Arcana (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
498A playthrough of Hal's 1992 role-playing game for the SNES, Arcana.
Arcana was one of the earlier US RPGs released on the SNES when it launched in May 1992, and though it is on the simplistic side, it was a fun alternative to Final Fantasy and The 7th Saga, and one that still today remains fondly remembered by most of the people that experienced it.
It plays like a dungeon-crawler fused with a JRPG, much like Sega's Shining in the Darkness for the Genesis. The entire game, including both towns and dungeons, is viewed from a first-person perspective. In town, you stand at the center and rotate you view to see any of the shops, and in dungeons you explore using a tile-by-tile style movement system, complete with auto-map. When your party is attacked, you direct the battle with menu commands in a manner similar to Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy.
The dungeons never get super complicated- there's nothing near the complexity of Wizardry's layouts here, but they do require some real attention in order to avoid wandering aimlessly. Being that Arcana came out in 1992, be assured that constant random-encounters are the norm here. They aren't difficult if you're at an appropriate level, but there is some grinding required. Not too much compared to its contemporaries, but it's certainly there. In this video I cut out the major chunks of grinding that I did. This footage amounting to about four hours, I felt the video would be much more watchable if you didn't have to sit watching me spin in circles endlessly hammering the confirm button. The first of the cuts happen after the boss in the forest area of Chapter 2, and the second happens at the end of my first trip into the ice caverns in Chapter 3. I ground out eight levels each time, and show my stats directly after both cuts.
The thing I most remembered Arcana for was its graphics. They were nice though not particularly impressive, but they had a real standout feature: the cards. Since Rooks is a "card master," all of the onscreen action is represented with animated cards. They're surprisingly well animated compared to the static sprites that shook or blinked in most early 90s RPGs, and they give the whole game a distinct, nicely unified style that manages to be charming. And that last boss's design is just unbelievably cool. The game's music was also really nicely done. It's not as memorable as Final Fantasy II's or ActRaiser's, but the tracks suit the game well and ate nicely orchestrated.
Arcana might not have the most complex battle system, labrynthine dungeons, or overwrought plot line ever seen on a cartridge, but it succeeds because of, rather than in spite of, its simplicity. It's well-polished, engaging, and completely accessible to gamers of any skill level provided they have the patience for its slow pacing. It's a great 16-bit RPG that you aren't likely to soon forget.
And hey, even Satoru Iwata's name appears in the credits, so how can you go wrong? :D
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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