Preview IGN It's been well over a year since we last saw Arc Rise Fantasia at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show. The traditional Japanese role-playing game was released in its homeland last summer and will be arriving stateside later this year. We recently played through the first hour or so and are starting to get a sense of what the story and battle system are like. If you played Luminous Arc on the Nintendo DS, Arc Rise Fantasia comes from the same developer. Composer Yasunori Mutsuda, of Chrono Trigger and Xenogears fame, provides the soundtrack.
This is a very classically-styled JRPG with an anime look that should make fans of Tales of Symphonia and Star Ocean feel right at home. You play as L'Arc, a soldier in the Meridian Empire out to save his country from invading monsters (in true JRPG fashion, he wields a sword that is three times his size). Along the way he'll recruit party members that bring unique abilities to combat. The game begins with an air battle between the Empire and a swarm of Feldragons. L'Arc is knocked off his airship and lands in a forest where he encounters a strange girl named Ryfia. Ryfia is a "Diva" who likes to sing and is the first to join up with L'Arc.
Ryfia here is a Diva.
L'Arc is the stoic military type while Ryfia is all about nature and butterflies. As you might imagine, the two quickly develop some romantic tension and as more characters are introduced players will bear witness to love triangles and squares. L'Arc and Ryfia are soon reunited with the Prince of the Meridian Empire, who happens to be L'Arc's childhood friend and current employer. When the trio attempt to make contact with a general in the army they are suddenly attacked by an arcane bad guy with purple hair who can summon monsters.
While the game is mostly 3D, much of the exposition is delivered by 2D talking heads. The version we played contained the original Japanese language voice track but it is currently being localized for English. Unfortunately for you otakus out there, the Japanese voice track won't be included as an option in the English release.
In battle you spend AP points to assign actions to the characters in your party, and then confirm your choices to end your turn. You don't have direct control of any character – you can instruct them to move to specific areas of the combat zone but you won't be doing any free running. To speed up the battle process you can set tactics for each character and let them make their own decisions. You can customize each weapon with special orbs, and while this system doesn't play a big part in the first hour of the game it sounds like it will provide players with a lot of options in battle. Arc Rise is controlled with the remote and nunchuck -- no Classic Controller, unfortunately.
UPDATE: So apparently that "no Classic Controller" nonsense was just a mean joke played on us. Arc Rise Fantasia will support the Classic Controller. Huzzah!
In combat, you can keep assigning actions to your party members as long as you have AP to spend.
You can see monsters running around the environment, so there are no pesky random battles here. When moving around the world map you become a giant so you can quickly get to your destination – there are still enemies roaming around, though. Arc Rise looks very nice running in progressive scan and true widescreen. The forest areas you explore early in the game are lush and vibrant.
Arc Rise Fantasia should be on shelves this summer. The story will take you around 60 hours to play through -- more if you complete all the side quests. Fans of JRPGs should definitely keep an eye on this one. We've just scratched the surface of this enormous game but what we've seen so far looks promising.