Playstation #18 and 19: Arc the Lad & King’s Field

Imagine it’s December 1995. You’ve bought the Playstation, and the holiday season is over. You won’t have played either of the games featured today, except if you were Japanese since they came out awhile ago there, and if you were American you would be far too sad about the end of Calvin & Hobbes on December 31st, 1995 to be playing video games, probably.

In 32 Bits I try to understand gaming’s past by playing the games that gamers played at the time: not just the classics we acknowledge now, but the games popular then. I use the “greatest hits” line – which rereleased supposedly popular games – as a guide to what people played then, what games had a audience and – sometimes – influence over the course of gaming. I look at the games popular in the United States, and those that were hits in Japan and Europe.

Today: the last two Playstation games for 1995 – or as I call it now, “season 1”. Both are RPGs, though not of kinds especially common on this system, and both were only popular in Japan.

After this: the rest of the month is focused on the Sega Saturn.

And then: Season 2, covering the games of 1996, will start sometime in the future, after I’ve scheduled posts a few months in advance; the first Playstation games covered will be Policenauts & A-Train. 1996 is the year of Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Suikoden; Nights Into Dreams, Dragon Force, Panzer Dragoon II; Super Mario 64, Wave Race, and a whole lot more.

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Playstation #18:

Arc the Lad

Developed by G-Craft, published by Working Designs (US only)

Released: June 30th 1995 (Japan), April 18th 2002 (US)

Popular In: Japan (The Best/PSOne Books)

Arc the Lad is the first RPG I’ve played for 32 Bits, and it gives me a chance to reflect. When this console generation was unfolding, I loved JRPGs. I played them endlessly, and Final Fantasy was all my friends would talk about – well, Final Fantasy and Pokémon. My affection for them followed into the PS2 era. Once the PS2 was supplanted by the PS3, however, I lost interest in consoles and began playing mainly computer games – a platform relatively devoid of JRPGs. So now I get a chance to revisit my youthful obsession and decide – was it worthwhile?

Arc the Lad was not one of my childhood favorites. In fact, I was completely unfamiliar with it until I started researching 32 Bits – and for good reason.

Arc the Lad is a strategy RPG, a form that merges the party system of a traditional RPG with strategic motion through an open battle field. Though there were exceptions like Shining Force (Climax/Sonic Co, Genesis,1992), Vandal Hearts (Konami, PS1/Saturn, 1997) and Final Fantasy Tactics (Square, PS1, 1998), this type of game rarely made it to the United States or Europe in the 90s: the most famous strategy RPG series, Nintendo’s Fire Emblem, didn’t make its way overseas until its seventh installment was exported in 2003.

That’s one year after Arc the Lad. While Arc the Lad was first released in 1995, it didn’t get exported until 2002, two years after the PS2’s début. Working Designs was responsible: they were an American publisher of Japanese games no one else would export – most famously, Lunar. They tried to secure the rights to Arc the Lad in 1995 – only to run afoul of Sony executive Bernie Stolar, who allegedly restricted the release of 2D games and RPGs out of a concern that they were “too nerdy”. Arc the Lad ticked both boxes. By 1999, Bernie Stolar was off at Sega and Working Designs began translating all three Arc the Lad games, plus a spin-off, for release together as the Arc the Lad Collection.

Working Designs didn’t survive much longer: they closed in 2005, after only a handful of PS2 releases. Arc the Lad Collection was their last PS1 release. So how does its first volume fare today?

Arc the Lad is a sparse experience by JRPG standards: there are no shops or towns, and only a handful of places where you can explore on foot. The game alternates between battles and cutscenes, with some sidequests to break the cycle.

Arc the Lad features seven playable characters…plus some. They are, on the whole, broad archetypes with simplistic story arcs. Indeed, once a character joins your party their story is basically over.

Our hero is Arc, who is thoroughly generic: he is a boy from a small town with a missing father. Not only is he destined to save the world – in one of the game’s few noteworthy twists, we learn his father rigged destiny so that his son would be the one to save the world – he’s also unknowingly descended from royalty. Arc is not just strong, but learns a wide variety of techniques that make him by far the game’s most useful character.

 

The other lead is Kukuru, a girl tasked with keeping a sacred flame lit. When the flame goes out, the world is imperiled and she tags along with Arc out of, well, destiny. She has a infatuation with Arc. Not terribly strong, Kukuru’s primary use is healing magic.

 

Poco is an army drummer who is the sole survivor of his unit. When he fights alongside Arc, he loses his cowardice. That is the extent of his story arc. He can use his instruments to boost his allies’ stats, impair the abilities of enemies and occasionally attack.

 

Tosh is a red-haired samurai seeking revenge on the soldiers who destroyed his clan. His abilities are various sword techniques.

 

Gogen is a thousands-year old wizard freed by the players. He learns a variety of spells and dies very easily.

 

Chongara is the least conventional and most creatively successful member of the party. A Arab-esque trader who speaks in broken English (which the game presents as funnier than it ever is), in battle he uses summons. These summons act as members of the party: they have their own statistics, abilities and levels. Four of them you gain through the story, and three are optional. There is the healing Kelack and shapeshifting Odon; there’s also Mofly, an insect who can make floors in empty spaces, an ability useful in Chongara’s first battle and never again. His summons aren’t always useful but they are at least odd diversions from the staid main party.

 

Finally, there’s Iga, a stoic monk type. Yep.

The story begins when the sacred flame Cion goes out; a creature known as the Ark Ghoul emerges from the darkness and nearly kills Arc. Arc is resurrected by a mysterious light and sent on a quest by his nation’s King to find five elemental guardians, who have lost faith in humanity and want Arc to save the world from the neglect and malevolence of mankind.

These guardians preach endlessly about humanity’s destructive nature – yet the game’s humans are rarely that evil: any authority figure who opposes Arc’s quest is swiftly revealed to be a monstrous impostor. It is only at the end that humanity assumes its status as villain.

The game rarely breaks from the conventions of its genre. No hometown goes undemolished, and the Kingdom’s Prime Minister takes on a traditional “evil adviser” role. It becomes clear early on that he’s the game’s true villain – the Ark Ghoul rarely appears and, oddly, later turns up as an ordinary monster.

The following section includes spoilers for the ending of Arc the Lad

Arc the Lad’s storyline ends on a cliffhanger, which is to be expected: Arc the Lad is only half a game. When the game’s development ran too long, it was split into two games. Critics and fans both agree that Arc the Lad II is superior – and longer: Arc the Lad only took me seven hours (it’d be about five without sidequests) and is essentially a prelude to the “real” game (or so I assume; I’ve yet to play Arc the Lad II).

After your party finds all the guardians and puts out the flame a second time, Arc and company find the Ark. They fight “dark” versions of themselves; victorious, the Ark tells Arc that he must now fight the Dark One, who has been revived by the Ark’s reactivation. They leave the cave and are promptly arrested by the forces of the Prime Minister, who has killed the King. They are being taken across a cliff when it snaps in half: Kukuru on one side, the rest of the party on the other. They escape in their airship.

In the game’s final scenes, Kukuru is separated from the gang as their airship rises past her to freedom. Arc and company try to keep up with her before ultimately losing her as they ascend. This scene is strangely affecting, unlike the rest of the game, thanks to the composition that effectively renders their separation.

End of Spoiler Alert

This is an interesting approach to the game’s story: rather than release one overambitious, bound to be incomplete game G-Craft instead crafted a two-part saga. Save data transfers between the two, a feature rare for its day. An innovative story structure was born out of necessity.

Arc the Lad’s storytelling methods are poorly paced and awkward. Arc the Lad opens with a fifteen minute cutscene before the first battle. Many Playstation developers took pride in their pre-rendered cutscenes: since the actual graphics were so often subpar, they relied on fancier computer animation to convey the game’s most epic moments. Uniquely, Arc the Lad’s pre-rendered cutscenes are rough compared to the more sophisticated sprites: the cinematic scenes are confusingly brief, choppy and primitive, indicative of the game’s rushed and early development.

The world of Arc the Lad features multiple continents, but feels small: each area’s map is made up of only a few locations, and there’s little to do besides fight old battles over again for extra experience.

The battle arenas feature some odd issues of perspective: areas that look open are often impassable. In one battle, towers that looked like they could be crossed were solid – forcing me to do a longer loop to kill a few weak slime enemies.

Luckily, you can learn how to leap over allies, enemies and objects: this prevents you from getting boxed in by other characters – if you plan well.

Notably, there is never an objective to the battles besides “kill all enemies”. Only the enemies make each battle distinct, and they’re often recycled. After you’ve faced the third variation on a slime, everything starts to blend together.

The player can equip items, but only accessories with special effects: there are no extra weapons or armor to find, and skills are gained through leveling or by finding them in the storyline. Unlike many games in this genre, there are no job classes and your characters can’t be “promoted” to another class: they stay as they are throughout, just with new abilities. Neither are there generic mercenary units to pad out your ranks: the seven playable characters, plus Chongara’s summons, are all you get.

While the game only lasts a couple of hours, sidequests boost that time – though they aren’t very original. Iga’s monastery offers battles against 20 monsters of the same kind, as well as trivia competitions. There is the requisite fighting tournament. After significant plot events, you can revisit the Forest Spirit and be rewarded with special items. And there’s Chongara’s secret summons.

Treasure on one of the ruin’s early levels.

The most noteworthy sidequest: the Mysterious Ruins, a 50-floor dungeon without any save points. The player descends down, finding rare treasures along the way. The bottom floor holds a secret boss whom Chongara can use as a summon, as well as special treasures – though to keep them, you must climb up all 50 levels. This expands the game’s length by hours, though I did not have the endurance to get all the way down and back.

Also boosting the game’s length: the traditional time-wasting elements of RPGs. Extravagant spell effects, repetitive scenes (you have to talk to a man named Chopin every time you board the airship, and watch it take off) and special death animations for every character. Oh, how I did not miss this part of RPG gaming!

Arc the Lad is difficult to judge since it’s incomplete. I will play Arc the Lad II next season – and in a way, I’ll have the experience Japanese gamers did. American gamers who bought the Arc the Lad Collection by Working Designs could jump right from Arc the Lad to the continuation in Arc the Lad II – so what if Arc the Lad was underwhelming? Its sequel was right there! Those in Japan, who played Arc the Lad when first released, had no such comfort. I have to wait, and I have cautious hope that Arc the Lad II is more engaging.

notes

• Developers G-Craft disappeared in 1999 after making the Playstation Arc the Lad games and Front Mission. They were bought by Square and turned into Square’s sixth development division, which continues to develop the Front Mission games.
• The rights to Arc the Lad remained with Sony, however; the series’ two Playstation 2 installments were developed by a company called Cattle Call. The fifth and final game, 2005’s End of Darkness, abandoned turn-based strategy and turned Arc the Lad into an action RPG.
• The box set (which I don’t have) includes a making-of CD, the soundtrack, and a hardcover manual.

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Playstation #19:

King’s Field

Developed by From Software, published by ASCII Entertainment

Released: July 21st 1995 (Japan), December 31st 1995 (US)

Popular in: Japan (The Best)

On the island there is only death.

You could drown in deep water. Be pushed to your demise by fish. Get struck down by a hulking beast guarding unknown treasure. That treasure chest may hold an invaluable map, or a deadly skeleton.

And that’s just in the first area.

King’s Field is a first person dungeon crawler by From Software, later the developers of Dark Souls and Armored Core, among many others. The King’s Field released in North America and Europe is actually the second King’s Field game: the first, From Software’s début game, never left Japan.

King’s Field tasks the player with exploring a mysterious island. You fight monsters and find secrets in a sprawling dungeon – the monsters, scenery and challenge changes as you go, though the game is not split into distinct levels. In fact, this is a remarkable achievement for the Playstation: all areas flow into one another, and there are no load screens between them. Most enemies do quite a bit damage with each hit – some can kill you in one hit. Save points are rare, and until you find one death returns you back to the start, your progress undone.

A secret door opens…

Death is a punishment in King’s Field, a massive inconvenience heralded by your character’s horrific dying scream. You’re encouraged to get accustomed to the rhythms of King’s Field: if you want to stay alive, you must attack then dash, and inspect every wall for secrets. Some walls don’t hold valuable secrets – some hold fatal spear traps. That path to a treasure chest might end in a deadly pitfall. Such is life in King’s Field.

King’s Field is intentionally slow and somewhat tedious. But the common nature of death in King’s Field makes it feel like you’re getting somewhere – even small victories are heightened when they mean something. Alas, some deaths are due to the controls. For the first time in 32 Bits, I miss the analog stick: the DualShock controller, with its twin analog sticks, is two years away, and older games only allow the use of the d-pad irregardless of the controller you use. Camera control is mapped to the shoulder buttons; maneuvering is slow.

The atmosphere of King’s Field is eerie: the island is dark, the music foreboding. Attention is lavished on the game’s monsters, who are rendered with a rare level of detail and who are easily identifiable from a distance thanks to unique designs. My favorites: the semi-transparent ghosts found in a graveyard area, and a giant, fire-breathing snail.

The game’s people, meanwhile, don’t even have faces. This adds to the game’s surreal atmosphere – as does the lack of decoration in the many mysteriously empty buildings found within the dungeon. Of course, both are indicative of the Playstation’s limited technology and the inexperience of early developers unable to work around its constraints.

King’s Field is far from the most accessible game, but it isn’t trying to be. When you spawn the player near an unbeatable boss, you’re making a statement: you’re in for a challenge. Yet you’re also making a promise with the player: eventually, you’ll return here and be able to kill that towering foe. King’s Field offers a surprising amount of freedom to the player in navigating through the island; you can make your own way when it comes to exploration, and there’s no overwrought story to guide you by hand. From Software wanted to give players an experience rarely found on the Playstation, one marked by relative freedom and surprising difficulty, and they succeeded.

Ultimately, neither King’s Field or Arc the Lad are especially “important” to the history of gaming. Arc the Lad was a cult hit but hardly the most important, or best, strategy RPG; King’s Field is an accomplished oddity. Yet not everything has to be important, or genre-defining: some games are worthy just because they’re themselves, and nothing more.

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Season 1 of 32 Bits is not over yet, though we’ve left the Playstation behind.

July is Saturn month, where I play probably too many Saturn games: classics like Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop and Sega Rally Championship – and more dubious entries like Virtual Hydlide.

Then retrospectives on the Playstation, Saturn and oddly Nintendo.

And then onto 1996.