Luminous Arc

August 27,2007 - Tons of strategy RPG's find themselves on handhelds, yet none of them have a consistent level of quality. For starters, you have great strategy games like Fire Emblem or Advance Wars. Then there are good games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Age of Empires, and then there's just crap... we won’t bother mentioning specifics. A lot of avid handheld players have been following with the details of Luminous Arc since its announcement in Japan. Now that it's finally available on North American shores, what echleon does this game fall in?

The game is basically about the nature of the world and how a war between witches and the divine members of the church caused the world to be shrouded in darkness, until the luminous light of God changed it forever. Unfortunately, witches still infest the world, and they have to be dealt with.

You play the role of Alph, a maturing member in a band of mercenaries that call themselves the Garden Children. Trained by an elite knight of the Grand Cardinals, the Garden Children are out to aid the world by eliminating all sorts of evil, whether they are witches, monsters, or just those under the source of some sort of evil. Eventually, Alph realizes that someone close to him is a witch, and through a series of intense conversations, your typical story of mindless discrimination surfaces.

Players will first be greeted by a signature ActImagine anime clip as most eastern titles tend to do. Like Fire Emblem, the entire story consists of connecting the dialog spoken in conjunction with each chapter. After that, you're given access to a menu where you can choose to talk to your colleagues and gain information, mess around in the shop, or choose to advance the story. You can also choose to go out to the world map, which really serves no purpose--it pretty much just tells you where you are and gives you the ability to save the game (you can only save in battle and at the world map itself).

Immediately after the dialog comes a turn-based tactics-style battle. Since it is turn-based, the order of your units’ turns varies depending on their movement rating. The higher their movement, the sooner they can move. In addition to this, they also might have more than a few turns at a time.

The battle system plays just like any other turn-based isometric strategy game. Depending on the options input on the first screen, you have the choice of playing using the stylus controls or just the control pad. Both are completely comfortable, and the stylus is definitely responsible to a point. There'll be sometimes where you want a unit to move behind another unit, and it's hard to actually pinpoint at that exact area. To make matters worse, you can't adjust the camera angle, so it also makes it a bit annoying. When highlighting a character, you can check his or her status and the amount of spaces that character can move--definitely a great tool when you get further into the game. After moving, you have the option of which direction to face. This is essential because enemies can come into you and hit you with increased damage if it's an attack from behind. So essentially, what you want is turn back the table and hit enemies from behind as well.

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