Arc
of Alchemist by developer Compile
Heart and publisher Idea
Factory International—Nintendo
Switch review written by Pierre-Yves
with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Arc of Alchemist is the latest from developers Compile Heart that
have brought us the crazy universe of Neptunia, the lazy adventurer
Fang from Fairy Fencer F, the witches of Dragon Star Varnir and so
many more. Having all shared some similarities, this adventure brings
about a new tale of the squad leader Quinn with her six subordinates
as they search for a stop to the desertification of the Earth in a
fast paced action RPG that while maybe not the most refined, has
definitely set a foothold for more within this style.
While I generally start with the same formula in how I like to go
through a title’s high points into its low points, I want to get
one thing out of the way first because while it does affect the title
mechanically from a performance standpoint, it doesn’t define it.
Arc of Alchemist, on the Switch at any rate, was rough performance
wise. Even just loading up the first few minutes of my eleven hour
adventure, I hit frame rate issues causing everything to lag pretty
badly. While it does smooth over time, and the issue didn’t seem to
be all that there in the NG+ at the same beginning point, it was
persistant through Quinn’s adventure and only ever got worse with
more and more enemies on screen.
That being said, while Arc of Alchemist is an Action “Adventure”
RPG, and while the gameplay is important to tell the story about
traversing the wasteland, the key moments are what make this a title
worth sitting down to. Taking place after another great war on Earth,
those left to live after are facing an impending death at the fact
that the planet can no longer sustain life and is steadily becoming
more and more of a desert despite the best efforts of anyone trying
to stop it. Tasked by their nation in order to find The Great Power
which is rumoured to be the solution to everything, Quinn and her six
subordinates head out into various ruins in order to find it.
Arc of Alchemist is not very long and in a way it’s a good thing
and not because of the performance issues above. Taking place at
almost the end of the tale, you’ll need to collect four orbs, which
work themselves well into the gameplay and cross various parts of the
desert to find the power that should be able to solve everything. I’m
not going to spoil what that great power is, but it was a nice touch
when you do find out what it is and what it can do. To cross these
locations and hunt for the orbs, you’ll be running around in a team
of three and literally mashing either the “B” button for attacks
or the “Y” button for a ranged attacks. That’s pretty much it.
While each orb adds some magical elements like Fire, Water, Wind and
Earth in which some can be used for battle, they are more for
exploration than for battle unless we are talking about the last
boss.
The gameplay is really that simple so having the adventure more than
a dozen or so hours would have been taxing. You run around, you kill
things, you go back to town, you sell stuff for money and then you
build up your main base that lets you buy new items, get access to
new item packs for the field, new outfits for visual prowess and the
ability to splurge all of that hard earned cash into stat points. Oh
yes, if things are too hard, and the grinding for experience isn’t
going that well and you’ve bought everything that you possibily
could have? Head back to you main base and drop the biggest down
payment for the biggest mansions you could possibly think of to raise
those numbers!
Health, attack, two types of defense and luck make up the five stats
that all of your chracters have to play with. Better equipment will
help raise these, accessories even more so, but the name of the game
often was how much money you had which made exploration worth it as
without these boosts? Most bosses would simply steamroll right over
you. And to be fair, it’s actually not that expensive once you’re
a few hours in and loads of money is easy to come by.
It’s what happens when money is no longer enough and you need to
start dropping organic fluids and toad oil into the mix. The first
becomes easy to find but the other is a bit harder to come by and
very much needed for investing new buildings into your base to allow
you to get more out of trading your materials and buying various new
equipment. It’s a balancing act, and between it and the more basic
combat system? The adventure wouldn’t have survived being much
longer than that.
Where Arc of Alchemist truly shines is in its characters. Each
character, both your original seven and then added three down the
line, have unique personalities and the banter between them is really
what’s going to keep you going. Quinn is a hardshelled military
woman that has one goal other than seeking out the power to save the
Earth. Her goal is to keep those that follow her alive as best as she
can as they mean more to her than she often shows.
Of the six that follow her, you have the stoic knight that is always
by her side and seeing to her every need, you have the other knight
in love with the doofus who’s always by Quinn’s side. You have
your goofball ronin who loves his cat Meow, you have your super smart
half dressed harem girl, the motherly figure, and your traditional
lolli to check off your typical achetypes. But they don’t come off
as their types as much as they come off as their own persons and this
is shown both in the mandatory points to cross on the adventure map
as every time you go back to base.
Your main base while obviously being the place to go back and truly
rest and gear up, is a feature that I didn’t realize that I had to
take more seriously until a few hours in. You’re given camps out in
the field to rest and these can be upgraded to do more and be able to
restock your items, but what they don’t do is give you cutscenes
into the daily lives of your party. Every time you go back, there’s
something new to watch and they aren’t just one off either.
While being in the field moves everything forward, the base tells
other stories like your party members getting together and learning
to make soup, or worrying about mending clothes, or in a particular
dynamic, everyone treating the mother figure as an actual Mom in
certain cases as they ask her for stuff even if she’s younger than
some of them. These bits give a lot of insight to why each character
is how they are and it makes for a better story than the constant
desert trekking that you’ll be playing through as you hunt the orbs
and the power.
Arc of Alchemist really is more than the sum of its parts. The
gameplay is stable and works for a time since it never evolves, the
town building elements are really only there as a way to limit how
fast you get new equipment, and there’s loads of story to
experience as long as you remember to go back to the base to see it.
Compared to a lot of Compile Heart titles, this is truly a short and
sweet one but it’s also one that could potentially become something
if they stick with it. It was fun and again, without spoilers, with
how it finishes I’m hoping for a sequel that could continue the
tale and hopefully add other refinements.
The only thing that I’ve got to wonder though is… why did they
call it Arc of Alchemist when there’s ZERO alchemy in it.
Score: 6.75 / 10
