I’m finding it a little hard to get into 
Arc Rise Fantasia
Quick impressions so far:
The famously bad voice-acting: It’s not as bad as I was led to expect. Or rather it is that bad, but no worse than that. What I’m trying to say is, there’s memorably, quotably bad voice-acting and then there’s half-assed, phoned-in crap like Arc Rise Fantasia.
It’s a bad effort overall, but Ryfia and Niko’s VAs really stand out in a terrible, terrible way. I got used to the others pretty quickly, but whenever these two pipe up it’s like sandpaper in my ear canals. There’s an option to turn voice acting off completely, but I’m not that desperate…yet.
The story so far: Eh. Yet another mysterious pendant that holds the key to the future of the world. Next time it should be panties or something, give the jewelry a break. A bad kingdom has cut off our empire’s power supply, so my party’s heading there right now to give them what’s for. I suspect things will really pick up once I finish that and hear what the other side has to say. Maybe the conclusion will be something other than the usual Power of Mankind/Friendship/We don’t need no Stinkin’ Gods storyline, but I don’t have much hope.
The battle system: I’ve played other games (Dragoneer’s Aria, Grand Knights History, etc.) with a shared AP pool that controls party actions. Right now I’m finding combat dull and restricted, but I’m sure it will pick up once I have more AP to tinker around with. Oh, and once I get more magic gems and open up some more slots. Once I can move around, use items freely and do more Chain Attacks and Syncs, things should get a little more exciting.
It would also help if they did something about the balance. I hear boss battles are hard (I would say “cheap”) all the way through, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The map battles though, are way too easy. Mook battles are simple and fast-paced, over in 15-30 seconds on average. That’s good. But then the boss battles are marathon slogs, and apart from giving you levels the mook battles do absolutely nothing to prepare you for them strategy-wise. It would almost be the same if they just scaled your level up and threw you straight from boss battle to boss battle.
I should probably play a little more before talking too much about the combat. It just seems to me that they have the makings of a very good system, but one which they’re handling very poorly. Map enemies are so easy you can kill them with auto-battle and zero strategy. Meanwhile boss battles are so tough you’re spamming Heal Liquids 80% of the time. Neither one leaves much room for planning or experimenting with the battle system.
tl;dr: I’m only playing this because I heard the battles were great. I’ll give it another 5 or 6 hours and see what I can make of it.
Only thing decent about the voice acting is L’arc’s attempts at sarcasm/dry wit sound like bad innuendo which makes for some funny scenes (“You’re a ~very~ selfish prince”). It’s a bit weird to bring up, but have you tried Yakuza 2? The combat’s janky and the minigames must be skipped to retain sanity, but the way it handles npcs and sidequests was pretty refreshing for me at least after putting some tedious hours into various fantasy jrpgs. Might be good for a break if you find yourself wanting one.
I’ve heard of the Yakuza/Ryu no Gotoku games, but I’ve never considered trying one. I’ll add it to my PS2 backlog, or should I start with the first game in the series?
Late reply (popped in to read your new article <3), but I'd say skip the first. The Yakuza series is relentlessly melodramatic and the first actually takes itself seriously on top of that. During the tutorial of Yakuza 2, there's an option to have the events of the first game summarized (choose to 'remember' in the cemetery) and that gets you up to speed.
As a heads up, the only aggravating /and/ unskippable part of the game is near the beginning at the Omi mansion. Die twice and it lets you switch to easy, and I'd recommend doing so if you're feeling frustrated as it's the only time you're ever going to be fighting in close quarters and it's not worth the time it takes to learn how to deal with that.
Yakuza 2's a great game, especially if you like hub towns in jrpgs. Weird little sidequests are everywhere (watch a cursed video, help an enka singer escape the mob through the powers of nostalgia, etc) and the violence is incredibly satisfying in that it's shounen as hell- you can stomp a man's face through pavement and honestly say you did it to teach him the meaning of friendship. Plus Goro Majima's the best Big Bro in gaming.
I’m sold. It’ll take me a while to get round to playing it, but I’ve definitely got to try this for myself.
“Maybe the conclusion will be something other than the usual Power of Mankind/Friendship/We don’t need no Stinkin’ Gods storyline, but I don’t have much hope.”
ahahahahahahahahah,good joke! i can at least tell you there is an interessing plot twist in the identity of the villain even if the game pulls it off quite stupidly and forced
“I should probably play a little more before talking too much about the combat. It just seems to me that they have the makings of a very good system, but one which they’re handling very poorly. Map enemies are so easy you can kill them with auto-battle and zero strategy. Meanwhile boss battles are so tough you’re spamming Heal Liquids 80% of the time. Neither one leaves much room for planning or experimenting with the battle system.”
yeah bosses hitting as hard as a truck will be a recurring theme trough the game,personaly it is one of the reason why i like the battle in the games,also the growth system,every weapon you get as a special skill represented by a tetris like block which you can then transfer to other weapon after accumulating enough point,it doesn’t do much at first but after a while you get tons of customizable options,if you fill a weapon entirely you also get a bonus skill
be sure to save your spell to damage and use them in a combo,some of them can shave off 50% of a boss health bar in a single swoop if used correctly and make boss fight go much quicker
I like the weapon block thingies. It’s a great idea and makes getting new weapons really exciting. I haven’t unlocked too much magic yet, but I’ve experimented a bit with putting different gems in different slots. The system has great potential.
did you get the comment i posted? everytime i try to post a comment nothing happens
Sorry about that. My spam filter has been flagging just about everything lately. I’ll see if I can change the settings to make it a little less restrictive.
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