'Budget price' review: Arc the Lad 3 (PSX)

Here's another 'budget price' review, this time of an old release, rather than an indie game. Since it's an old game, the scoring is quite forgiving, and concentrates on the fun factor and playability, rather than visuals or audio, as those are obviously outdated by today's standards. Anyhow, here goes.

Arc the Lad 3
Arc the Lad series has always piqued my interest with the fact that it's a TRPG (Tactical Role-Playing Game), in other words, the battles are done on square/grid -based fields, where position and approach matters, unlike in most other Japan -originating RPG's, where the party and enemies are in rows and exchange attacks. Not that I have anything against the traditional setup, but adding a tactical aspect to it is always a bonus in my books.

Arc the Lad games 1-3 were released on the original Playstation, while the next two were released on Playstation2. At the time of typing this review, I'm already working on the next Arc the Lad title, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits.

Let's start with the story...
The story in Arc the Lad series continues, and at least in case of the first three games, some characters appear in multiple games. The main adversary most of the time seems to be the Evil One, who is about to be resurrected. The classic way of banishing the Evil One seems to be sealing it inside a magical ark, but other methods have been applied as well. To not spoil everything, I'll let you speculate what the case is this time.

In this part of the Arc the Lad story, the world is recovering from The Great Disaster that happened in the previous title. Much of the world is in ruin, but a handful of towns on various continents have survived, and are trying to rebuild the society again. Some groups are researching the lost technologies, others getting rid of monsters and bandits that are still plentiful in all areas.

Alec, the main protagonist, along with his extremely annoying friend Lutz are living a peaceful life in a village on a relatively small island. However, one day bandits raid the village, and while the villagers are being helf captive while the bandits loot the village, Alec and Lutz manage to sneak out to call for help. In this case, the only help they could rely on is the international Hunter Guild. Hunters are people that take on almost any kind of work, mostly specializing in monster extermination and bandit bashing. Our duo finds their way to a nearby guild, and hires a hunter to take down the bandits, which he does in matter of seconds upon reaching the village. Alec, impressed by the hunter, now wants to be one too. He decides to leave the village and become a hunter. Lutz insists to tag along, and off they go. To become a hunter, one must pass a test at the guild, which is basically the first task ahead.

On a mission
Once Alec receives his hunter's crest and is officially in business, he starts to take on jobs at the guild. Unfortunately for all you battle enthusiasts, half the jobs are basically about running errands to people and attempting to complete mini-games. While not all of these need to be accepted, some of them may have unexpected rewards in form of items or weapons.

In addition to jobs, each guild has six 'wanted monster' posters up, and these monsters can be hunted down in nearby locations for extra cash and experience. These are completely optional, and I personally think that they should be skipped, should you want future battles to be challenging. You'll level up plenty while searching for these monsters.

Once enough missions have been completed on a continent, special guild jobs become available. These jobs, upon completion, or for the job itself, grant transportation to a new continent. Along the way new people tag along Alec's group, up to a total of 7 characters, of which one is optional. Occasionally you get special guest characters, from previous Arc the Lad games to temporarily join. I was delighted to see Tosh and Shu again, who I liked a lot before. Sadly, the main characters in this game are mostly quite boring folk. Arguing teens and clueless youths. Alec is also way too optimistic about everything. Goes too easily with the flow, I'd say.

Eventually the party encounters a special group, that is bent on restoring some old technology by any means necessary. Even with the 'Warning: Evil Energy' sign plastered all over everything, they still just have to do the same mistake as other people before. With no real motivation, other than blind ambition, this group is hard to take seriously. I wasn't really very interested in the story, and that's a shame, as I liked the story in the previous game a lot. It's like everything has been simplified and made compact this time around. It's just too small in every aspect to be really compelling.

Swing and Bang
Battles are, unfortunately, short and easy. What makes them easy is the area in which the characters can inflict damage upon. Quite soon on the first continent already, both Alec and Lutz have a special skill that does damage to an area of 13 squares in size. Take into account that the battle fields are usually less than 20 squares in each dimension, usually closer to 10, and there are only 3-7 enemies per battle, these skills are overkill. And if that's not enough, you have two characters that can equip guns. A machinegun does damage to 4 squares and shotgun to 8 squares, just to name two common weapons. Add to that a spell caster with 13 square spells aplenty, standard attacks, other than guns, become obsolete very quickly. One character has the ability to capture and then summon monsters to do damage or inflict status penalties or bonuses. Quite often capturing a tougher than average monster means that when you unleash it, it takes out all the enemies on the field. They're just that weak and unchallenging. Only boss battles have some challenge to them, though even so, I don't think I ever lost one.

In towns, after you reach a certain point in the game, you can start synthesizing items and weapons, by combining two or more items with each other. You can learn recipes for this in special Society offices scattered in towns, or you can just experiment by yourself. Experimenting is pretty useless in the early parts of the game though. You don't have much materials, and when you fail at an experiment (which you WILL, 99% of the time), you lose the items you used. All useful synthesizable items require expensive or rare ingredient to be made, so you're better off saving that one special ingredient for a recipe that will actually work. Synthesizing does provide access to some weapons, like shotguns and special swords and amulets, but other than that, it's not necessary, and not really worth the time and effort to be casually explored.

Old is gold?
The game looks old. Even for being a PSX title, and even for being a third title on the same console, the graphics aren't really impressive at all. Enviroments have been mostly updated to 3D, but with the camera looking at everything in a fixed angle, the 3d apect is quite pointless, and I liked the environments in previous titles better. Characters are still 2d, but somehow I think they don't look as good as before either. Some CG movies are included, and they're ok. Just not impressive or anything.

Music is... mediocre at best. I've heard tons of better soundtracks on even older games. The music gets repetitive and is simple, and there's very limited selection of it. To me, music can sometimes make a game. In this case, it doesn't. It's way too forgettable.

The conclusion
The game lasts for a solid 50-60 hours if you explore most of the jobs in guilds, and hunt down most of the wanted monsters. Usually I like it when an RPG is long, but the scale in which the story is presented, as well as the simple and overkill battles, could've been better in form of 20-30 hours of playtime. The story simply drags on for too long, and is accompanied by too many jobs that include running and talking to people for very limited rewards. It's not a bad game, just average at most. If you just like RPG's for their stories, and can ignore overly simplified battles and cliché story, this is a very playable game. To someone like me, looking for a purpose or goal in a game, this was a chore to complete.

Scoring
Visuals: 7/10
For a game of its age, the graphics are rather unimpressive. The 2d style of characters can be appealing, but in this case even that lacks fine-tuning. 3d graphics are pointless in a game like this, on PSX.

Audio: 7/10
Repetitive music, poor selection of tracks. Everything's forgettable.

Gameplay: 7/10
Battle skills are overkill, and battles require very little planning. It's fun at times, but there's hardly a challenge at any point in the game.

Lasting Value: 6/10
It does last, but for too long. I'm quite sure that very few would play this game twice, and I'm sure many people never finished it at all.

Overall: 6/10
I like Arc the Lad games, but this one just didn't feel much fun. Even though the previous title had some tedious jobs to do as well, this time it felt like completing them took ages, and they were not as interesting. It's playable, just not very interesting game.

'Budget price' review: Shadowgrounds (PC)

Budget price games are always a great alternative for gamers who don't care so much about graphics or latest tech, and independent game publishers sometimes release very interesting and unique titles at low prices as well. At times I'll be reviewing such games. The games will be scored to match the expectations of games from the said price range. Here's my first review.

Shadowgrounds
I've been neglecting the games made by studios in my own country (Finland) for the past few years. Lots of popular games have come out, Max Payne and Flatout to name two that come to mind. When I noticed Shadowgrounds, a game by Frozenbyte from late 2005, sold as digital download on Totalgaming.net at an affordable price of $9.95, I couldn't resist purchasing it. One reason why I bought the game was because it was promised to have a co-operative mode, and I wanted to enjoy it with a friend. This review is based mainly on the co-operative experience, which luckily seems to be pretty much identical to the single player game.

Shootin' aplenty
Shadowgrounds is an action-packed arcade-like shooter at heart, though it also has a hint of adventure and RPG in it. You play as technician, situated near a space colony New Atlantis, which is about to be under attack by aliens. There's not much story to tell, which is a good aspect for anyone looking for pure action. Only minutes from the start you're already picking up your first pistol and making bullet holes to hordes of spider-like aliens. Interestingly, the only item you start with, the flashlight, is also useful against at least two types of enemies, which becomes evident as you rush through the first corridors by pointing a flashlight at the spiders that apparently hate light. Throughout the game you'll be picking additional weaponry, up to ten different types. The RPG element I mentioned earlier is mainly evident in the guns, which you can upgrade with upgrade chips that enemies often drop. These upgrades are usually pretty significant too, with benefits like larger clip, doubled damage, faster fire rate, etc. The weapons are mostly much fun to use, and you often find yourself switching to a weapon better suited for the situation. Grenades and rockets against large monsters, minigun against a row of incoming aliens, pistol against the weaklings, and so on.

Hey, I'm up here!
The game is viewed from top-down perspective, so you have a good view of the surroundings most of the time. You move the character with keyboard, and aim with the mouse. This works quite well.

What surprised me most were the graphics though, or more exactly the lights and shadows. Pointing flashlight around in a dark room creates some rather eerie shadows, that constantly twist as you move about. Rails and pipes can sometimes have a startling resemblance in shape to certain types of aliens, though in light you wouldn't mistake them for one, obviously. All in all, the structure of the game is very simple, but the textures look great and detailed. My favorites parts were levels where there was both interiors of buildings to explore, as well as outside roads and alleys that connect them. Enemies could be coming from any direction, including from underground and air ducts.

Intel on the opposition
There are several types of aliens, some with varying types and weapons or abilities, but overall I felt that there could've been a few more. Spiders and dogs (as my friend liked to call the armadillo-like creatures) are everywhere for a good part of the initial game. Some more unique aliens start showing up later on though, so you never get to play for a long period without seeing something new. The creatures behave quite nicely, though they all have only one objective, get to the player and shoot, smash or gnaw him to death.

The game offers various difficulty levels, and I'm looking forward to trying the harder ones again later. The normal difficulty was entertainingly intense in co-operative mode for the latter part of the game. I managed to die couple of times during the entire game. In co-op mode this means both players respawning again at the level entrance. Medikits are luckily plentiful in all levels, so if you survive a wave of monsters, you'll be healed up again behind the next corner. It sounds a bit easy, yes, but also makes the game less frustrating to progress.

Leftovers and co-op inspected
There's something I need to mention about the co-op mode. It's only possible on the same computer, with both characters on the same screen. The second player is controlled with a joystick/gamepad, and it is highly recommended to have a gamepad with two analog controllers, one to move with, and one to aim, though the official site claims that any gamepad should be enough to control a character. I played the co-op with a Playstation 2 gamepad, plugged in an adapter for PC. For a pc gamer, this might sound horrible, but I have to admit, I was surprised by how well I was able to perform with the gamepad, considering that I have hardly ever played any games that require usage of both analog sticks. The gamepad hardly made the experience worse.

Shadowgrounds is unfortunately a very short game. In co-op mode, it was over in less than 6 hours. I wouldn't complain about the length much though, as the price was fitting for this title, and it has replay potential with its easy access and straightforward action.

Scoring
(Please note: the scoring is scaled to budget releases.)

Visuals: 10/10
Some people will most likely disagree with this verdict, but I think it's true that for a $9.95, you're getting some impressive lighting work and very nicely textured areas.

Audio: 9/10
Audio is very good too. Weapons make some nice sounds and the music, while being a bit repetitive at times, has a very fitting arcade feel to it. Only voice acting could've been better. Slightly lacking in emotion (The character portraits are also slightly to blame for this), they're a bit... whatever-like.

Gameplay: 9/10
Surprisingly solid controls, even with gamepad. It's common to get stuck in some corners of tight corridors at times, but it's usually only momentary, and you'll be free again in seconds.

Lasting Value: 8/10
A bit short, but has replayability potential. If nothing else, it's got content for both a single player campaign and a co-op experience. Should provide you a nice 10 hours of entertainment at minimum, even more if you really like arcade shooters.

Overall: 9/10
With more multiplayer options and slightly longer campaign, this would be a perfect game in its price range. Even now, I highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys blasting some aliens to pieces, preferably with a friend even.

Lastly, I want to inform you that the sequel to Shadowgrounds, titles Shadowground Survivor, has been released this week. According to screenshots and info at the official website, it looks even better now, and should also have option for co-op with multiple keyboard and mice, so you don't need a gamepad. I'll possibly purchase and review this game in future as well. For more info, screenshots and system requirements on the original Shadowgrounds, see the official website.