Arcadia no Ikusahime (Battle Princess of Arcadia) [PS3]

[briareos_kerensky]

This is part of Nippon Ichi's 20th Anniversary project, and it's a scrolling beat'em'up with strategic elements. I think that the nearest term of comparison would be Grand Knights Historia...or Pokemon.



This is the first monster you'll face. I mean, "inspiration" is a bit underplayed here.

Anyway, being this a Nippon ichi game, the cast of characters is as wacky as it can get, with Plume's (the main heroine) brother, a duck, being the most normal.
Oh yes, if you like comical reactions from your characters you'll love AnI, I personally found them over the top, especially when every character doesn't wait a minute to show off his or her strange side. And apparently Nippon Ichi writer went to Kojima's school of dialogue, where "hi" is a monologue 30 minutes long.
Probably I'll be more interested in the dialogues if I were able to understand them or if the character didn't feel like stereotypes forced into sprites.

Speaking about sprites, AnI looks wonderful in pictures, although characters seem stuck in the uncanny valley between normal proportions and superdeformed, but not so much in motion. It's nothing terrible, but every animation still lacks that "something" to make it appear fluid an not completely awkward; animations almost feel like when consoles had to use multiple sprites to create bigger ones, if you know what I'm talking about; they are not bad, but probably I've got Dragon's Crown and Rayman Legends spoiling me for 2D animations.
The game begins with a BGM that wouldn't be out of place for a fairy tale, but then ELECTRIC GUITARS! No, really, why do Japanese put electric guitars everywhere? Luckily music outside battle sounds more in line with the graphics presentation.

In the first hour or so you'll be introduced to the three main battle types: in the first you have to clear a stage full of monsters by yourself and other supporting characters, that can be swapped by R2 and L2.
The second type is a group battle against a single monster: each main character commands a squad of soldier equipped with different weapons (swords, staves, bows, etc), and the main character is able to issue orders to this group (defend, attack, back up) while participating in the battle.
The third type is army VS army: you select a certain number of troops to pit against enemy troops, with their certain weapons being more effective against others (axes trump swords, swords trump bow, staves trump axes, and so on); the main character won't partecipate directly into the battle but will be able to help by defeating smaller enemy squads; if the enemy leader is defeated, friendly troops will get a boost, if your character croacks, the opposite.

Controls are very simple, though orders and restorative items are linked to the same menu and keys (R1), switching between the two while fighting requires some time to get used to it. Every character has its own weapon and combo list, and there's a combo counter that resets once you get hit.

So far, there's nothing really troubling to report, though it feels a bit unispired, but during the first hour there's more dialogue than actual game. The system sounds promising, I hope that the game won't end in being a grindfest.

[briareos_kerensky]

So, some more time with the game and...I'm puzzled.
Boss and army battles seem to work just on pure luck, or I'm completely lost in translation. In both battle types it's possible to issue orders only when a blue bar has filled up to a certain point, but orders you're not able to issue aren't blacked out, and when your troops are suffering, it would be great to know if I can swap them with fresh ones...either way, I'm not really sure if the weapon table is telling the truth or not: in the second army battle you'll face gunblade fighters (yes, the same weapon from FF8, but here these weapons can be used at long range), and you don't have any troop proficient against them; however, a simple "attack" order was enough for my mages to overrun them...and my troops were at level 2 while the enemy at 5. I don't think I've got the effiency table backward because axe troops demolished sword troops without my intervention, but after that my sword troops had difficult times against lance troops, and I should have had the weapon advantage.

Even more puzzling are the boss battles, it seem they can go either way, whatever you do. I tried the first boss battle with what should have been an overpowered party, and the boss totally destroyed my troops, while during the first battle, he wasn't able to do much. Now, maybe bosses scale with party level, but in the second boss battle I had a similar result: one time the boss wasn't able to act, the other I didn't had time to react, and I reloaded the save to have a common comparison ground.

I'd say that the foundations of these two types of battle are shaky at best.

[briareos_kerensky]

The games has picked up nicely. Still far from being excellent, but it's pleasant to play.
The seemingly light-hearted plot takes a rather dark turn you wouldn't expect, and while it's nothing grounbreaking or immensely original, it's good to see plot points introduced in the first hours not going lost or forgotten.

The structure of the game is heavily dependent on character levels, and grinding is the most bothersome aspect of the game, especially when a new character gets introduced and starts way below the rest of the group, and he/she is not a brawler.
Bringing those characters up to speed requires to complete the most challenging levels available, at first by having him/her just partecipating and getting some bonus experience at the end of the level, and then progressively killing as many enemies as possible.
All characters handle in a different way, even when they share the same weapon type; as characters level up, they'll gain new combos, so there's a good sense of progression beyond plain levels. Clearing a level with a good ranking will also reward you with better weapons and materials.
Materials are used to upgrade weapons while in town; each weapon comes with a predefined number of "slots", that can be used to add special features or simply increase attack, add or change elemental type, improve critical chances. Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, special features are out of my reach, but improving weapon stats is the usual numerical rundown.

As characters with new weapon types join the party, they'll also bring new troop types with them. Worse than characters, these troops start off a level 1, and the only way to level them up is to pay; troop level is linked to their "general's" level, so before having new troops ready for battle, you'll have to spend some time grinding; luckily, due to how battles are laid out and due to how the weapon interactions work, it's not imperative to get all troop types at the same level as soon as possible, but there's still a lot of grinding involved, especially against boss battles not related to the story.

Boss battles seem to revolve around character and troop level more than any other mission type, though every single one of them follows the same structure.
Bosses are invulnerable until their guard is broken, indicated by a blue bar below their health; with the guard gone, attacks will start to damage the boss; as the guard is restored after a while, the two orders you'll have to issue are "defend" when the guard is up, and "attack" when the guard is down, while the main character hacks away at either guard or health between the very obvious attacks.
Essentially, higher the character/troop level, faster the battle will go, and troops will actually be able to absorb damage while guarding; there are two other orders, but so far, swapping between attack and defense has been enough to go through all bosses, except when optional bosses are at a higher level than your troops; unfortunately there's no way to know that before engaging into battle, unlike when armies clash.

Army clashes are the highlight of the game, requiring to handle yuor troops and character at the same time; controls can be overwhelming at first, but everything falls into place. What I still have to understand about army clashes is why at times it's not possible to issue orders more than once without swapping character.

[briareos_kerensky]

Game completed...well, I wasn't expecting it so soon. There's no counter on the savegame, but I guess it has been 20 or so hours.

Starting with the story, I've already told about the plot twist: I still think it's a good twist, not too original, but it comes out from absolutely nowhere...keep in mind this is a Japanese version and I can barely understand what characters are saying. Unfortunately this twist is the only highlight of the story, and some plot elements remain unexplored or incomplete; now, I don't know if these elements will be part of the endgame content, but the ending leaves a bad aftertaste.
Character interactions also feel a bit off, with cutscenes before and after missions making them almost enemies, and cutscenes outside missions showing them very friendly. Same thing applies to the mood, in the second half of the game missions end with a somber mood and other cutscenes are comical in nature, as if writers weren't willing to commit to a specific style.

The fighting mechanics are the best thing of the game, with each character having distinct features and gaining his/her own set of combos as they progress through the levels. Unfortunately combos boil down to launching enemies in the air, hoping for an other character to do a follow-up, while you jump toward the enemy to deliver few more hits.
Enemy types are just an handful, with recolours and partial redraws taking care of environmental-specific opponents; you can hit, and can be hit by, enemies outside the screen, and with Raz, the archer, it's possible to complete stages by killing enemies even before you see them.
The few bosses you fight alone are probably the most interesting part of the "action" missions, but even those have very few attacks, with no real pattern, they just attack with a huge delay.

Army battles continue to be puzzling, not because of why you can't issue orders, but because never really seem able to stop your troops. During one of the last army battles my troops were around level 37-38 while the enemy was 45, and I was able to win by just issuing swap and special attack orders. Defend, attack, and the mysterious "duck" orders are essentially left unused during army battles, and these missions are just an affair of pairing opposite weapons...or just use mages that are apparently able to slay everything in their path.

Boss battles where characters are accompanied by armies are even more uneventful: you just need to issue a defend order when the boss' guard is up and and an attack order when the guard is down. The special attack (performed by your character after a sort-of QTE where you have to mash square to build up a meter) is useless here, as defend/attack orders are enough to carry you through all boss encounters.

Arcadias no Ikusahime is fun, if you forgive its lack of depth, and it's worth a look once it comes to North America and Europe.