Lord Of Arcana

"You’d have to be pretty desperate to reach for this dull title from Square Enix."

Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: January 25, 2011
Platform (s): PSP
Genre: Action, RPG


In the land of Horodyn, there is great power to be found. But there are also great beasts and monsters on your way to said powers. As the conveniently sole hero left possible of obtaining this power, known as Arcana, your quest in this game is to become the Lord…of Arcana; yes, quite.
 

Lord Of Arcana: This is you.

 

After you’ve made your character in the customizable builder, the game starts you off in a linear dungeon, where a short tutorial gives you the basics and expands them as each battle and area progresses. After slaying some monsters and retrieving the keys from them that open up gates towards your objective, you can warp yourself to the main boss. A few slashes later, he’s on the floor and you lose your memory and powers and whatnot and wake up somewhere completely different; it’s all really convenient. Look, you’ve heard the plot device before: something something, great power, you’re going to get that power, you’re going to kill anything in your path towards that power.

Lord Of Arcana (LoA) states to be an Action RPG, but the action is far too absent to call it that. In truth, it’s more of an RPG meets hack and slash, dungeon crawler. In line as games as Phantasy Star Online and a near clone to Monster Hunter, your goal is to take on missions in a guild list, complete those and pick up anything you can find, to craft them in to other things. This already sounds tedious, but LoA’s demo does nothing to polish this up. Sure, there’s an addition here and there with Cards you can call to summon a Final Fantasy reference and I haven’t seen a firelance in any other game, but there should be more to separate it from the pack. Also, the firelance is dreadfully dull to play and takes forever to kill an enemy; though every other weapon gets the job done sans tedium.
 

What Lord Of Arcana's thrilling action will look like...or not.

 

So what should hold you onto LoA? I don’t really know; there’s little that hasn’t been done better already. Combat is dull and ultimately reverts to pressing square until something dies. Dungeons are uninspired, linear and colors to bland to really curb your enthusiasm. Boss battles are challenging, but not so much you like to sit through their stretched duration over and over. Crafting and such; that’s just a copy/paste from Monster Hunter and such. I can only think of a few ‘innovations’ that will hold you onto your screen for the hour or two you can spend on this demo alone.

When taking on missions, you need to be wary of the timer set in the upper corner. Giving a timespan does elevate the excitement, be it ever so slightly. When your magic bar is full, you can use a card to summon a powerful being that destroys anything in the combat field. It’s nifty as a tactic, but not amazing. Also, during boss fights, you can trigger a Quick Time Event (QTE), where you can also rip off God Of War and do serious damage by pressing the correct button. The most novel addition is when an opponent is near finished, the locked camera swerves to the side, indicating it’s ripe for the plucking. That’s your hero’s cue to attempt a Coup De Grace, splattering your foe into pieces and giving you a better chance at rare spoils.

As said, dungeons are pretty linear and exploring these offers little reward, but it’s managing your character within that is the real killer. As you need to adjust your camera with the directional pad, most the time you either have to stop or find dead moments to adjust your view. This can also leave you vulnerable to attacks from monsters.
 

Agni is the boss available for slaying in this demo of Lord Of Arcana.

 

But in general, there isn’t one redeeming factor that will be able to save LoA. It’s a tedious and uninspired attempt at dungeon crawling that offers way too little action and borrows too much from successful titles to stand on its own. If by some freak coincidence you’ve played through all Monster Hunter games so much you need a change of pace, you might look into LoA; might. Otherwise, you’d have to be pretty desperate to reach for this dull title from Square Enix, launching January 25^th on PSP.

 

Lord Daav of Valentaten, NoobFeed.