Arkadian Warriors Review
It's easy to get excited about the idea behind Arkadian Warriors. There's something about cooperative dungeon crawlers that makes them fun, despite the highly repetitious gameplay. Arkadian Warriors is lacking that certain something. It's lacking quite a bit more, as well, like level design, story and character progression. If you're looking for a game that is completely generic in every possible way, look no farther.
Arkadian Warriors begins in a village. So far, so good. There's a shop, a person that will offer you a quest, a fountain to toss coins into and…well that's about it. This is just a hub for the series of boring fetch quests and poor boss battles that are to follow. From the town, you can upgrade your weapons, helmet and armor, move on to your next quest, or replay old quests.
After you play the first quest, you might find yourself thinking that the game isn't half bad. You've got one button for attacks, another to activate your Alter Ego (a powerful beast form that can be activated by filling a meter through attacks), and a third to perform magic or skills. Standard mana and health potions are scattered around, chests can be found to open for gold, and you might even find a hidden room with more gold. Enemies race towards you when they see you and, perhaps, retreat when their health gets low. Other than that, it's good ol' hack-and-slash gameplay.
Sure, there's a bit of slowdown when each floor loads and that first mission to hunt down a set number of wild boars isn't too inspired, but there's a decent foundation here.
That's about as far as the developers got. The rest of the game is nothing more than a series of fetch quests, all variations on that same first quest and all taking place in the same series of randomly generated dungeons. Go into this warp tunnel and kill this many poison scorpions. Now go into this one and find eight keys in the same boring area. You did that? Good job. Now go do the same thing except bring back some piles of bones instead of keys.
Each of the 19 missions feels exactly the same, save for the few that end with a boss fight -- a boss that is devoid of any intelligence, always slower than you and offers no challenge at all.
The only carrot in place to keep you from simply running through levels ignoring the series of enemies (and you can just race through the stages if you want, it's pretty easy), is the experience you gain from fighting. As you level, you'll gain strength and unlock five skills or spells. We had particular fun with the health spell. You see, it not only gives you health, but also causes you to freeze in one place while casting it. If you're in a battle, it's useless. You'll end up taking more damage than you recover.
The design issues spill over into the online game as well. Arkadian Warriors was made to be played either online or off, which is in itself never a bad thing. The mechanics for the offline game carry over online, though. That means that you'll be constrained to the same camera space as your online friend, bumping into the screen's edges as you try to fight your own battles. If your friend rotates the camera, it rotates for you as well. In the online world, none of this is necessary and only adds to frustration levels.
Let's not forget that there are three character classes but the game can only be played with two people.
source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/840/840871p1.html
Arkadian Warriors begins in a village. So far, so good. There's a shop, a person that will offer you a quest, a fountain to toss coins into and…well that's about it. This is just a hub for the series of boring fetch quests and poor boss battles that are to follow. From the town, you can upgrade your weapons, helmet and armor, move on to your next quest, or replay old quests.
After you play the first quest, you might find yourself thinking that the game isn't half bad. You've got one button for attacks, another to activate your Alter Ego (a powerful beast form that can be activated by filling a meter through attacks), and a third to perform magic or skills. Standard mana and health potions are scattered around, chests can be found to open for gold, and you might even find a hidden room with more gold. Enemies race towards you when they see you and, perhaps, retreat when their health gets low. Other than that, it's good ol' hack-and-slash gameplay.
Sure, there's a bit of slowdown when each floor loads and that first mission to hunt down a set number of wild boars isn't too inspired, but there's a decent foundation here.
That's about as far as the developers got. The rest of the game is nothing more than a series of fetch quests, all variations on that same first quest and all taking place in the same series of randomly generated dungeons. Go into this warp tunnel and kill this many poison scorpions. Now go into this one and find eight keys in the same boring area. You did that? Good job. Now go do the same thing except bring back some piles of bones instead of keys.
Each of the 19 missions feels exactly the same, save for the few that end with a boss fight -- a boss that is devoid of any intelligence, always slower than you and offers no challenge at all.
This could a screen from most any quest in the game.
The design issues spill over into the online game as well. Arkadian Warriors was made to be played either online or off, which is in itself never a bad thing. The mechanics for the offline game carry over online, though. That means that you'll be constrained to the same camera space as your online friend, bumping into the screen's edges as you try to fight your own battles. If your friend rotates the camera, it rotates for you as well. In the online world, none of this is necessary and only adds to frustration levels.
Let's not forget that there are three character classes but the game can only be played with two people.
source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/840/840871p1.html
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