Luminous Arc (Nintendo DS) Review

Luminous Arc focuses on the wrangling between the Luminous Church and evil witches that purportedly terrorise the land. Monsters are attacking people and supernatural occurrences are becoming somewhat of an everyday issue, thus the Church has enlisted the help of the 'Garden Children' (basically a youth training programme to build up special soldiers for protection in situations such as this) in thwarting the Witch of Immolation, her many minions and any other witch that gets in the way of the peace and prosperity that once was. The game is highly reliant on its strong visuals to carry its theme along, with lavishly crafted, well-drawn characters that appear in detailed 2D portrait form during the story sequences, many of which are rather busty in nature, flashing lots of skin around...(but you would expect no less from the creative mind of renowned artist Shibano Kaito, who has a habit of creating numerous drawings of buxom young ladies as well as many other images). These characters are then translated into small SNES/PSone-like sprites for the actual battle scenarios and, thankfully, still manage to retain a lot of their charm. Locations are full of detail, magical effects are quite attractive (although do not push the DS to its limits in any way) and movement is fluid throughout. However, there are issues with the fixed camera, since it can be hard to judge where to click to highlight the character you wish to use or enemy you want to attack when there are many characters huddled around the same location.

As for the soundtrack, the game flourishes in this department all thanks to the marvellous work of Yasunori Mitsuda, a name that will be recognisable to stalwart RPG fans. His work spans many games and along his path of creation he has left many a fond memory in gamers' minds. His repertoire spans the likes of Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Xenosaga I, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter...even up to recent release 'Deep Labyrinth' on DS. The man is a legend in the world of soundtrack composition, alongside other greats like Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo. In fact, in his work for Luminous Arc there are shades of Mana to be found, along with moving music full of orchestrated strings, trumpets, piano work, gentle bells and much more that help to create a haunting atmosphere in places, yet a perfectly upbeat, happy mood at other points. Everything is balance wonderfully. Voice work is also particular strong, if somewhat cheesy and over-the-top in places, with the majority of the main scenarios being covered by voice actors. Overall it really does bring the player closer to the story and help immerse them into the gameplay.

Speaking of which, in terms of the game's core, Luminous Arc is a pretty standard strategic role-playing game. The game does not let you wander around an overworld, instead having you choose the next location along a set path and automatically moving the team appropriately. Each time you arrive at a new place there will be a long-winded conversation to help the story along, followed by the choice to talk to other members of your current team, shop for new weapons, armour, items and so on, brush up on more background knowledge of the world and various in-game elements at a local library or simply 'advance the story' and move onto the next major battle. Basically, if you have played anything like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem before, you will feel pretty much at home with the set-up.

Now, whilst this might sound quite boring, the script is so diverse and the options available for extra plot development so extensive, that players will be sucked into the tale and find themselves starting to care more and more about the characters as they develop throughout the adventure. There are highly amusing moments littering the script (thankfully it seems the game has not been censored for its Western release, meaning all the quirky and sometimes risqu

Once fully suited up with whatever armour and weapons you require / desire, you are given the chance to select which characters you will be using in battle, before being thrown onto one of the various encounter maps, strewn with various different enemy types. Everything is controlled using the touch-screen, so selecting individuals is a perfectly simple case of tapping on them, choosing an action like 'Move' or 'Attack', and then tapping the place they need to move to, enemy they should attack, and so on. Each character takes its turn and when finished must wait for the rest of the map's dwellers to take make their move. But rather than having the annoying situation of certain team members getting stranded and dying quickly, everyone gains experience 'on-the-fly', meaning each action taken lets them accrue a little more of that vital 'EXP'. Therefore, someone on the verge of death can be fully revitalised as their level goes up and health and magic levels are fully boosted back up again. This adds a great new element of strategy to the proceedings as calculated risks come into play more than in other SRPGs. New skills are learned during battle as well, meaning your team's dynamic constantly changes.

In addition, tactics play an important role, since hitting enemies from the side or back results in more damage being given, with the same being true for when they counter-attack; so be careful where you leave team members after going on the offensive. Other aspects included in the game are things like how certain characters can use strong magic, crossbows and arrows, meaning that they can attack from further away, thus protecting them more from returned fire. There are also special moves, called Flash Drives, which can be used when a character has killed an enemy and has gained a Flash Point. Many of these have a long range, again letting you stay back to attack from distance. But do not simply use all of your accrued Flash Points straight away, as if two characters store up a maximum of three each, they can team-up to unleash devastating Synergy moves. Add all of this into the package, plus little extras like Intermissions where you can boost the morale of certain team-mates simply by talking to them, and Vitae Imbuing (that appears later on in the game) where you attach special runes to weapons, armour, and so on, and it is quite clear Luminous Arc is definitely a not-to-be-missed title for lovers of SRPGs!

The game consists of twenty-five main chapters, so if you choose to skip over the majority of the optional conversations and extra information, you could probably fly through the main adventure in about fifteen to twenty hours, all depending on your skill (and luck) in battle. However, the game is so well developed that you will definitely want to make sure you do not overlook any aspect of the storyline or miss out on the side-quests dotted around the game's world, meaning that the game can easily stretch to thirty hours or more. With the added option of being able to fight friends or even strangers via the local wireless download, or over the online Wi-Fi network as well, there is definitely enough depth to this RPG to warrant making the purchase.