An adventure of generic proportions! But, that doesn't mean it can't still be enjoyable...right?
The story here follows a group of anime kids who live at a place called the Ever Garden. There they are trained by the Luminous Church to fight off Witches who are out to destroy the world, or so they are told anyway.... The kid's names are Alph, who basically is the goody-goody hero boy; Theo, the little bro to Alph and crybaby who of course has his moments; Leon, who is the easy going sort of macho guy; and Cecille, who is loving and caring "big sis" of the group. Later on, more interesting characters join, because I found the basic for boring and just not interesting. Nikolai, who reminded me a lot of Zelos from Tales of Symphonia, is the perverted guy who is also very intelligent (or so he claims anyway). Honestly, my favorite character out of the whole game was Vanessa, the Witch of Immolation, her fiery and implusive personality was charming and fit her name.
The battle system, well, if you look at basically every other SRPG out there, you'll see that the battle system in Luminous Arc doesn't deter from the generic formula. It is still fun in the end though, but... The only real additions to the system, were the Synergy attacks that certain characters can pull off with another character after a certain part in the story. But I didn't really use them all that much, the battles were easy enough wthout them. Using them would've been like adding more insult to injury for your enemies. Most special attacks didn't really do more than regular attacks anyway, so they felt unecessary...like putting more icing on a cake when it's already covered with it, just to make it seem more enticing and pretty when it really doesn't need it. Of course you have your Flash Drive attacks which are semi useful, but still not really necessary. It just felt like these attacks were added in to make it feel like you had more options, when you could basically go through this game by just using regular physical attacks and magic. I should also point out you fight the same bosses over and over....you fight Vanessa around 4 times and numerous other bosses multiple times. There are only a handful of actual bosses in this game and fighting the same ones over and over, is just dull.
One of the aspects of the game I did like, however, were the Intermissions that occured after each battle. After each fight was over, you could talk to a character who was in the fight with you. By choosing to chat it up with that person after a long day of monster slaying, you could gain "interest" with that character. You have 3 responses to choose from after they talk to you and which one you choose affects your relationship with them. A little heart meter begins to build with that character until it becomes full/blue/has Cupid's little arrow going through it. When it is full, Alph and that person can use certain abilities in combat. A lot of work and it doesn't really amount to much, but it was still fun to build a relationship with the characters in game.
There is also this, "Life of Kopin" event that happens after every story related battle.....they are about as pointless as a "story" in most First Person Shooters. They can be somewhat funny, but really.....I just thought over and over..."Why?"
The graphics are decent, not really all that great, but decent for a DS title. The animated cutscenes and animation for the characters are well done, as are most anime related games. There are some graphical flaws in this game that cannot be forgiven, however. When you buff a character, they start to glow brightly, despite the buff. However, when they have a negative status put on them, they turn darker. When you have both on a charracter at once, they flash.....and it is just annoying, plus it causes the game to slow down more. Yes, more, there is horrendous lag in this game about half of the time. Characters looks like they're turtles with a 2 ton shell on their back sometimes and when you have the HP/Turn indicator up, it slows the game down even more! It also doesn't help you cannot rotate the map....this makes the maps 2D basically, there are height differences, but it's hard to tell when you can't rotate the dang field!!!
The sound design is on par with the graphics. The soundtrack left a lot to be desired, I found myself muting the BGM because I couldn't stand to listen to it for an extended amount of time. In every RPG there is at least 1 song I don't mind....in this one, I pretty much despised them all. The voice actors were okay, not great, but okay. I liked Vanessa's VA and Nikolai's the best, they seemed to be the most convincing of them all. One thing about the sound that was as annoying sometimes as the lag, was how the words would keep moving in the dialogue box, but the voices wouldn't match up.
You can turn off the voices, so this problem can be elimated, but to get the full experience I guess you'll just have to put up with it.
There are only a few extras in this game to make you want to play it again. There is a New Game +, where you keep all your items, experience, and you can use every charcter for random battles, just not story battles. There is also a single bonus dungeon you can exlpore. Besides those two things.....there is the Extras menu where you can listen to all the BGM, voices, look at Gallery pics, and scenes from the game. But.....I don't see why anybody would want to listen to the BGM of this game.
Overall, Lumious Arc is pretty much a generic and linear SRPG, but it can still be enjoyable due to a few interesting characters and a pretty fun battle system. If you need a short (I finished it in 16 hours), yet fun SRPG then Luminous Arc is it.