PixlBit

I've stated it before, and I'll say it again: I'm not a fan of the Monster Hunter series and its archaic design. The latest from Square Enix, Lord of Arcana, seems to set out to replicate the design of Capcom's popular series, but clearly fails in its execution. While I didn't think it could be possible, someone has managed to make a bad design worse.

Things even start off on the wrong foot. When you begin the game, you are imbued extraordinary power, a strong weapon, and fully maxed stats. You get to slay a massive beast as well as a variety of his smaller minions, and then after completing your mission… you are stripped of everything. While I'm well aware that plenty of games do this (Metroid), here it just doesn't work. As a matter of fact, it gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect once I do level up my character completely, and I knew it wasn't worth the effort to ever get there.

In something like Metroid, you get a taste of a wide variety of powers that you will acquire over the course of the game. Additionally, you only get to use each one enough to make you excited to use it some more in the future; it's also used as a tool to direct level design. But Lord of Arcana doesn't do any of these things. Now it just means that I have to grind through a bunch of imp battles to kill anything in a timely manner. Point being, Lord of Arcana immediately removed my interest in the game upon removing my strength, armor, weapon, and level stats.

Now that I've got my ranting out of the way, let's talk a little bit about what Lord of Arcana is. As mentioned earlier, Lord of Arcana is clearly trying to emulate the popular Monster Hunter series. Players will take quests and venture off to their intended locale. Upon arriving, they will be tasked with either killing everything in sight, collecting a particular amount of something from the area, or defeating a large beast that occupies one of the areas.

Before even setting out on these quests, players are able to customize their gear load by either having the blacksmith craft up some new armor or weapons or by purchasing items with money earned via questing. As you might expect, the ability to craft and earn new armor by collecting items from the field is meant to be a huge hook for the gameplay, as seen in other similar games. I can see where this could be interesting, but the act of collecting the necessary parts in the field couldn't possibly be more boring.

Upon arriving at the quest destination, players are placed at spot one on the map. Each spot on the map is essentially a room unto itself and progressing from room to room forces a loading screen. I was blown away at the need to load when moving from room to room. Not because I haven't seen something like this done before, but because each room is completely barren. I have no idea what the game is loading, but most rooms look the same, they aren't very detailed, and there's next to nothing inside each one. This produced some profound frustration because it drags out each quest, which was tedious enough already.

While progressing from room to room, players can search the landscape for a variety of items, including health and random goodsthat can aid players in their current or future quests. Upon going to actually pick up these items, players will learn that they can't retrieve the entire contents of the item with one button press. Each item can hold multiple instances and players will need to pick up each, one at a time, until nothing is left. Each time things are picked up, players are treated to an animation, a pause, a description of what was picked up, another pause, and then return to control. When having to pick up three instances of an item, it almost doesn't feel worth the effort to grab them all. If I recall correctly, Monster Hunter has a similar design. Needless to say, there's no way anybody enjoys this aspect of that series, and clearly it was an opportunity to improve that design, but instead Square Enix has copied blindly, demonstrating just how derivative Lord of Arcana is.

Things only get worse when you get into combat. At the start, combat was already a bit on the tedious side, even though enemies could be quickly dispatched. Upon encountering an enemy on the field, the game behaves like a standard turn-based RPG, transporting both player and enemy into a field for battle. Except here, it makes little sense because you are moving around similarly to the way you did on the field, except now you can actually execute attacks.

Depending on the weapon you have brought with you on the quest and the enemy you are in combat with, battles will take a varying amount of time to complete. As you've probably figured out on your own by now, attacking is a cumbersome experience, especially with larger, stronger weapons. This means players have to avoid enemies most of the time, and wait for the proper time to attack. Even worse, most enemies follow a set pattern, which just means that combat comes down to patience. Wait for the right moment, attack, wait for the right moment again, attack again, rinse, repeat.

At the point of actually wearing down the enemy's health, players will need to perform a coup de grace, which results in a bloody finishing off of the enemy. This seems like a half-hearted attempt to excite adolescents with a blood lust. It's largely unnecessary and feels out of place in the context of the game.

Boss battles don't offer the ability to perform a coup de grace, but instead a set of quick time events that must be completed to defeat the giant beasts. As usual, the quick time events are annoying to pull off and missing the mark results in needing to attack the enemy once again. This is especially frustrating when realizing just how long it takes to dispatch these larger enemies.

Like most games, multiplayer softens the blow with poorly designed gameplay, but even this is poorly executed in Lord of Arcana. Up to four players can quest together, but it can only be done in local ad-hoc multiplayer, and only the quest organizer actually makes progress with their quest and character. Chances are you won't have even one friend to pair up with anyway, so the mode is largely useless.

There's nothing redeeming about the Lord of Arcana experience. All facets of the game are insanely tedious and the experience is extremely boring. Copying the Monster Hunter formula without making improvements, and in many cases, making it worse, makes Lord of Arcana a wholly unenjoyable experience.