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Official Arc Rise Fantasia JP (Wii) topic/impressions.

kiryogi

Banned
arcrise.png

placeholder for images info, yadda yadda later. Playing game now, will compile a nice OP later.

Voice cast:

L'arc Bright Lagoon - Nakamura Yuuichi
Lyphia - Makino Yui
Cecile Garushia - Tomatsu Haruka
Adelle Nevanrinna - Katou Emiri
Alphonse Zena Meridia - Ishida Akira
Weiss Dona Meridia - Takehito Koyasu
Nicol Benikus? - Wataru Hatano
Serge - Konishi Katsuyuki
Lasutona Oigen? - Keiji Fujiwara
Leslie Furahati? - Asano Masumi
Dinos - Saiga Mitsuki
Soare - YUKANA
Luse - Satou Rina
Polla - Yu Kobayashi
Luna - Ryo Hirohashi
Fraya - Shizuka Itou





--------

Well, wanted to get that out of the way so I could post some impressions myself. That said, did anyone else get this? I was surprised myself it came out, was able to order and get it next day EMS style tho. Go NCSX! Oh and I don't recall if there was already a topic, but hell search is dead so.


So straight to the point, it really does seem to have the foundation of a Tales game, but just not Tales. Got a pretty typical story thus far, L'arc runs into a mysterious girl and JRPG antics ensue. Although like Tales, there's a lot of character interactions via skits. The battle system was a surprise though, maybe I didn't watch enough of the videos. Or maybe I'm not that far along. I originally thought it'd be a super tedious game with the animations. It is turn-based, but it's pretty fast paced. It uses an AP system similar to that of Skies of Arcadia. You can assign as many commands as you want with any character as long as you have enough AP. IE I could have L'arc attack 3 times and leave Refia to do nothing. Anyway, you have a few options to work with in battle, you can either: Attack, use magic, reposition yourself, or use items. Magic is limited in that not only does it use AP, but you also only have certain amount of MP per level, similar to that of the original Final Fantasy. The reposition bit is neat as it's pretty similar to Grandia's usage of it. Positioning will determine when attacks will hit, if they'll miss if the enemies already been defeated or trigger a combination attack if another ally is nearby. There's also an autocommand system if you want to just mash thru battles. I haven't messed with that function outside of having everyone just attacking endlessly. To sum up how a battle flows, once you assign all the commands, you let it play out and everyone will move out and attack at the same time. Battles breeze by pretty quick if you're really good about inputting the commands. It is slightly annoying though that it doesn't automatically move command selection to the next character, so you might accidentally input the same order twice. At least you can always cancel and redo.

Now onto the technical side of things, the game probably doesn't have the highest poly count out there, but the art direction helps save that. It's a pretty vibrant game in terms of colors, and there's tons of foliage and detail to the scenery. (Mind you I've only touched the surface of the game, this may change later!) Unlike a Tales game, the World Map isn't anywhere near as barren, there's literally trees everywhere. It's almost hard to navigate or see enemies. Oh and yes, that means onscreen encounters, not random for battles. Doesn't seem like you can change the on field character tho, or maybe I don't have the item for it? Also, load times seem nonexistent, be it from battle transitions or entering a town. Upon entering a town, you're treated to the usual camera pan and town name introduction. The towns can be explored with full movement, but buildings or shops tend tend to just be a stills like that of an adventure or visual novel game. As for options in the game, Arc rise supports all forms of controllers, Wiimote+Nunchuk, Gamecube Controller and Classic Controller. Using the wiimote myself personally, doesn't seem too bad. There's also message speed, command memory, demo movie skip, and sound volume. On the music side, I'm not quite sure how much Mitsuda is involved, but it's pretty damn nice so far. His name is plastered on the intro credits in the composer portion tho, and I didn't see anyone else mentioned or I forgot.

On the mechanic side of things, aside from how battles run, there's also skills you can learn from your weapons that you can trade around between the characters. I haven't seen the full extent of what you can do aside from stuff like damage up or magic +2. But you also have to position these skills in a grid. Each skill is a gem that takes up a certain amount of slots. I imagine weapons will get more slots later.

Alright, that covers it for now. Hopefully more as I dig deeper into it!

----------------------------

Alright, about 10 hours into it now. Really loving it, it's basically filling in that JRPG gap I was missing this Spring. (Endless Frontier doesn't cut it, super fricken mindless) Also updated the OP with more cast info. I finally got someone to tear away @ the flash site so char art up soon! Hopefully system breakdown as well.

Finally got a better idea about how Armforce slots work. Armforce being the weapon customization you can do. First off, unlike normal RPG weapons, they don't come with any base stats, but instead come with secret abilities that you can trade off to other weapons to customize with. They first start off mostly locked away, with a 1/3 of the usual available space. But as you earn WP in battles, you'll unlock the full potential of the weapon. There's only one ability that can't be traded off to other weapons, so you might find yourself switching between weapons for certain situations.

Back to battle, the special abilities in this game are known as Accel acts. They usually eat up a good amount of SP and AP, but they're practically the artes in this game. That said, like Tales, you also learn newer Accel acts randomly in the middle of battle once you've reached the requirements. You can also combo certain Accel acts to form Trinity Acts and Trinity Accels, which are basically a triple team attacks on the scale of a Mystic Arte. and Another bit I haven't learned or messed with yet are Tandem attacks. Well, I explained the basic ones earlier, but they're not based on position as I thought. There are various different types of Tandem attacks however. One form are Atttack Tandems, in it's Single Connect version, if you have one character attack the same enemy over 4 times in a succession, instead of attacking the enemy slash by slash, they'll do a combo attack on them. Party Tandem was what I explained before. Next, are magic Tandems, the Single Connect variation will let that character cast a stronger version of the spell. The Party Connection variation will do the same, but involve 2 characters instead of 1. Finally, we have Leystone Tandems, which rely on using Leystones on the field to buffer your magic.

Speaking of magic, the system reminds me of Sora no Kiseki, as in you have slots for different elemental gems that'll determine what magic you'll have. You also get to expand your magic at the magic shops. You can increase elemental affinity, fuse smaller gems to make whole gems, increase how many slots you have, or increase your MP per level. Also while I'm talking about shops, there are guilds you can visit to take up sidequest missions. They're the typical ones that you'd normally see, such as kill this many monsters, or collect this many items. Completing these requests will net you some Rico and items. Finally on options, I forgot to mention there was flicker level, or more like I didn't toy with it myself. You can add a bit more vibrant contrast if you kill the flicker level, it also removes that blur that images out there had.

Onto personal thoughts. Again and again this really is a Tales game in disguise. I mean, learning attacks mid battle? And all these skits! And actually, some of these skits get pretty long winded. But the characters are showing some personality at least. On the art direction side though, it really does remind me of Abyss. In terms of scale anyway. An example would be the city of Diamant . It's so huge, I'd actually run into some slowdown and pop-in when it got really expansive you take elevators to each section of the city, and there was a ton of people to talk to. .That was interesting though was some of the stuff I'd see in the houses was a bit more hip and modern compared to other fantasy RPGs. Like when I checked out Adelle's room, she had these chairs that looked like they're from a modern diner. I think part of it is that we have Kenichi Yoshida (Eureka 7) in charge of the character designs. It's just very slick and refreshing compared to Fujishima and Inomata. Then again on personal preferences, it's really cool seeing E7-stylized characters come to life in an RPG. I've also finally come across swimsuits already! Practically given to you, they're treated like titles but, they only show a difference on that status screen. You won't see a difference on field or anything. They will trigger special party talks involving the actual designs, but that's it. I have yet to run into party dress where it actually will be in effect for all party talks. But man what a tease :lol

Give this a listen if you haven't yet. seems to be the vs boss or certain organization theme. So good, it does demonstrate some of the battle mechanics if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxffqdW1lQ&feature=channel

Here's a less spoiler version if you don't want to watch that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0bW6vBKDFw

I really wish I knew who was really composing in this game. Certainly a lot more listenable than the Tales ambiance that Sakuraba usually has.

I think that covers it for now, hopefully more later!!!
 

Aeana

Member
I've been tempted to go ahead and import the Japanese version, because it feels like XSEED is going to take forever with this. Not sure just yet, though.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
Impressions sound great. This gen is lacking an onslaught of JRPGs compared to the PS2, so I'm eagerly anticipating this one.
 

PusherT

Junior Member
Yeah I been eager for impression of ARF Image Epoch looks like they put alot of effort into there first console RPG. XSeed has this listed as a Q4 game in America so sad
 

batbeg

Member
L'arc Bright Lagun, welcome to the Elites of this generation, alongside Shing Meteoryte and Edge Maverick.

Impressions sound nice, can't wait until this finally makes it here via Rising Star. I haven't looked into it that I recall, but I imagine it's a 2010 title, so I have a long wait ahead of me :(
 

markatisu

Member
Great impressions, I have my copy here but do not have much time to put into it for a few weeks.

There are a ton of videos on youtube by a user named swillo if anyone is wanting to see the boss battles
 

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
Thanks for the impressions, the game sounds really good.

But damnit, now there's ANOTHER game I wanna buy this year :lol



[edit] BTW, here's the reason this game feels like a Tales game — according to Wikipedia:

Hiroyuki Kanemaru, the director of Fantasia, previously worked at Telenet Japan and then moved to Namco Tales Studio, where he worked as scenario script director and level concept designer on Tales of Symphonia.​
 

kiryogi

Banned
markatisu said:
Great impressions, I have my copy here but do not have much time to put into it for a few weeks.

There are a ton of videos on youtube by a user named swillo if anyone is wanting to see the boss battles

Swillo is legit, he's responsible for the Vesperia combo videos out there. and yeah. it's been known about Kanemaru. It's just so bad that's basically tales nontales. XD
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
Did this come out? Fuck. I really liked what I played at TGS last year but I don't think I have the time.
 

kiryogi

Banned
Alright, about 10 hours into it now. Really loving it, it's basically filling in that JRPG gap I was missing this Spring. (Endless Frontier doesn't cut it, super fricken mindless) Also updated the OP with more cast info. I finally got someone to tear away @ the flash site so char art up soon! Hopefully system breakdown as well.

Finally got a better idea about how Armforce slots work. Armforce being the weapon customization you can do. First off, unlike normal RPG weapons, they don't come with any base stats, but instead come with secret abilities that you can trade off to other weapons to customize with. They first start off mostly locked away, with a 1/3 of the usual available space. But as you earn WP in battles, you'll unlock the full potential of the weapon. There's only one ability that can't be traded off to other weapons, so you might find yourself switching between weapons for certain situations.

Back to battle, the special abilities in this game are known as Accel acts. They usually eat up a good amount of SP and AP, but they're practically the artes in this game. That said, like Tales, you also learn newer Accel acts randomly in the middle of battle once you've reached the requirements. You can also combo certain Accel acts to form Trinity Acts and Trinity Accels, which are basically a triple team attacks on the scale of a Mystic Arte. and Another bit I haven't learned or messed with yet are Tandem attacks. Well, I explained the basic ones earlier, but they're not based on position as I thought. There are various different types of Tandem attacks however. One form are Atttack Tandems, in it's Single Connect version, if you have one character attack the same enemy over 4 times in a succession, instead of attacking the enemy slash by slash, they'll do a combo attack on them. Party Tandem was what I explained before. Next, are magic Tandems, the Single Connect variation will let that character cast a stronger version of the spell. The Party Connection variation will do the same, but involve 2 characters instead of 1. Finally, we have Leystone Tandems, which rely on using Leystones on the field to buffer your magic.

Speaking of magic, the system reminds me of Sora no Kiseki, as in you have slots for different elemental gems that'll determine what magic you'll have. You also get to expand your magic at the magic shops. You can increase elemental affinity, fuse smaller gems to make whole gems, increase how many slots you have, or increase your MP per level. Also while I'm talking about shops, there are guilds you can visit to take up sidequest missions. They're the typical ones that you'd normally see, such as kill this many monsters, or collect this many items. Completing these requests will net you some Rico and items. Finally on options, I forgot to mention there was flicker level, or more like I didn't toy with it myself. You can add a bit more vibrant contrast if you kill the flicker level, it also removes that blur that images out there had.

Onto personal thoughts. Again and again this really is a Tales game in disguise. I mean, learning attacks mid battle? And all these skits! And actually, some of these skits get pretty long winded. But the characters are showing some personality at least. On the art direction side though, it really does remind me of Abyss. In terms of scale anyway. An example would be the city of Diamant . It's so huge, I'd actually run into some slowdown and pop-in when it got really expansive you take elevators to each section of the city, and there was a ton of people to talk to. .That was interesting though was some of the stuff I'd see in the houses was a bit more hip and modern compared to other fantasy RPGs. Like when I checked out Adelle's room, she had these chairs that looked like they're from a modern diner. I think part of it is that we have Kenichi Yoshida (Eureka 7) in charge of the character designs. It's just very slick and refreshing compared to Fujishima and Inomata. Then again on personal preferences, it's really cool seeing E7-stylized characters come to life in an RPG. I've also finally come across swimsuits already! Practically given to you, they're treated like titles but, they only show a difference on that status screen. You won't see a difference on field or anything. They will trigger special party talks involving the actual designs, but that's it. I have yet to run into party dress where it actually will be in effect for all party talks. But man what a tease :lol

Give this a listen if you haven't yet. seems to be the vs boss or certain organization theme. So good, it does demonstrate some of the battle mechanics if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxffqdW1lQ&feature=channel

Here's a less spoiler version if you don't want to watch that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0bW6vBKDFw

I really wish I knew who was really composing in this game. Certainly a lot more listenable than the Tales ambiance that Sakuraba usually has.

I think that covers it for now, hopefully more later!!!
 

Dante23

Member
kiryogi said:
I really wish I knew who was really composing in this game. Certainly a lot more listenable than the Tales ambiance that Sakuraba usually has.

Yasunori Mitsuda for the most part, but it's a collab with Shunsuke Tsuchiya and Yuki Harada.

Thanks a lot for the impressions!
 

kiryogi

Banned
Dante23 said:
Yasunori Mitsuda for the most part, but it's a collab with Shunsuke Tsuchiya and Yuki Harada.

Thanks a lot for the impressions!


Hah, so it's the Luminous crew. Awesome.
 

kiryogi

Banned
Macstorm said:
How is saving? Lots of save points? There isn't by a tiny chance a quicksave option?

No quick save, saving seems fair enough. Usually one @ entrance to dungeon and one before the boss. And theres also full heal save points too. Can also save on world map.
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
Always liked the look of the game, impressions sound great... will buy, I hope it makes it out this year in the US.
 

kiryogi

Banned
Relix said:
Ok... language =P.

Probably should hold back unless you've played RPGS in japanese in the past. A basic understanding of kana and the basic kanji can get you pretty far though if you have that.
 
kiryogi said:
No quick save, saving seems fair enough. Usually one @ entrance to dungeon and one before the boss. And theres also full heal save points too. Can also save on world map.


Ah good.
I like the full health saves, because that means no "going through a dungeon and wasting a hundred potions just to have none at the boss".
 

Zhengi

Member
Thanks for the impressions. The combat system and weapon system sound complicated. I would love to give it a try when it releases in NA to see how it is.
 

duckroll

Member
Seeing as how you're quite a bit into the game, how well balanced is the game? Are there actually challenging battles? Is it easy to abuse and break the gameplay systems? Are battles paced such that regular enemy encounters are fun while boss/mid-boss battles are much more exciting?
 

Josh7289

Member
WickedLaharl said:
i've heard that this game is 480i.

is this true?
That would suck, really badly. So I'd like some confirmation on that, too.





Anyway, what's the release date for this game in North America?

June 30?

Or November 16?

I'm inclined to go with November 16, because GameStop is usually correct compared to Amazon.

But that is a loooong ass delay.
 

grandjedi6

Master of the Google Search
Ah, so it really did turn out to be "Tales of Arc Rise Fantasia" with Arcadia's battle system. How's the story in particular though? To continue the Tales of comparisons, are we talking about Symphonia level? Abyss level? ect...
 

kiryogi

Banned
duckroll said:
Seeing as how you're quite a bit into the game, how well balanced is the game? Are there actually challenging battles? Is it easy to abuse and break the gameplay systems? Are battles paced such that regular enemy encounters are fun while boss/mid-boss battles are much more exciting?

Still early on honestly, but regular battles are pretty simple so far. You can really just breeze by them, especially if you decide to use the autoattack macro. That said, the boss battles are definitely on a different level and require a bit more thought. IE, I think it was the 2nd boss battle, I accidentally had L'arc do his Accel Act twice and that just ended up screwing me over for the entire battle. Ended up with a Game over in fact. But I haven't even gotten far enough to see the full extent of any abuse yet. I only finally unlocked Magic Tandem attacks, which I heard are key to boss battles since they deal mad damage. Probably why they limited MP the way they did.

WickedLaharl said:
i've heard that this game is 480i.

is this true?


No idea, playing on an SD TV XD Which is the best for a Wii game anyway.

grandjedi6 said:
Ah, so it really did turn out to be "Tales of Arc Rise Fantasia" with Arcadia's battle system. How's the story in particular though? To continue the Tales of comparisons, are we talking about Symphonia level? Abyss level? ect...


I've only really scratched the surface. Things have yet to heat up. Although, they have basically introduced the entire cast featured on the website. I'd say if anything, it's between the two so far. But I've heard some interesting things to come.
 

kiryogi

Banned
So, faced my first optional boss battle. Got my ass handed to me. Supposedly it is possible by pure luck at my level, but I'm not going to bother. Also I finally got single connect tandem attacks. They literally make normal battles a joke, as if they already weren't a little simple. I mean normally, you don't even mess with magic since it's so limited. So you're either constantly attacking or using Excel Acts. The thing about Tandem attacks, they bypass the whole thing about waiting to attack. Such as, normally if you input to attack someone twice, the 2nd command wouldn't activate until everyone's had their turn. But tandem basically lets the character's first attack become a combo of hits, which wipes out enemies quick. So yeah, in terms of normal battle balance, once you gain Tandem attacks, it's becomes too easy. But maybe I'm still too early on that. Boss battle continue to be fun though.
 

Hobbun

Member
kiryogi said:
No idea, playing on an SD TV XD Which is the best for a Wii game anyway.

Well, I hope it looks fine on a large screen tv. I have a 60" HDTV.

Also, you indicate it is very much like a Tales game. I am assuming you mean the feel of the game? Tales are ARPGs, from my understanding, this is turn-based, correct?
 

kiryogi

Banned
Hobbun said:
Well, I hope it looks fine on a large screen tv. I have a 60" HDTV.

Also, you indicate it is very much like a Tales game. I am assuming you mean the feel of the game? Tales are ARPGs, from my understanding, this is turn-based, correct?

Correct. Although it's pretty fast paced for a turn based system. Once you gain said Tandem Attacks, you can end a battle in under 10-15 seconds. In terms of feel yeah, I mean you got every little quirk a Tales game would have involved. Tales of Arc Rise Fantasia would be right :lol Also, I'm slightly off, but I'd think this is the first really worthwhile RPG on the wii in terms of full fledged production. Unlike that Tales spinoff XD Arc Rise really makes a Tales game seem barren in terms of field design and towns. I know there's Opoona and Fragile, but those aren't as attention grabbing as Arc Rise is. Maybe what I should say it's the first real traditional RPG that really nails the basics.

On the sales side, looks like it's 3rd place now, doing around 28k.

Here's another video of one of the extra boss battles if you want to get more of a feel for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOI3URhKt1E&feature=channel
 

wrowa

Member
That really sounds great. Damn, I think I have to import the US version later this year – sorry, Rising Star Games, I really want to support you, but you are so unbelievable slow! :(
 

Zhengi

Member
wrowa said:
That really sounds great. Damn, I think I have to import the US version later this year – sorry, Rising Star Games, I really want to support you, but you are so unbelievable slow! :(

To be fair, Europe got Little King's Story before NA did. It's not all that bad with Rising Star Games.
 

Ricker

Member
Thanks for the impressions...looking forward to the N.A. release,hopefully it supports 480p and Widescreen as well.
 

vareon

Member
Thanks for the impressions, kiryogi. Where are all the other J-GAFfers, though? You can't be the only one buying :/

Safe to say that this is the best JRPG on Wii then? Not like there's any competition for the title.
 

kiryogi

Banned
vareon said:
Thanks for the impressions, kiryogi. Where are all the other J-GAFfers, though? You can't be the only one buying :/

Safe to say that this is the best JRPG on Wii then? Not like there's any competition for the title.

Good question isn't it D: It does seem lonely being the only one posting about it. Well I managed to get a little something from Bepbo and he indeed also picked it up. I poked him to post and I guess he hasn't. What I've heard tho, he hates the plot and characters, but loves the battle system. Still too early for him though, like 2 hours in. Of course, from my impressions, I focused mainly on the technical and battle aspects as well :lol
 
I am so looking forward to this game when it comes out in America. Thank you XSEED. I can finally start playing JRPGS again XD. Last one I played was Tales of the Abyss. Which actually leads me into a question. Is it true that the writer for Arc Rise Fantasia was also the writer for Tales of the Abyss? I could have sworn I read that somewhere but now I can't find it.
 

EDarkness

Member
vareon said:
Thanks for the impressions, kiryogi. Where are all the other J-GAFfers, though? You can't be the only one buying :/

Safe to say that this is the best JRPG on Wii then? Not like there's any competition for the title.

I didn't pick it up, unfortunately. I'll pick up the U.S. version when it comes out, though. After the last couple of games I've picked up here, I've decided to hold off until they come out in the States.
 

kiryogi

Banned
Fanboydestroyer said:
I am so looking forward to this game when it comes out in America. Thank you XSEED. I can finally start playing JRPGS again XD. Last one I played was Tales of the Abyss. Which actually leads me into a question. Is it true that the writer for Arc Rise Fantasia was also the writer for Tales of the Abyss? I could have sworn I read that somewhere but now I can't find it.

Correct, Takumi Miyajima is in charge of scenario for Arc Rise, hence the questions earlier in the thread asking about how the plot compares to Symphonia or Abyss.

Emotion: Unfortunately I didn't. I never actually got to experience the DS version either.
 
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