Arc the Lad : End of Darkness

 “Evil is a demon born from the darkness of the heart. It cannot be destroyed, nor eliminated, neither can it be sealed away.”

The words are written in a book found in the forest, a book that belongs to a young lady who would like it back. The hero, of course, returns it, much to the shock of the young lady.

A strange beginning, to say the least, full of partial memories, but for one young man building a raft on an island, with his diminutive friend Hemo, it is the start of an adventure. Arc the Lad: End of Darkness is a PlayStation2 title slated for release in early June. The title is developed by SCEA and published by Namco and takes place five years after the adventure of Twilight of the Spirits.

The face of a hero

A group of hunters come to the peaceful island in search of a dangerous criminal, known as the Darmyst. Edda (the default name of the young hero) joins them at the Cave of Truth and finds the hunters dead. Armed with his late father’s cudgel, which is the weapon of an exorcist, Edda finds out that he is an exorcist and confronts the Darmyst.

At this stage in the development Arc the Lad: End of Darkness still has the elements that have dotted previous incarnations in the series, but also has some problems that interrupt the flow of the game. There is a lot of dialogue in the game, and players don’t actually do much initially, and the gameplay is rather linear in design. You must do certain things before other elements that advance the game come into play. Combat has limited attacks, and players will quickly find that the key to winning many encounters is to move, and not to root your character and attack. The Darmyst is a rock-golem thing that has powerful blows. Edda must use the cudgel to pound it to unconsciousness, and then perform an exorcism on it. X is the button for beating on the mob, and O performs the exorcism.

This incarnation of the franchise also seems to run around with a clear sense of direction. There are elements quickly introduced and then almost discarded. After the battle with the Darmyst, Edda is found shipwrecked, rescued and taken to the land of fortune telling. There he learns about the hunter class, and a world of quests open up to him. He can do two kinds of quests, one for coins and the other for dignity points to advance his position within the hunter class. The black swirling mist surrounding the Darmyst is, it seems, a common malady in the world and others refer to the type of monster as a malademon, which is not to be confused with the regular demons that populate the grounds of the hunter training school.

While the game uses real-time combat (a first for the series) it does employ character cards, which aid hunters in carrying out their abilities. There are 24 cards in all, and hunters activate them using a wrist device called an ALD. Die, or fail at a mission, and all the cards you earn in a mission are removed from your ALD.

The cards are important as they unlock different skills and create new and powerful attacks. There are also cards you can materialize to activate other characters.

There are also items that you can find in combat areas that replenish health, so the skimpy armor you start with does not prove to be overly detrimental if you play smart.

The sound, right now, can be mildly annoying and through the initial phases of the game, you will spend more time tabbing (using the X button) to advance dialog than actually doing anything useful in the game. During the initial 40 minutes to one hour of gameplay, there is only about 5-8 minutes of action – the rest is clicking through dialogue.

Graphically the game is solid, though nothing that really jumps out and impresses. There will be multiplayer elements included in the final release – a match mode for up to eight players, and a co-op mode.

Arc the Lad: End of Darkness has some interesting ideas, but seems to be all over the map with ideas. This game likely would have been much better had the developers keyed in on a few and focused energies on playing them out, but as it stands in the preview build, the game is an average successor to Twilight of the Spirits.