A great tactics game in a long time that comes to the DS that delivers fun and enjoyable times once again to veterans.

User Rating: 7.5 | Luminous Arc DS
Luminous Arc ------------------------ 7.5

Gameplay --- 8
Graphics ---- 7
Sound ------- 8
Value ------- 7
Tilt ---------- 7

The Good: Great replay value, surprisingly large voice dialogues, fun multiplayer
The Bad: Graphical glitches, very annoying voices of characters, lag and slowdown during battles.

Luminous Arc is one of the newest title released by the developer Atlus which has a record of localizing great games from Japan over into the United States and Luminous Arc is no exception. This game is a turn-based strategy game for the Nintendo DS handheld that doesn’t reinvent the genre but makes players go back to it and remind them of how great of a genre it is. If players didn’t like the turn-based strategy genre before, this might not be the best way to get into it, however, with a good storyline, great sounds, and great gameplay this game will motivate players to keep moving through the end of the game.

The game starts out with youths from the Ever Garden that are raised by the Luminous Church, a holy religion intent on protecting the world and worshipping their God. These youths are raised for combating the evil witches that will come into the world wreaking havoc and destruction upon humans and the lands. Alph, the main character, and his trusty buddies Theo, Leon, and Cecille are the Garden Children that will be the wrath of the church upon the witches and will “Protect the Light, Condemn the Dark.” The story develops as these kids go on a journey to condemn the witches and bring peace back to the planet that they so love.

The story has always been a driving force with all Atlus games and this game does so just like other previous Atlus games. The story is told remarkably through anime characters popping on the top screen and the text dialogue shown right below them. The player can basically tell who is talking because the character that is talking will be a bit brighter than the one not talking. There is usually two characters shown on the screen at each time and the characters swap as they talk to get a conversation going. This method seems very old and not something admired very much nowadays, however, the game does it partially well so that it doesn’t annoy the fans of this old style character conversations. The one thing, however, in the game that does get very tiring is that there is too much dialogue in between battles from the story. As a game driven with much story it is understandable however, there should be an extent to how much the characters talk in each set after battles. The characters show during dialogue are drawn in an anime style that fits greatly with the game itself because of the fantastical and mythical world that this game place in, plus this being a Japanese RPG game it’s very understandable. A great addition to the game is that Luminous Arc actually has a great amount of voice overs in the game that adds more value of the game. While some voices of the characters are well done, others are a bit annoying and just all out wrong. Even though the voices are well and is actually featured into the game at certain parts of the game, the game puts dialogue sometimes into the most bizarre parts of the story or conversation therefore sort of ruining the mood of the game and at other times the VO just suddenly cuts off therefore it feels that game has a bit of lack. Also the flow of the VO sometimes does not fit because at times you will want to proceed with the story and you click the A button to proceed, the voice of the characters will go onto the next character or the dialogue will not allow you to proceed because the imaginary, or used to be Japanese dialogue, footprints of the previous VO is left behind. This is very noticeable in the game but does not hinder the story at all, rather it partially hinders the game itself.

Even though the bulk of the game is through dialogue and story telling, the part that makes this a game is of course, the fights. The battles in the game represent great alikeness to that of the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, as they are of the same genre. Luminous Arc is an isometric turn-based RPG that allows the characters to move certain spaces and take action. The characters are placed on to the map and the player moves the characters against the enemy characters that are on the battlefield. The battlefield differs as you go on throughout the story and the scenery is quite beautiful but it’s not something to be admired on the DS as the graphics can be a bit better. The reason for this is that the graphics are very similar to the FFTA and veterans of the game that play this game might realize the great similarity in graphics of the battlefield and the characters that are on it. Regardless, the graphics are well drawn enough that it weaves in with everything else that is in the game. The character’s movement order is dependent on speed and previous action in this game. In example, the person that moves the least amount of spaces and does the least amount of action will have their turn come faster next turn. The player and the enemy does not move their whole entire army each turn rather, a bulk of the enemy’s characters can move depending on how fast they are and what they did last turn. Because of this players can strategize how they will move their characters in order to finish the mission with the least amount of casualty and greatest amount of skill. Even though the action affects when the character’s turn will come around, the speed is the big part of when the character will have his or her next turn. A general use of this style is called turn order which can be quickly accessed by clicking start in the battle and going to the turn order section.

Each character will have his own class and will tell the player, usually, what his or her specialty is. This is sort of a turn off to most players due to the lack of customization in a character. In other turn-based games, players would have the liberty of choosing a class for each character whereas in this game the class is set for each character and you will have to make due with this system. However, the game offers a variety of characters for the players to choose and place their own set of characters that they like on to the battlefield with a maximum of 8 of your own characters on the field. At times the character will say a battle phrase when their turn starts or say something when they are hurt or when they even cause hurt. This is one of the neat additions into the game that proves this is actually a next-generation portable game but this feature might hurt players as some of the voice of the characters annoying or the restlessness of the player hearing the same phrase over and over and over again. The battle field is represented on the bottom screen while the top screen represents the character’s stats that you are currently controlling. While this makes a good use of the DS’ dual screen feature, it’s not very intuitive. The bottom screen’s battlefield can be controlled by either the D-Pad control scheme or the touch screen control scheme, left of right handed, by using the stylus and moving the characters, touching the menus bars, and etc. While the touch screen controlling is pretty cool, the battlefield tends to sometimes get very bunched up that the player can no longer see where she is moving, what spaces are available, and even who she’s attacking or controlling. It also gets especially difficult in battle when you cannot scroll to an enemy and see how much HP it has without removing the player’s menu by repeatedly pressing B. A quick way to see how much HP a character has is to click the X button which shows the character’s HP bar, showing remaining HP out of the whole, and a number which represents when her turn will come, smallest being the soonest. Though this feature is a great add-on, it somewhat does not balance out the overall crowdedness in the battlefield. A great addition to make up for this would be the Hoshigami’s rotating map feature with a click of a button but, oh well. Players will make battle against the enemy and for every action that the character does, movement and wait do not count, the character will gain experience. Once a character reaches 100 exp that character will level up and replenish his or her Hit Points and Magic Points. This adds a great amount of strategy into the game as players will consider this as a factor to automatic healing and such. A character can take action by attacking or using MP to use their special ability, however, another battle feature added onto this game is the Flash Drive and the Synergy Feature. Each character possesses a FP meter, or Flash Points Meter, which increases with every hit you take of every hit you cause on a character. As this meter increases a character is allowed to unleash their special ability attack that will cause great damage and might create a status condition on a foe. Synergy is a synchronized attacks between character that do an even greater deal of damage when certain requirements are met. Major requirements will be that they must be within a 3x3 range of the character and also that their FP meter must be full. The Flash Drive and the Synergy are somewhat hard to pull of in battle, they are great battle features that help aid the player later on in harder mission in the game. Death of a character does not permanently erase she or her from the game rather, the person does not gain anymore experience in the battle. He or she can be revived but is put at the end of the line for the turn order. During the battle there is also the suspend battle feature but it’s real cheap because it’s not as punishing as the Fire Emblem, which made very good use of the suspend battle feature. The battles are somewhat easy in the beginning of the game, but the difficulty will spike real high once they progress in the story that may discourage the players but those that get past these difficulties will realize the true importance of strategy and conservation in this game.

Atlus has been well known for having a game that has tiny but very funny additional features in their game and in this game it is the Intermission phase. Intermissions are triggered after each battle where the main character Alph may talk to one character to build up their relationship. The person’s relationship will grow and eventually will pay off by special added effects in battle and gifts from the character for Alph which can virtually be used by anyone. The person chosen after the battle goes into a fun dialogue section with Alph and the player decides what to say after the character is done talking. This can raise the person’s affection, keep it neutral, or lower the affection with Alph. Most likely, you would want to go for the positive choice. There are 3 choices and they affect the relationship with the above consequences. The person’s relationship with Alph is represented by a heart which is filled halfway, full, and full with an arrow from good to best respectively. This is a fun feature, really it is, but at a certain point the character’s heart, will turn into a blue color which will mean that the relationship will develop no further until you play a new game, or play the new game+ which can be accessed by completing the game first.

No battles, intermission, or anything else, Luminous puts an Alph avatar in the overworld of the continent that he lives in. The main flow of the game is that you go through the story, do etcetera stuff, proceed with the story further, battle, intermission, then more story. In the etcetera the character will go buy armor, weapons, and other equipments that will aid the player in battle buy properly equipping items onto a character. These items can be bought through the game’s currency which can be earned by finishing battles or doing random battles. However, because items’ costs are a bit hefty in the beginning, the game requires a bit of money grinding from time to time. Another etcetera would be imbuing of items which improve the stats of the items or add random stats that will aid the character. Imbuing can be done later on in the game by merging items with vitae, magical stones, which players collect throughout game. Recipes can be found by randomly imbuing items, or looking on the internet. The overworld has icons placed on the map and dots that connect the icons from place to place. The icons on the world are as following: towns, random places, encounters. The towns are just locations that contain a shop which offers items for you to buy at anytime. You can also sell random items that you use, which most likely be useless armor that you no longer use. Random places are just icons that are on the map because it has something to do with the story, but sometimes it’ll contain shops. Encounters are icons that are symbolized by 2 swords and going across these icons on the map will trigger a battle. These encounters help by raising your character’s level, money grinding, or item hording.

The sound of the game is surprisingly well and fits with every single mood of the game as well as the battles. It’s become very standard that most Japanese RPG games will contain a good story with outstanding characters and a great music score, and Luminous Arc fits the sound category very well. The only fit that a player will most likely make when playing Luminous on the sound section will be some of the annoying VO on the characters or annoying battle cries.

The Network fights and the Wi-Fi part of the game pits you against another player to fight it out on a battlefield. The multiplayer portion of the game works much like the fights in the single player except the player will fight against an actual human. Each player will bring out their own team of 8 characters and the gameplay works the same as the single player portion. The multiplayer offers the players to think outside the box by strategizing greatly. Of course, the player is bringing his or her own team of characters so the levels and items and other things will stay. There is a level range that the player will fight against which is a good thing but sometimes people can be overwhelmed by the opposing team because the lack of skill, and sometimes cheats (action replay). However, for the victor the winner will receive rare items and other good junkies.

Though the game is great, Luminous Arc does have its flaws and some of the flaws bring down its gameplay and value quite a bit. The slow button reactions due to the VO in the conversations or the imaginary Japanese footprints are an obvious problem as the story progresses and it’s a problem that shows that Atlus didn’t quite touch up on the porting process of the game completely. There noticeable graphical glitches in the game where a white line will stream across during character dialogues or in battle which can be noticed if you’re even casually playing but they disappear instantly. One part of the story shows a major graphic problem most likely due to the layering process of the game. The last but the biggest problem of the game is the game’s speed of the game. The game runs surprisingly smooth and fast in the game but from time to time or the later parts of the game, Luminous Arc will lag very much. It seems like there’s a frame rate issue in the game or a lack of memory in the game but it doesn’t hinder the game too much. The lag is present but it’s something that should’ve been cleaned up if possible before released to the public.

The game offers a great amount of fun and replay value due to a good story, great music compilation, fun characters, and challenging multiplayer. However, the tiny and tedious details and problems of the game makes it come a bit short of its greatness.