Arc of Alchemist is a game that invokes a lot of feelings in me and is by far one of the hardest/complicated games I’ve ever had to review. The story follows Quinn Bravesford, who’s tasked to retrieve the Great Power that will save the world from its current desolate, war-torn desert-scape filled with monsters and giant machinery. At the same time, a rival group exists and has other intentions for the Great Power.

To start things off, I had to play the game to the end to find the good parts that separate it from its many many drawbacks. The most distinct, memorable, and harmful drawback to the game, is its ungodly frame rates. Just moving Quinn from point A to B regardless of the speed of walking garnered frustration in me. The frame rates regularly dip with little reprieve between each action, which made it a chore to continue playing. Aside from the atrocious frame rate, the combat design is sorely lacking in depth.

You are provided with a variety of weapons to choose from, playing as Quinn; you have the option to choose whatever weapon you wish. Each weapon has two combat properties; in this case, you have the circle and square buttons. The circle button is the basic command for the said weapon, i.e., the slash button when using a sword, and the square button is the unique combat button whose function varies with each weapon, that’s it. You either slash the enemy, use the unique action, or dodge attacks.

In addition to the disappointing combat mechanics, the enemy type is more or less the same throughout the game, with many re-skins in between. They offer barely any challenge, at least through half of the game. You also level up pretty quickly just hacking away at the enemy. I was forced to increase the difficulty to hard in order to get any enjoyment out of the combat. Arc of Alchemist’s idea of challenging is throwing difficulty spikes in strange and unusual places.

There is little to no complexity in Arc of Alchemist, which i found strange as right from the start, you’ll be spammed with so many tutorial pages so you’d think you’re in for some complex gameplay. Every little detail about the game, and every item has multiple tutorial pages, especially the ones you’ll use to solve puzzles and progress further. If you understand how everything works and know what you’re doing, you’ll have nothing to worry about.

Besides the exploration and combat side of gameplay, players have the option to return to base after exploring the world. These serve as checkpoints that you can return to at any point. When at the base, you have many options to choose from, as most of the customization is done there. This is yet another drawback, as to do anything worthwhile, including saving your game, you’d have to stop progression and go back to base.

Options at the base include customizing yourself and allies, buying gear, training (improving your stats), and even upgrading the base itself by building facilities. Each upgrade requires money and specific resources found around the world. You’ll mainly be using money which isn’t hard to come by. Getting the resources, however, will require you go out of our way to get to specific areas where they are found. Which quickly becomes a hassle.

Story-wise Arc of Alchemist brings little to the table. It has an interesting concept, but it feels like its only there as a driving point. The only thing you need to know is that Quinn and her crew are tasked with a critical mission to find a source of power that will bring prosperity and life back to the depressing war ruined land of the future. There is very little that keeps you invested in it, mostly due to how complex the nature of the plot is, how little you are told right from the start, and how badly it tells its story. It also doesn’t help that the character models while cute, are stiff and almost motionless which quickly breaks the immersion.

One of the good sides to the story, though, is the characters. They are cute, well-voiced, funny, and entertaining. Perhaps if the game took a more visual novel style to the storytelling, it would be more appealing to the audience as the characters alone are worthy of your attention despite the shoddy game design. An annoying side to this, though, is the lack of a dubbed version of the dialogue. Though not needed, English voice acting would’ve been nice to have. This is mainly because outside “cutscenes,” the characters aren’t subbed at all, which is a shame.

The music is another good aspect of the game as it succeeds in lifting your spirit in an otherwise depressing world. It also supports the retro JRPG feel the game has going on. Overall after beating the game, there isn’t much to do afterward, asides from attempting its other ending.

Arc of Alchemist is a fast and relatively short experience which I found to be a good thing due to all its shortcomings, it wouldn’t be a good game to pump many hours into. That is unfortunate as if it were a bit more polished and had a good gameplay experience; it would’ve been a better game for what it aimed to be. As of now, Arc of Alchemist is not worth the asking price of $40. There are many better alternatives for less. If you must buy it, I would advise doing so when or if it goes on sale at a more fitting price, like for free.

           A PlayStation 4 review copy of  Arc of Alchemist was provided by Idea Factory for this review

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Arc of Alchemist

$39.99 USD

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Nice Music
• Entertaining Characters

Cons

• Subpar Combat System
• Mediocre Plot
• Atrocious Framerates
• Empty World
• Stiff Character Models During Cutscenes