Review by: Mike Thompson

The end of summer is a bad time for game releases. It's when publishers tend to quietly dump titles onto store shelves, often with a minimal amount of promotion or fanfare in the hope that uninformed consumers might lead to some extra sales. Occasionally, though, something mildly surprising comes along. Enter Arc Rise Fantasia, a new JRPG for the Wii from Ignition Entertainment.

The game's story is somewhat interesting, although it's pretty standard for anyone who's played JRPGs in the past. Within the Meridian Empire, flocks of beasts known as "Feldragons" have been plaguing the countryside. While you'd think a reasonable response would just be to just to break out some weaponry and hunt the buggers down, things aren't that simple. You see, if a Feldragon is killed, there's an explosion that ends up poisoning the local environment.

During a nasty battle with a particularly large group of Feldragons, a young mercenary who bears the (unfortunate) name L'Arc Bright Lagoon is badly wounded but manages to survive thanks to the help of a girl named Ryfia. The duo is joined by the Alf, the Meridian prince, and the three form the beginnings of a party that winds up fighting to prevent a war and (ultimately) save the world.

The problem is that while the plot isn't bad, it's somewhat crippled by the dialogue. The writing is all over the place, with certain lines working while others cringe-inducing. On top of that, the voice acting is just bad; every character seems incapable of expressing more than one emotion; the performances do a lot to make the story unenjoyable.

The best part of the game comes from the turn-based combat system. Each turn, characters have a group pool of Action Points to spend. Every action costs a certain amount of AP, which means that some serious forethought is required during the tougher battles if you want to get the most out of your characters each turn. Tough battles tend to sneak up on you without much warning. Most of the time, battles are pretty easy and players don't have to worry about dying at all. However, boss battles happening without a save point nearby aren't uncommon, which means that a lot of progress will be lost if you don't survive. It's really frustrating, but it's also something that players are going to have to get used to if they plan of spending any real amount of time with Arc Rise Fantasia.

Another nice touch is that weapons level up in the same way that characters do. Weapons provide special abilities and enchantments. With the former, a weapon might grant a new move in combat. Meanwhile, the latter tends to be a bit more passive, doing things like boosting a character's statistics or adding an effect to attacks. Weapons will level up thanks to Weapon Points that players earn from battles. One of the cooler features about this whole system, though, is that players are able to switch abilities over to newer weapons. Unfortunately, doing this is a bit of a pain thanks to a needlessly-complicated menu design.