My Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits Review

Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirit
Episode: Fourth in the 'Arc the Lad' Series
Genre: Strategy Role Playing Game
Publisher: Sony
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 166 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Features: Dual Analog, Vibration, Digital Control
Release: June 2003

OK.. first off.. I'll let you guys in on a bit of the story...

The game starts off with a little prologue...
A beautiful green environment...
A large luscious tree with sunbeams through its many leaves and branches...
A beautiful large fountain, where a beautiful and mysterious girl sat and played a strange instrument...
A bird comes to investigate... joining the few other birds on the ground in front of the girl...
The girl continues to play her beautiful melody... when suddenly...
She stops, stands up and turns around... frightening off the birds...
Up in the darkening sky is a flying armada, heading her way...
She knew what armada it was... and so she examines something she was holding in her hand... a glowing white stone...
Covering it again in her hand, she prays, "May the Spirits guide me.."
And she just dashes off, to where, no one knew...

The beautiful scenery

The threatening armada

"May the Spirits guide me..."

Then we were introduced into the life of a young boy, Kharg, in a small town of Yewbell..
It was another one of those sword training he was having with his 'teacher', Lloyd, who was also the father of his good red-long-haired friend, Paulette...
The two were having a practise sword bout, and as was to be expected, Kharg won... with much praise and recognition from Lloyd..
It turns out that Lord Kharg was a prince of a once Royal family of (I forgot what kingdom)...
and the only son to Lady Nafia, a well-reputed woman of admirable courage (though with the oddest of outfit I must say...)
Kharg was also becoming an admirable figure in Yewbell, amongst the younger and even the older generations...
He was to be the future leader of the Yewbell Defense Corp. after Lloyd...
soon after the practise bout, Kharg had an encounter with a spirit, the Spirit of the Wind... which had long been believed to have been gone from the world and only exist in folk tales and stories...
Within such stories, was that the sudden existence of human-like demons called Deimos...
Cause of mutual needs but warring opinions, the Deimos & Humans had ended up being arch-enemies and integration between the two was prohibited!
After this strange encounter.. Kharg resumes his story with some simple errands around the town.. before the town's mining area was under attack by a group of Deimos... Drakyrs to be exact...
After saving the mining area... Paulette & her father, Lloyd went to scout around Yewbell, to look out of any more Deimos...
they did... a family of three Lupines (humanoid wolves) to be exact... the wife and child was killed in the battle... but the father was able to escape... sworning revenge against all humans...
however.. the two didn't win the battle perfectly...

Paulette rooting for Kharg, naturally

Kharg versus Lloyd

Encounter with the Spirit of the Wind

Lady Nafia and her 'odd' outfit

After Kharg's chapter, we were introduced to some more flashbacks...
A male deimos and a female human running through a forest, hand held... Each were carrying a baby..
Both were being chased by some winged Deimos.. which players would've already learned to be called Drakyrs in the earlier chapter...
Finally cornered at the edge of a cliff, the male deimos, Windalf, tried to protect the woman from the pursuers...
however, a magical blast from one of the Drakyrs had caused the crumbling of the cliff... and the plunge of the woman and the baby she held in her arms...
"Nafia!!" Windalf yelled as he watched in dismay as the woman disappeared into the shadows with the baby still in her arms...

Windalf & Nafia, each holding a baby

We then entered into another's life... a young Deimos, Darc..
We are first introduced with a little history of Darc's past...
When younger, his father, Windalf, had been injured badly for some reason but the two had to travel a lot on foot and through terrible terrains...
finally, coming to a church ruin.. they rested.. but this was soon to be the final resting place of Windalf...
Before that, with some of his final breaths, he gave Darc a special stone... and told him that he must save the Deimos from dying out in the future, as it had seemed that things are not going well for the Deimos kind in the far future...
and now brought back to the present, we see Darc in a terribly awful 'home', enslaved by an obesed orgelike Deimos (forgot name)...
this obesed Deimos often caned Darc to 'discipline' him, and controls him with a magical collar, using her magic...
As a slave, Darc is often called to run errands for her... and one particular errand to be done right now was to buy a bottle of Phoenix Blood from a nearby town of Orcons (another type of Deimos)...
there, Darc got to encounter loud and hot-tempered Delma, the sister to the mighty brute Orcon leader, Densimo....
Throughout this chapter, we get to see Darc as a kind-hearted softie... if compared with all the other Deimos who are rugged and would care less about everyone else...
plus with his half human appearance... it's no wonder he was known as the 'Deimos Wannabe' amongst every other Deimos...
however, for some reason, Delma seems.. interested in Darc...
as the story progresses, Darc got an encounter with the Drakyrs, as well.... who knew of Darc's father, Windalf.. claiming he had stolen a treasure from them, the Wind Stone...
As the story proceeded further, Densimo came as an ally to Darc with the help of Delma.. but however, at the end of the chapter, Densimo betrayed Darc, making a deal with the Drakyrs against him...
This made a tremendous turn in Darc's idea to accomplished what his father's wish... to save the Deimos, he needed power to force them!
Darc ended up turning to human weaponry to help him gain power to fight against Densimo and the Drakyrs, and even his former obesed master!
He succeeds in killing all of them... and to Delma's surprise when she finally came to the scene... Keeping to his father's wish, Darc learned that to save the Deimos was not to gain allies through human's way of friendship... but through the Deimos' way with power!
To save the Deimos, he decided that he would need strong allies... and to get strong allies, he sworned to be the strongest Deimos of all!

Young Darc & his injured father, Windalf

Young Darc and his father's momento

Darc, wearing his master's magical collar

Delma who appears to be interested with Darc

The brawns-over-brains Orcon Leader, Densimo

The Drakyr asking for the Wind Stone (Darc's obesed master hanging at the back)

Darc wearing human armor to beat Densimo and the others

What will become of Darc and his quest to 'save the Deimos'...?

Shall he succeed in rounding up strong allies?

Will he be able to win back the trust of Delma?

Will he be able to annihilate all human from the face of the world and reign over all Deimos?

And what about Kharg? Will he be able to lead his people as the new Leader of the Yewbell Defense Corp.?

Will he succeed to eliminate all Deimos in the world? Or will he be consumed in hatred and fail in all?

And who's this mysterious old man who'd appeared out of no where and claiming to be a world-famed explorer?

And what of the Dilzweld Empire, which have been slowly conquering different countries on and on without any force being able to stop them?

And most importantly, who's that mysterious girl and what's her relationship with the Great Spirits? And why are the enemies so desperate to have her?

The story is all right, and I have to say, the screenplay of the story events were meant to hide the unknown big villain.. but it is very obvious who it was... it was only what the villain was planning to do was what remains a mystery... unless it is related in a way through the Arc the Lad series...

The story's a typical fantasy story, where you have the heroes that come together through wins and losses and then in the end face the big boss that wants to destroy the world or something similar and then the heroes beat the boss and they saved the world...

However, the story is quite creative as each of the main characters from both sides of the story, the human's and the Deimos's side... seems to hold something against the other of the opposing side...

like an obvious example, being Kharg's and Darc's aspiration to destroy the other's species/kind...

Anyway... in my opinion.. the lesson behind the story should be taken into consideration of our lives... as it included the moral lesson of understanding others, no matter how different they are to you or the people you are associated with... or even how much their opinions or point of views differ from your own...

Sometimes, they may just seemed so different from you.. when in reality, they're so much like you!

OK.. enough with the story... time for my comments on the game...

Hmm... first the graphics..

The graphics throughout the whole normal gameplay are all right... It's neither too bad nor too good... which includes during battle...

the special effects of the magic cast during battle is enjoyable to watch... haha.. strangely for me, no matter how many times the same spell is cast....

Besides that, during the more 'cinematic' scenes, the graphics go up a level (just a little bit) and you can tell that the graphic is slightly different, compared with the during gameplay graphics...

Overall, the graphics are just right...

One of the scenes somewhere in the games

The animation of the characters are quite all right... though you can easily notice the constantly repeatative movements of the characters... (play the game and you'll see what I mean)

The voice acting is really good... including the voice suited for the characters...

though the script of the story is not as commendable... take for example..

"Don't die on me... Mother... Mother..! Mother.... MOTHER!!!"

just listen to the script the characters follow through and you'll get what I mean...

though I comment the script to be quite creative... I'll praise it of that quality... take for examples..

"Short is a life of a flower."

"I manipulate and am manipulated. I am a puppet and I am a puppetteer. I am Bebedora."

the creativeness of the script is definitely shown from the character, Bebedora.. who is capable of reading people's soul and is not afraid to say aloud the colors of a character's soul... plainly, spelling different colors to represent different emotions...

Besides that, the way some of the characters are introduced to you in the game will bring some humor to the story... as you may just never expect such a turnout...

and that would include the secret characters (of who I've not yet gotten in my first round of the game)...

The world's most evil monster created to destroy the world... Bebedora

Ok.. Let's get into the battles....

Your mind would have to come into play as the battles require strategy if you are to execute an attack that benefits your party more than your loss...

Taking into consideration, the ability to attack more than one enemy in one attack and even small details such as inflicting more damage on the enemy(s) by hitting them from their back...

Or even at defence, setting your characters so that they are to either withstand attacks, or be able to dodge the attacks or even counterattack their attacker!

OK.. the magic... The special effects are nice and the magic itself, though there are the usual typical 'Cure', 'Resurrection', etc, are quite creative...

such as shooting down a large bird to crash onto the enemies.. or for even stronger damages... an airship! O.o

and as I said before.. the special effects are enjoyable to watch (at least for me) despite how many times that same magic or special move was cast...

In battle, strategy is best used, in order to achieve in a beneficial result.

In battle, take the advantage of attacking more than ONE enemy at a time

An visual example of some of the special effects expected in the battle.

Black Ship Down!

However.. ONE big downside to the battling... It's annoyingly slow....

As fun as it is watching the special effects.. you just sometimes want the battle to be over and done with quickly... especially since you'll get to encounter most of the same looking, plus annoying monsters...

some times you just find yourself using the same tactics to defeat the group of monsters...

And gaining experience is not that easy, as evidence to support that, as much as I've encountered monsters throughout the story... and highest level I was able to reach before reaching the final boss battle was just over level 31.... which is low but still enough to beat the final boss.... though with some difficulty and much time-consumption..

Anyway, this game I believe is still considerably all right and fun to play with.. as it does give something extra after you beat the game..

you can save your end result of your first game and continue with a second game which adds some bonuses to your characters at the start, for example, 100,000 of the game's currency & some items and equipments...

plus there are secret characters to unlock through the game (two if not mistaken).... (I'll try to get them the second time around...)

However, for the more experienced RPG players (such as myself), this game isn't that mighty... as the stage designs are quite simple and not easy to get lost in and even easier to find treasure chests...

so I believe, for those of you who are just getting into the RPG genre, you can start your RPG learning with this game...

though, sometimes the monsters are just annoyingly hard sometimes.. but can be overcame with a higher level for the characters or a more effective strategy against them or just plain luck...

I give this game a 3.5 out of 5... Do give this game a try if you think it should suffice your taste...

Kharg & Darc finally meet. What will happen between the two of them?

A peaceful reunion? Or a battle for extinction of the other?