Okay, I should get to this before I forget about it completely. Arc Rise!

The story is something I don’t have much to say about it except that it’s fun. Fun like Tales fun. That sounds about right, right? Anything else I have to say about it comparatively would probably be unbelievably spoiler-riffic if you understand the references.

If you like Tales skits, you’ll like Arc Rise. The game bombards you with them at the same or maybe even a higher frequency than a Tales game. They’re also voiced – as they should be. I did find it strange that they voiced skits that are triggered from doing post-ending sidequests, but not the dialog during those things. Thinking about it now, it’d actually be pretty nice if some RPG actually voiced EVERYTHING, sidequests and ‘non-essential’ text conversations included. By ‘non-essential’ I mean those dialogues where it still involves the heroes but didn’t warrant voicing for some whatever reason. Yes that’s right, I still don’t care about random townspeople. There’s probably some game that did, right? Anyways, I’m way off the tracks here now. Moving on…

Battles were very interesting. For those unfamiliar with the system, you get an AP gauge and each action takes a certain amount of AP, limiting the amount of actions you can do in a single turn. Some actions take more AP than others, and your Speed stat generally determines where these actions place in the turn timeline (I seriously forgot if there was an better term for that). The interesting part is that you can distribute the actions any way you please – meaning you could have 16 AP and have a single party member use all of that AP up on himself. Typical mid-to-late boss battles will require you to play it cautiously old school – keeping yourself healed and buffed, managing your AP usage and waiting for your opportunity to risk it all and do some heavy damage. I’d delve into it but it’ll probably turn into more of a battle tutorial; there is a lot more to that the game will introduce you to in key parts of the game. Excel Trinity Acts are so fun.

Graphics… I’m not really a graphics whore so I won’t talk about this too much. The game was designed for widescreen usage so if you’re playing on a 4:3 screen you’ll notice the game letterboxes itself on startup. It’s actually rather hard to think of something non-cliche to say about it. Something that doesn’t involve the phrase “for a Wii game”. Jokes aside, everything was pretty sharp and very, very colorful in HD. Even though it isn’t the type of cel-shading you’ve seen like in Tales of Vesperia, Arc Rise has made a very impressive effort recreating the character designs in 3D while retaining the anime feel. The CG scenes are a different story though. They reminded me of something of a FF8-quality CG, which felt kind of awkward because I enjoy the in-game engine scenes a lot more.

I can’t say I approve of the plainly designed overworld though. Not only was it plain, but monsters barely notice you. If they do notice you, they don’t run faster than you can run so outrunning anything is never a problem. The same thing applies to monsters within dungeons, but the lack of speed there is actually nice because you’re usually dealing with narrow corridors where they actually have a chance to catch you should you not outmaneuver them.

I should also mention something else that bugged me while I’m talking about random stuff. Costumes! Some you get through events, most you buy from a clothing shop. They’re a little expensive if you tend to buy complete upgrades at every new town, but you can always come back to get them. The problem with them is they don’t change your appearance! They change your status screen portraits, but they do not change your appearance in the world or in battle. What happened? I just don’t understand the purpose there. Anyways, what else haven’t I talked about…

The music! Not too much to comment on here except that it was really nice to hear Mitsuda again after quite a while (I haven’t played Luminous Arc). Scin mentioned the airship theme was nice and I agree. I gravitate more toward battle themes though and Arc Rise did a nice job with them, especially with variety. My favorite is probably __________. (I realized it doesn’t have a name because they haven’t even released an official OST yet. And no, promo discs don’t count.) I guess if I were to call it something it’d be something along the lines of Fury Sparks or Heartful Cry. Heartful Sparks! I wouldn’t highlight that spoiler if you’re game music savvy and don’t like story spoilers.

I guess that’s it. Sorry for not posting this earlier, plenty of stuff kept my mind away from this post for a while now. Be sure and check it out when it hits the States, which is apparently some time in early 2010? Yikes.