that aren't as nice as Tales as they only affect your artwork) and even undergo skits like in a Tales game. As you can see, it's a large hodgepodge of many prior works rolled into one to forge its own identity. The music is great as expected, the artwork is nice as expected, and though the voices are bad for some (not all) of the characters, the story itself is coherent if not predictable. Overall, I'd recommend it.
This is a video illustrating various things. There are a few spoilers, so don't watch anything after the fifty three (53) minute mark if you don't want to know, but that segment is for more advanced gameplay mechanics. Enjoy.
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