Man, it seems like forever since I first heard of and became interested in Arc Rise Fantasia. In reality, it hasn't been that long—Wikipedia tells me the title was unveiled just over two years ago—but between the publisher change and the simple fact that there's been pretty much nothing on the Wii in the way of RPGs, ever, it just seems like it's been longer, I suppose.
I think it was largely worth the wait. Arc Rise Fantasia does a lot of things right, and provides a reasonable quantity of bang for an even more reasonable quantity of bucks (forty, to be precise, unless it's bargain-binned by time you read this, in which case, hurrah for you!) But it's also going to cause a bit of pain in two key areas, which you should be aware of and make your own call on before putting down your money.
The first is one thing you are probably already aware of if you have been following just about any preview coverage of this game—the localization efforts are pretty sub-par. That is not to say the entire game is as awful to behold aurally as that one IGN battle tutorial video would lead you to believe, though; a respectable amount of the voicework is actually pretty decent, or at least no worse than you'd get with your typical anime dub. But there are also definitely some weak points which will haunt you the entire production, particularly with the various cries of your party in battle (which you'll likely be doing a lot of—more on that in a minute.) The text is mostly decent, but has its share of problems as well, so you can't really hide from the localization even if you turn the voices down to nil. I recommend just leaving the voices up. You'll get used to them. Mostly.
The localization issues couldn't spoil the game's look, though, which I thought pretty impressive in a number of areas, mostly dealing with some really neat-looking architecture in castles, towns, and such. The distinctive and neatly-architected looks of the big city areas in particular really awed me. The look isn't the greatest in some of the natural areas, though; in particular, the world map looks cluttered, overly angular, and it's pretty easy to get lost in samey-looking areas. It doesn't seem that the developers are doing much with Wii's bag of tricks for effectively hiding the console's visual limitations—if you've been through a lot of the bigger productions on Wii, you know of what I speak—but if you can get over the jaggies, you'll find a lot to like, in the end.
The other potential pain point is that most people are going to run into is the need to grind themselves up. This isn't really as bad as it sounds on its face, though; Arc Rise Fantasia has a fantastic and very efficient battle system. Let me go a little into why I like it first. It's based not necessarily on just selecting one action per turn per character, but spending a per-turn budget of Action Points from a pool shared by your entire party. Lots of considerations go into making your selections each turn, including the order the battle will play out in, saving AP for the next turn, playing numbers games with each character's SP (tension) gauges so you can bust out their special Excel Acts, and coordinating the aforementioned to get Trinity Acts (think triple techs) going to beat down your enemy a little harder. There's also the concept of Sync, amplifying your characters' actions if they target the same enemy and do the same thing, sometimes by quite a bit—particularly against bosses. And then there's the customizable magic system, which adds another whole level of interesting power-up possibilities... there's a lot of great stuff to like on the battle front.
But things seem like they maybe might be a little out of balance from time to time when you're sailing through an area and then suddenly get trounced by the local boss battle, even if you are paying a lot of attention to all the various advantages you can get to planning out your party's actions. Backing up and gaining a few levels typically solves this. You'll get a lot closer to where you need to be if you're doing all the little sidequests along the way, of course, and the actual grind is tremendously efficient thanks to speedy battle animation and strategies you can issue either at the beginning of your turn or mid-turn if you want to split between explicit and implicit orders. I don't think I ever really found it a chore; it was all pretty slick, even when I was being totally mindless.
All-in-all, I liked Arc Rise Fantasia quite a bit, owing mostly to the battle system; but I also thought the story was kinda cool as well, sporting a few interesting twists along the way. It's a good game for a low-ish asking price, and I think fans of unique battle systems and a good challenge will enjoy it—just be aware that you are going to wince at the voicework and occasionally the text, and you are probably in for a number of extra battles that you might not have otherwise fought. If you've been waiting a long time for this game to come along for your Wii, and the shortcomings don't sound like deal-killers to you, you'll probably dig this game like I did.
I think it was largely worth the wait. Arc Rise Fantasia does a lot of things right, and provides a reasonable quantity of bang for an even more reasonable quantity of bucks (forty, to be precise, unless it's bargain-binned by time you read this, in which case, hurrah for you!) But it's also going to cause a bit of pain in two key areas, which you should be aware of and make your own call on before putting down your money.
The first is one thing you are probably already aware of if you have been following just about any preview coverage of this game—the localization efforts are pretty sub-par. That is not to say the entire game is as awful to behold aurally as that one IGN battle tutorial video would lead you to believe, though; a respectable amount of the voicework is actually pretty decent, or at least no worse than you'd get with your typical anime dub. But there are also definitely some weak points which will haunt you the entire production, particularly with the various cries of your party in battle (which you'll likely be doing a lot of—more on that in a minute.) The text is mostly decent, but has its share of problems as well, so you can't really hide from the localization even if you turn the voices down to nil. I recommend just leaving the voices up. You'll get used to them. Mostly.
The localization issues couldn't spoil the game's look, though, which I thought pretty impressive in a number of areas, mostly dealing with some really neat-looking architecture in castles, towns, and such. The distinctive and neatly-architected looks of the big city areas in particular really awed me. The look isn't the greatest in some of the natural areas, though; in particular, the world map looks cluttered, overly angular, and it's pretty easy to get lost in samey-looking areas. It doesn't seem that the developers are doing much with Wii's bag of tricks for effectively hiding the console's visual limitations—if you've been through a lot of the bigger productions on Wii, you know of what I speak—but if you can get over the jaggies, you'll find a lot to like, in the end.
The other potential pain point is that most people are going to run into is the need to grind themselves up. This isn't really as bad as it sounds on its face, though; Arc Rise Fantasia has a fantastic and very efficient battle system. Let me go a little into why I like it first. It's based not necessarily on just selecting one action per turn per character, but spending a per-turn budget of Action Points from a pool shared by your entire party. Lots of considerations go into making your selections each turn, including the order the battle will play out in, saving AP for the next turn, playing numbers games with each character's SP (tension) gauges so you can bust out their special Excel Acts, and coordinating the aforementioned to get Trinity Acts (think triple techs) going to beat down your enemy a little harder. There's also the concept of Sync, amplifying your characters' actions if they target the same enemy and do the same thing, sometimes by quite a bit—particularly against bosses. And then there's the customizable magic system, which adds another whole level of interesting power-up possibilities... there's a lot of great stuff to like on the battle front.
But things seem like they maybe might be a little out of balance from time to time when you're sailing through an area and then suddenly get trounced by the local boss battle, even if you are paying a lot of attention to all the various advantages you can get to planning out your party's actions. Backing up and gaining a few levels typically solves this. You'll get a lot closer to where you need to be if you're doing all the little sidequests along the way, of course, and the actual grind is tremendously efficient thanks to speedy battle animation and strategies you can issue either at the beginning of your turn or mid-turn if you want to split between explicit and implicit orders. I don't think I ever really found it a chore; it was all pretty slick, even when I was being totally mindless.
All-in-all, I liked Arc Rise Fantasia quite a bit, owing mostly to the battle system; but I also thought the story was kinda cool as well, sporting a few interesting twists along the way. It's a good game for a low-ish asking price, and I think fans of unique battle systems and a good challenge will enjoy it—just be aware that you are going to wince at the voicework and occasionally the text, and you are probably in for a number of extra battles that you might not have otherwise fought. If you've been waiting a long time for this game to come along for your Wii, and the shortcomings don't sound like deal-killers to you, you'll probably dig this game like I did.