GAME STUDIO DESCRIPTION: Arc The Lad: End of Darkness takes place five years after, yet in the same world as Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits™. Edda is a young man whose youth is marked by a “boring island life”, but his serenity is shattered when he meets Kirika, a rude young woman, on the beach. Shortly after, Edda tries to help a hunter capture vicious criminals, but when the hunter is killed, Edda notices Kirika standing nearby, and his suspicions begin to grow about the mysterious young woman. Edda who has awakened as a full-fledged exorcist becomes a hunter himself. Realizing a sense of responsibility to save the weakened world, he sets out on a remarkable journey that will ultimately pit civilization against nature.
For the first time, the Arc The Lad series takes a real-time action approach, and players fight vigorously though various action-packed missions to build up their character. They then take the same character online to fight and cooperate with up to seven other gamers. The game will include an all-star cast of characters from the Arc the Lad series.
PLAY: End of Darkness has taken a lot from Twilight of the Spirits and rehashed them for this new version of Arc the Lad. There is a new updated play system with more emphasis on action than on RPG.
As good as that may sound—it isn’t all that fantastic. The reason gamers played Twilight was for its cool story and RPG style. End of Darkness doesn’t have the great story or the RPG. Everything that wasn’t broken was fixed.
The cast is still strong so it’s too bad they were wasted on such a weak story. The lack of interest in the story makes for battles that are without emotion or interest. It would have been easier to ignore the average story had the game played better.
The delayed animations are mostly to blame for the lacking game play. The ideas that went into the game play are very good from the ability to equip yourself with special abilities. The amount of upgrades is fantastic. Yet it’s hard to get by the issues with delayed responses of the animation and controls—not to mention there is a lot of going back and forth over the same terrain.
GRAPHICS: Nothing seems updated since Twilight of the Spirit. There is nice facial animation however the characters are dated and the animations have been surpassed years ago.
SOUND: The soundtrack is very good. It’s interesting that a story like this is all but void of voice acting.
FRANKLY: The poor responsiveness of the controls, lack of a great storyline, and repetition makes this a weak release. You can play online with up to eight people—which hardly make up for it. Arc the Lad: End of Darkness has a lot of great concepts but very poor delivery.
+ Richie Wright
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