GoNintendo hands-on preview: Luminous Arc II - written by Deux Michaels

Atlus was nice enough to send a preview copy of Luminous Arc II our way. Deux Michaels has stepped in to check the game out, and give you guys a preview. This is Deux’s first sit-down with an SRPG, which I thought would make his impressions extra interesting.

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Having never played the first installment (or any other strategy RPG) before, I thought that learning the way things work in Luminous Arc 2 would take a while. In fact it is quite an easy title to pick up and play and they’re aren’t so many facets to the battle system that you’ll just get the hang of it five hours in. It’s fun, not over challenging, and engaging.

The opening cut scene is beautiful (this coming from a guy whose limited anime experiences are nestled into the old safe ones: i.e. Akira, anything Miyazaki, etc.) and the character designs are colorful and varied enough to keep your eyes happy. The witches especially all have that anime body that can’t exist in real life if you follow me… talking big boobs, crazy hair, and tiny waist guys!

The story on the other hand is barely passable and a little too cute for my taste. I was still able to invest myself into it, but there are options to skip right through it and play how you’d like. The use of the touch screen really helped me get integrated in both battle and menus and I never knew that the buttons could be used instead until a couple hours in!

The battles are what kept me pushing through. The strategy element reminded me of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and a chess board with water and varying terrain (forgive me for being so easily entertained, but I told you it’s my first SRPG!). The characters have normal attacks, magic, items, and an FG bar. The more damage you inflict, the higher your FG bar fills and it enables you to unleash a big attack. The main character, Roland, also has an engage ability which allows him to fuse his power with one of your allied witches and unleash elemental attacks such as fire, light, water, etc. Once I got the hang of that, the battles weren’t as challenging, but I’m still in the first 15% of the game.

The rest of the title’s action happens through menus. You travel areas by touching a big map and can ‘gather info’ from folks who talk to you in places that you’ve already visited. There is no walking or going to inn’s and snooping around towns, just touching and reading. That part is what makes me wish the storyline was a bit more compelling to help the urge to press on.

There is some limited voice acting that is definitely worth noting. When it happens it is great and the DS sounds fantastic. The only thing is the voices are selective and sometimes stop in the middle of a conversation so you’ll just go back to reading. If they didn’t want to make every line read by the actor that’s fine, but why record half of certain dialogue and not the rest? I’m only mentioning this because it was noticeable.

If you are the kind of gamer who likes tactical RPG’s and battles in grid form than keep both eyes open for Luminous Arc 2. It’s quite colorful, you won’t miss it.