I suppose it's a shiny enough semicircle

I was hunting for Etrian Odyssey after learning just how good it was. The thing is, I just know that I’d seen it before and recently. A while back Circuit City had a clearance sale that held the potential to provide me cheap copies of God Hand, Final Fantasy IV Advance, Final Fantasy V Advance, Elite Beat Agents, or Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. I was much too slow to find any of these games or, for that matter, any cheap games at all. I went to a bunch of stores though, as well as a bunch of other stores that just might hit my cheap games itch. Somewhere amongst all those stops I saw a copy of Etrian Odyssey but didn’t buy it because 1.) I didn’t know how hard it would be to find again, 2.) I didn’t know that I wanted it, and 3.) it wasn’t deeply discounted.

I was hunting for Etrian Odyssey, but what I settled for was Luminous Arc. I might have picked up Odin Sphere instead, but I was hell bent on getting a DS cart to play on the train so Luminous Arc it was. I thought, “It’s an Atlus strategy game, it must be pretty good. After all, they released Disgaea and a whole lot else.” Of course, I would come to find out that it’s actually developed by Marvelous Interactive, most famous for acquiring the Harvest Moon series, and not Nippon Ichi, who gave us Disgaea, LaPucelle: Tactics, and Phantom Brave. I was buying a game on the fly, based purely on the box and the pedigree of the publisher. It was like I was 12 years old and spending my allowance on NES carts all over again.

So, I picked it up and on my way to work that day popped it in on the Red Line. The opening cinema — a bombastic bit of anime J-pop crap — was worrisome. I chalked this up to a desire to cater to the opinionated forum lackey who wails and bemoans any significant localization effort for not being pure to the original in every respect. Besides, I could skip it by pushing any button (and believe me, I did).

Unfortunately, so much of the rest of the game falls right in line with that saccharine little intro. I swear, they must be able to buy these characters in bulk over in Japan. I’m picturing a catalog, distributed at trade conventions and by greasy-haired regional salespeople, much like a stock footage/photo catalog¹ wherein characters can be ordered by the pound. You need an earnest young hero with a secret past? Well, if you order him with an squeaky-voice, admiring younger brother you can save big yen! How about a love interest? We’ve got great rates on strong-willed mystics whose tough exterior belies a heart of gold! In fact, why not buy the box set which includes a confident ladies man, a soft-spoken young girl whose faith is tested, and an experienced mentor (whose an elder at the age of 18-22)? They go great with the kooky magic user pack. That one comes with a rambunctious child, an aloof and laconic warrior, a queen full of doubts, and a couple of wacky animal characters. Save big when you buy them all together!

And then there’s fucking Nikolai. Though not without precedent by any means — he’s the horndog weirdo nerd who loudly and inappropriately announces his boner to everyone within earshot, a staple of Japanese cartoons and other popular media — he attains particular attention by being the character most likely to make you wish the cut scenes were skippable and that there weren’t voice acting. Just look at him. This is the stupid fucking face he makes in every fucking cut scene in which he has a line. He has a hard on for witches, and no amount of violence can damped his ardor which is only exacerbated by his voice acting. My best guess is the actor was given the direction of “mincing caricature of homosexual, circa 1960” though I suspect his patter is par for the course with many popular anime titles. I’m tempted to attack him direct my own characters to attack him, except that would make him talk even more.

The cast of characters is nauseatingly familiar. They’re cliché. There’s not a single aspect about them you haven’t seen a hundred times before. Any supposed character developments have been telegraphed miles before. Light years before. The same goes for the plot. At the outset of the game your plucky young heroes are tasked by their church with destroying witches. Spoiler alert: the church is the bad guy and the witches are the good guys. Except, that’s only a spoiler if you have just awaken from your cryo-stasis pod wherein you have been resting for the past 30 years or so to take a crack at these newfangled electronic games the kids are so into these days.

As for the rest of the game, well it’s just fine. The battle system is just what you’d expect, because it’s precisely the same battle system you’ve seen since Final Fantasy Tactics and probably before that. You’ve got your long range and short range attackers and your healers. You’ve got your terrain and elevation and sides. You’ve got your turn order to watch. You can move and do something, or do something and move, or just do something, or just move, or none of the above (and it affects your turn order). You buy new equipment and potions or whatever. It’s the same damn game you’ve already played (unless you haven’t, in which case that’s great for you because you might not realize what a carbon copy it is).

This is not to say that Luminous Arc is a bad game. It isn’t. It just isn’t remarkable in nearly any capacity. All of the parts are solid, having been liberally swiped from established games. If you can get past the crushing sameness and god awful characters there’s plenty of game here to enjoy. Hell, I’m still playing it: the parts it does right it does really right, and most missions are just the right length for my daily commute (once I get past the interminable plot development). It’s exactly what I expected, and nothing more.

¹ I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these things, but once you have it’s like your eyes have been opened to a great secret of the universe. These stock photos and video are positively everywhere. All of a sudden you realize where every single “customer service” photo came from. That asian girl, smiling and turning slightly to camera with her headset on? You know where they bought her image. You see her in every commercial, on every website. She’s like some sort of Greek god of customer service.