Don't let the lack of hype fool you, Arc Rise Fantasia is this year's sleeper hit and one of the Wii's best games.
That changed with the N64. Though a great console in its own right, the only classic style JRPGs it received in America were Quest 64 and Aidyn Chronicles. Though this changed somewhat with the Gamecube and the runaway success of Tales of Symphonia, it was Sony's Playstation that became the de facto choice of console RPG designers.
Though with Monster Hunter Tri achieving some moderate success on the Wii and both Xenoblade and Hironobu Sakaguchi's The Last Story" almost a lock for a US release we could be seeing a change sooner than we think.
Especially after seeing how well Arc Rise Fantasia turned out.
In the run up to its release, I had heard all manner of horror stories about the game's lack of quality and sloppy localization. I had heard about the poor voice acting, had seen the low resolution graphics and had witnessed the complete lack of hype and excitement the game's impending release had been cursed with. Still, with my Wii in need of a good classic style JRPG, I took the plunge and bought it regardless.
Though the complaints of bad voice acting and low resolution visuals aren't exactly without merit, neither is so horrible that it detracts from what is essentially a very challenging albeit somewhat formulaic JRPG.
First of all, the voice acting isn't truly as bad as I had been led to believe. While it did sound rather grating at first, as time wore on I found that the actors seemed to grow into their roles and improve as the game went on. Like a pool full of freezing cold water, it stung at first but the longer I stood within it the warmer it began to feel.
Some of the actors, namely Ryfia and L'arc's, seem to be a bit inexperienced when it comes to doing voice overs. Though L'arc's actor improves with time (or so it seemed to me) Ryfia 's voice seemed off to me for some reason. Granted, this could be intentional since Ryfia is both a foreigner and a sheltered young woman that isn't used to the Imperial way of speaking, but her voice didn't need to be so wooden in order to get that feeling across.
Balancing out things a bit would be the voices of Rastan and Ignacy, two men whose actors not only know what they are doing, but seem to bring the story up a few notches just with their inclusion within the cast. Cecille, the prerequisite tough young girl in a frilly dress, also comes up big with a rather well done voice of her own.
In the end, your tolerance of the voice acting depends squarely on how much you expect for a 39.99 game put out by a relatively inexperienced company. While this isn't Ignition's first game, it's easily their most ambitious undertaking, and I feel they did about as well as they could given the circumstances. In a June 25th interview they even admitted that the acting wasn't as good as they had hoped it would be, but reassured fans that their next game (Takeyasu Sawaki's cross platform ARPG "El Shaddai") wouldn't suffer the same fate.
While it's easy to pick on Ignition's low budget and lack of funding, there is so much more to Arc Rise Fantasia then spotty voice acting. In reality, the game is one of the most challenging JRPGs you'll likely play this generation.
Arc Rise starts off innocently enough, with your main character (L'arc Bright Lagoon) separated from his platoon of dragon hunting mercenaries and getting saved from death by a strange young spell caster who grows attached to him. The first few boss fights, as you would expect, are nothing spectacular. Though as time goes on and the game begins teaching you advanced combat techniques such as Trinity Acts and Excel Arts you'll soon find yourself scrambling for an FAQ as a boss (Probably that boss in the Nabra Jungle) pounds your party into paste within the time span of a few rounds.
Though the game's colorful graphics and cliche story may lead you to believe otherwise, it's actually an extremely challenging JRPG that forces you to learn its systems or die. Nowhere is this more apparent than the fight with Gula, where proper positioning and equipment sharing is absolutely mandatory in order to even make it past the first three rounds.
That is where Arc Rise Fantasia truly shines, in its refreshingly difficult boss fights.
In Arc Rise, you have to worry about things such as your position on the field, the order of your actions, the amount of action points you expend per command (Think Fallout 3) and the status-nullifying equipment required for each battle. While this is certainly nothing new to RPGs in general, Arc Rise Fantasia seems to beat you over the head with these requirements until you realize that they aren't just something meant for the optional boss fights or the final battle, but rather a discipline you must adhere to for every fight from the halfway point of the game on to the end.
While sometimes the save points are a little sparse and/or too far away from the boss and therefore cause you to lose a considerable amount of time, it's a small concern that most old-school RPG fans shouldn't be too bothered by. Anyone who has played the "Tales of" series will be used to such practices and probably think nothing of them.
Which leads us to the inevitable connection to Tales of Symphonia and why the game not only feels like that famous Gamecube breakout hit, but why it looks like it as well. With "skits" akin to the what we've seen in the modern tales games as well as the colorful and vibrant worlds that the series is known for, it's hard not to shake the feeling you're simply playing a turn based Symphonia.
The visuals, while a bit low-res due to the Wii's current inability to go above 480p, are actually quite good when you compare them to similar titles. With a very vibrant color palette and some rather impressive combat animations (Especially Adele's Excel Arts), Image Epoch obviously knew what they were doing in terms of presentation. This isn't a surprise when you realize that former Namco Tales studio member Hiroyuki Kanemaru was heavily involved in the project.
Hiroyuki Kanemaru, who Turbo-Grafx 16 CD system owners like myself might remember from his work with Telnet Japan in RPGs such as Exile and Cosmic Fantasy 2 (Thanks Working Designs for localizing them!) was heavily involved in the production of Arc Rise Fantasia and his old school touch can be seen everywhere. Though many like to call his work out-of-date and cliched, I find the story and gameplay to be more about honoring the past rather then simply going back to it due to lack of ideas. Hiroyuki Kanemaru has two decades worth of experience under his belt and it shows in nearly every crack and crevice of Arc Rise's systems. Whether it's the limited magic point casting system that forces you to use your spells wisely or the weapon leveling that requires you to carefully consider how you modify your equipment, Arc Rise is not just another "Tap a button rapidly to attack" type of RPG.
Arc Rise Fantasia is a game that is far greater than what previews and screenshots would lead you to believe. Having been unfairly passed off as a B-grade JRPG with a cliched storyline and ancient design choices, very few people seem to want to dig deeper to find out what the game really contains. They don't see the enjoyably challenging boss fights, the heart-warming characters (Such as Niko) or the Tales-level of quality within the visuals and music. They simply pass Arc Rise Fantasia off as a left-over from a bygone age and criticize it for being a remnant of the genre's past.
Though I would have loved to see some small changes such as the outfits actually showing up on my characters in battle and the in-combat voice overs being less repetitive, these are small gripes that in no way lessen my enjoyment of the game. Arc Rise Fantasia may not be perfect, but it's one of the few JRPGs that we've seen in this console generation that not only gives the player a challenge, but stays true to the genre's roots. For some, this is a huge turn off, but for others like myself, it's enough to make you glad you have a Wii.
Especially since other than Vesperia, you're unlikely to find another JRPG of this type during this new generation.