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Hands-onArc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits

We check out a preview build of the newest game in the Arc the Lad series. Details inside.

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Sony has provided us with an English-language preview build of the new Arc the Lad game, subtitled Twilight of the Spirits, and we sat down with the game for a few minutes to see how it plays. Twilight of the Spirits puts you in the role of Kharg, a young swordsman and member of his kingdom's royal family. The monarchy in Kharg's nation was recently dissolved, however, so he's adjusting to life as a commoner. Kharg is a member of his town's defense corps, and along with his friend Portia and her father Lloyd, he begins the game by simply practicing his swordsmanship. Soon, we learn about a race of monsterlike beings called deimos that share the land with humanity, and the soldiers of Kharg's town rush off to help some miners under attack by a group of vengeful deimos. Though Kharg's royal lineage precludes him from taking part in the battle, he rushes off to help.

The first part of Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits features a lot of dialogue but not too much in the way of combat. We did get to play through a couple of story-oriented battles, though, and the fighting system appears to be a mixture of tactical combat and standard RPG fighting conventions. Going into a battle, you can select the party members you want to participate, and then during a character's turn you can move him or her around the battlefield within a certain range. You can issue other standard orders for things like attacking and using items and special attacks. When two characters reach a certain level of tension during the battle, they can target the same enemy and perform a joint attack to do a great deal more damage. You can purchase a variety of items to equip on your weapons to increase their strength or handling, for example, or add an elemental attack. The flow of the battles seems pretty slow so far, although presumably as your characters are powered up you'll be able to handle enemies much more deftly than at the start of the game.

Twilight of the Spirits is looking good overall. The major cutscenes feature pretty decent voice acting, although most of the dialogue is text-only. Graphically, the game isn't really a standout, but the visuals certainly get the job done. The character animation is pretty good in the major cutscenes but average elsewhere. Based on the first couple of hours, the newest Arc the Lad seems to be a solid RPG that doesn't take a lot of risks. We'll bring you more info on Twilight of the Spirits before it's released later in the spring.

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