Arc the Lad 3
The Great Disaster

Review by Chi Phan

There aren't many first party rpg game from Sony so the entire Arc series is special and unique in it's own self since this is the one true rpg series that Sony has a hand in. Arc the Lad 3 is the third installment of the Arc the Lad series. Unlike the first 2 Arc game, this one is more a Playstation rpg game so we get our first real look at how an Arc game is run on the Playstation engine. Of course the other 2 Arc games were made for the Playstation as well but those were in the early life span of the Playstation so we never really got a chance to see how an Arc game really look with the Playstation engines. Despite Arc 3 being a full Playstation rpg game, it's really a step down from the second one but better than the first one. Sort of like the Star Wars trilogy I suppose. Enough chit chat and let's get on with the review.

The Great Tosh Shu?? We don't know no Shu! The story begins 15 years ago after the great disaster that took place in Arc 2. When the Romalia Castle fell from the sky in the ending of Arc 2, it caused a great environmental effect destroying towns/villages and countries throughout the world of Arc the Lad. This period or event is now known as the Great Disaster. 15 years later in a small village known as Sasha on the continent of Eteru Isle, Alec, a boy who is a refugee from the Great Disaster, contemplates his past with his friend Lutz when all of a sudden his village is attack by bandits. Fearing for the lives of the villagers, the Elder Chief requested that Alec and Lutz head out to the nearby city, Itio, to find a hunter at the Hunter's Guild. Like with Arc 2, hunters are mercaneries for hire to help people out. Having successfully hired a hunter, the 2 friends quickly made their way back to Sasha with a hunter in tow. The hunter easily dispatch the bandits that were threatening the villagers. Upon seeing this act of bravery and strength from the hunter, Alec quickly realizes his dream of becoming a hunter himself. Within the next day, Alec and Lutz set out to the Hunter Guild to become a successful hunter and performing various hunter job requests from those in needs. These various hunter job requests would soon take Alec all over the world where he and Lutz will meet with new friends who will join them along the journey. As Alec begins taking on hunter job requests, he and his friends soon discover the threat of a science group known as the Academy conducting weird experiment and kidnapping people. The weird experiments from the Academy would soon cause a great danger to the world so Alec's groups under the command of the Hunter's Guild are sent on a mission to stop the Academy. This brings the whole plotline in full circle. In brief, your goal as Alec the hero is to stop the Academy from destroying the world with their experiments. So ends the brief summary of the story behind Arc the Lad 3. Now the problem with the story is that it's not an even flow story. In fact the hunter job requests itself is the story. The entire story and gameplay is base off of doing hunter jobs. Each time you complete a hunter jobs, you get a small story cut scene. Most of these story cut scenes have nothing to do with the actually story plotline of the Academy. They're just there to take up story time. You complete these jobs inorder to gain access to the real story behind Arc 3. And for that it hurts the story telling. In regular rpg story, you do your world exploration to reach your next goal to progress the story along. Everything is told smoothly without interruptions. But here, as soon as you access the true plotlines behind Arc 3, you are then interrupted with the storytelling cause you have to do a bunch of silly jobs with sub story plotlines that has nothing to do with the actual story inorder to gain access to the actual flow of the story again. Basically when you access the true story scene plotlines and once you're finish with that story scenes, instead of progressing onto the next plotline to get things going right away, you have to go through a bunch of nonsense story sub plots just to get back on track of the real story. A good story is when you are able to grab the gamers attention and get them addicted where they want to keep playing more to find out more about the story. You can't grab the gamers attention by having them go through some boring sub story plotlines everytime once things get interesting. Another thing I didn't like is the exaggeration of the Great Disaster. The game makes is a point that Great Disaster is something big that effected the entire world long ago but in all honestly I find it hard to believe that a single castle falling down would have such a disasterous effect on the entire world. Sure, on the area where the castle fell down but on continents hundreds of miles away? I think not. Another problem is that the characters in the game all talk about the Great Disaster like it's something that happened long time ago in ancient times when the Great Disaster only took place 15 years ago. Arc 3 storyline did not hold much interest for me at all. Half of the time I feel like it's a big choir just to read through some of the useless jobs story scenes. It's nice that some of the characters from the previous Arc games make cameo appearances but their involvement is from too little to none existent. I think the story would be more interesting if the characters in the old Arc games were more involved. Who knows? Maybe others like this story more than me but not me. One thing I would like to give is that the story's ending is one of the best. I really enjoy the ending scene. It's very much like a cross between Lunar and FF8 ending.

I was once a great hunter. The game focusses on 6 characters with a 7th extra secret one. There are cameo appearances from all the the previous characters in the 2 Arc games before this one but the main focus is put on the 6 new characters of Arc 3. First the good part. I like how the entire cast of characters in this game interact with one another. I also like how these characters literally come alive with their own unique personality. Their unique personalities really shine out as they talk with one another in story cut scenes. These characters act very human and I like it. Each one has a personality that will remind you of someone that you know in real life. A big two thumbs up here. Now the bad part is that even though these characters look alive with their personalities, they don't have much background developement on who they are, where they came from and what their childhood is like growing up after the Great Disaster. Alec is the only one that the game seems to center on in terms of background developement. We know that Alec came from a city that was destroyed due to the great disaster and that when this happened his parents were lost as well.. He was rescue during the destruction of his city by a Hunter who gave him a sword. This event had a great impact on Alec's life and gave him the purpose in wanting to be a hunter when he grows up. So for Alec background, it's done nicely. But for the other characters we don't really get much insight. What we get is a small brief description on what their lifestyle was like and nothing more. One could use a little more insight than just a small brief description. Still this is a good group of characters that I do enjoy as a team. Too bad none of the characters will stand out on their own as a cool character for me.

Diekbeck and mini Diekbecks Graphics are a big improvement over the 2 previous Arc game. The graphic now uses the Playstation engine for the first time. Characters are no longer short sprites like with 16 bit rpg games, they are now drawn in anime style much like the character designs of Suikoden. The background is now a rich 3-D environment. The colors are done nicely to match everything. Magic spells and summon spells now have that special 32 bit long render casting movie scenes that you would normally see when casting a big summon spell. There are now lots of FMV/CG sequence feature in this game. Unlike the previous Arc 2 game, FMV are nicely done and smooth instead of blurry and choppy. Very good 32 bit graphics. It's still not the best 32 bit graphic but one that meets the require standard for a Playstation game anyways.

Whoa! Are you a babe? Music is the best feature I like in this game. The music personally to me is a cross between Grandia and Lunar. The game still re-uses some of the tunes in the previous Arc games but it also has some really great new ones. Arc 3 now has it's own main theme tune different from the previous Arc games. The main theme tune does sound alot like Grandia main theme but I like it nevertheless. There's also another main english song theme that is very good. Sound alot like Lunar english song and is probably sung by the same singer that sung the Lunar english main theme but I still like it. I don't know what the english song is called but I like it very much. Hopefully I can find a copy of it somewhere. Overall I enjoy this game's music alot more than what was presented in the 2 previous Arc games.

The Holy Ark! Burn, baby, burn! Game Information    Genre: Traditional Rpg    Publisher: Working Designs    Disc: 1 Disc CD    Memory: 1 Memory Block    Players: 1 Player Mode    Vibration: Yes    Dual Analog: Yes    Digital Control: No    Rating: Teen    Release: April 2002 Gameplay is somewhat different this time around but the battle system remains the same. Like with Arc 2, you can use a converted save file from the previous Arc game. In this case you are using a save file from Arc 2. The difference here is that when you use a converted save file, you are only using it to access some scene with the previous characters in Arc 2 that you normally wouldn't get when playing Arc 3 without a converted save file. This is different from using a save from Arc 1 as that save file allows you to transfers characters stats and weapons & items from the previous game over to the new game. As you can see that's sort of a step down not being able to transfer your stats and stuff from Arc 2 over to Arc 3. Another thing about the gameplay is that what was once consider a mini sidequests in Arc 2 became the main focal point of Arc 3 gameplay. To sum it up..Arc 3 gameplay is nothing but Hunter jobs after Hunter jobs. You have 102 hunter jobs to do. As you do one hunter job after another, you begin to progress in the game and story. Each time you complete a certain number of jobs, you are then opening up access to jobs that require you to travel to a different country. The jobs themselves aren't very hard to do. And since each jobs are numbered you can tell which jobs you should do first. The game is pretty straightforward. The battle system is pretty much the same as Arc 2 and Arc 1 but more simplified. You can only have up to 4 party members in battle now. Which is less than Arc 2. It seems with each new Arc game that get release, the number of party members used in battles get less and less. There are no monsters to use in battles this time around. Your choice of fighters comes from the main 6 characters feature in this game. You will get to use some of the characters in Arc 2 as an added extra fighter in some of the mission but that's it. Battles are still in a strategy turn base system where you use regular attack or magic attack. The only new and unique thing is the use of summon cards. Theo (one of the fighters) has a special magic ability call cardish where you can transform a monster during battles into a card. Once a monster is transformed into a card, Theo can then use that card and summon the monster as a summon spell with a cool animes sequence. There are at least 100 summon cards to be found and use so you might have fun trying to get them all and watch what cool anime sequence each shows. Buying weapons, armours and items is the same as any other rpg game. Done through shops. You can even make new weapons and items by combining different materials. This is known as synthesizing. And can be done through Society shops. Customizing your own weapon isn't really new here. Pretty much the same as in Arc 2. Overall there's not much in gameplay. It just basically do and complete all the jobs listed at the Hunter's Guild. Once you finish all the jobs, you go to the last dungeon to find and fight the last boss. It all depends on how you like your gameplay. I enjoyed the hunter jobs as a sidequest thingy to do but not as the main gameplay. Some jobs are okay but most of the time I was bored doing these jobs. It's not a good sign when you are bored with the gameplay.

Score: 7/10

United we stand together. In terms of extras and replay, there's not much. A far cry from all the extras that was available in Arc 2. The only extra and secret stuff here is the recruiting of a seventh member for the party. Other than that I can't seem to find any extras. It's kind of hard too since the Hunter job requests was the main extra feature in Arc 2 but what was once an extra feature in Arc 2 is now the main gameplay of Arc 3 so that leaves out very little in terms of extras. There are some silly mini games that is available from Choko but these mini games are mostly for owners of the Pocketstation. Not to mention that the mini games just plain suck. There's no replay value other than the fact that you enjoy this game. So basically no replay value and a very small extra features leaves little to score points on.

Did I enjoy playing Arc the Lad 3? Yes. But is Arc the Lad 3 any special than any of the other rpg games out there? No. It's an rpg game where if you have it then play it as you will enjoy it no doubt. But if you don't have it then don't worry too much about not having it. I hear that Arc the Lad 4 is currently being made for the Playstation 2 as I type this. And Arc the Lad 4 is expected to take place 3 years after Arc the Lad 3. Hopefully by then there will be some innovative stuff in Arc 4 that Arc 3 didn't have. And maybe you just might see the return of Alec and his gang in Arc 4.... Final Score: 7.2/10 Time to complete: about 50 hours for the story game. Difficulty: medium Favorite character: Theo What happened to?: Chongara Best sword: Life stealer Best cardish magic: Diekbeck Best fighter: Velhart Worst overall fighter: Lutz Best advice: Rotate your fighters in and out of battles Also try: Arc the Lad 1 & 2 Up next: Dark Cloud

STORY A some what dull and uninteresting story at times during the game. 7 CHARACTERS Characters interact well with one another providing unique personalities. 8 GRAPHICS Good playstation graphics with anime drawn character designs and lots of CG. 8 MUSIC The best feature of this game with some really great new tunes. 9 GAMEPLAY If you like Hunters jobs then you'll love the gameplay. If you don't. Well...... 7 EXTRAS/REPLAY Not much to do. Very little to no extra sidequest to do. 4