Luminous Arc for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

As more and more Japanese titles start to make their way to the worldwide arena gamers seem to take sides on which games they'll let in, and which they won't. Sure you'll see a ton of love from games like Elite Beat Agents or Cooking Mama due to their charm, but oftentimes Japanese adventure, strategy, or RPG games are met with some pretty harsh skepticism. Case in point, Luminous Arc fits in the same category as games like Children/Heroes of Mana, Etrian Odyssey, Deep Labyrinth, or to a lesser extent GBA's Tales of Phantasia, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, and Yggdra Union, as it'll never reach "Game of the Year" status, but should definitely captivate DS niche gamers quite nicely.''''At its heart, Luminous Arc is a Final Fantasy Tactics clone, unless you're more of a purist and want to call it a Tactics Ogre clone, or to an even lesser extent, Hoshigami clone. Nevertheless, Luminous Arc aims to take the classic gameplay of strategy role-playing games (SRPGs) and wrap it up in an anime style, complete with accompanying VO, a fully-animated hand-drawn intro movie, and a solid musical score. Luminous Arc follows a group of adventurers called the "Garden Children" in a quest to rid the world of witches, fighting alongside the church of Luminous in an attempt to restore peace to the land. Along the way the ragtag group of adventurers acquire new allies, upgrade weaponry, and dive deeper into a corrupt plot. All of the menus, battles, shops, and overworld can be controlled either with a stylus, or classic d-pad/button control.''''''''Right off the bat you'll notice that Luminous Arc still has the look and feel of other Atlus titles such as Izuna, as it sports the same tan backdrops and letter font as previous games. Despite the now somewhat bland setup, Luminous Arc still shows off a solid style, using tons of hand-drawn backdrops and large, crisp character portraits for dialogue sessions. In addition to the expected accompanying artwork for story sections Luminous Arc also threads in a large chunk of VO into the mix, though you'll soon notice that it seems to drop in and out without a moment's notice. Still, the portions of the game that do use full VO (we'd say about 1/5 of the overall story) sound great, and it was unexpected to say the least.''''As you dive deeper into Luminous Arc you'll notice that the design - while taken from SRPGs before it - is intuitive, easy to navigate, and actually a great setup for newcomers to the world of turn-based strategy. There's always a destination flag on your overworld map marking exactly where you should head, battle areas are constantly available for players that want to ramp up their team, and once approaching a destination an "Advance Story" button becomes available. We said it in our hands-on; Lumious Arc ensures that you're experiencing what you want - be it story, battle, or character customization - when you want.''''And even though Luminous Arc takes its battle design directly from other tactics titles it's still done well, adding in a few aspects of gameplay to set it aside, and relying on the tried and true for the rest. You'll still move your characters around a virtual chess board, attacking, casting magic, and using items at your discretion, and while it isn't a huge change from the norm it still works, and it's still fun. Control can be handled with either touch or d-pad control, and we found that classic button use was far better than stylus, as it was far more accurate and generally more comfortable over hours of tactics battling. In addition to touch/d-pad control you can also change how the d-pad is oriented on the screen, allowing up to either move the cursor up and to the left, or up and to the right. As with games like Tactics Ogre and FFTA, we opted to have up move up and to the right.''''Adding to the core battle engine Luminous Arc adopts its own experience system and skill usage. It may not be a perfect fit for everyone, but we found the "Everyone levels up after 100 points" aspect of the game as an interesting - and challenging - design, as we always knew when a character was close to gaining another level. Since each attack, item, and magic use yields exp you'll need to use strategy in deciding who sits on the sidelines, and which characters deliver the final, exp-filled blow. In addition we were happy to see that every character - regardless of classic - uses both physical attacks, skills/magic, and the uber-attack "Flash Drive," as it adds more depth the game, counter-acting the fact that you can't change character classes or jobs, and most equipment management is entirely linear throughout the game. Kill enemies, buy items, equip them, and kill more enemies. It's simple, but that doesn't stop it from being entertaining.''''To add to the game's lasting appeal Atlus included wireless multiplayer for Luminous Arc, allowing not only local multi-card play, but also online battle via Wi-Fi connection. We had a chance to try this out for ourselves, playing in both random and friend battles, and it's a solid addition to an otherwise "by the books" strategy game. You won't find mind-blowing options or hundreds of hours of internet play, but it's still fun to grab your team of eight fighters (taken from your single player mode, of course) and pit them against other battlers around the world. And while some people will look down on the restrictions of online play, only allowing you to engage in multiplayer after the 13th chapter, it certainly helps, as a higher-level team will decimate a lower-level one. The game includes no dummy teams, and no pre-set groups for battle; bring in your team, fight, and repeat. Like every other aspect of Luminous Arc it's basic, but still entertaining in our eyes.''

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