Hiya guys, and welcome to 'An In-Depth Look: Luminous Arc'. You may have seen me banging on about this game lately, and that's because I think, at the moment, it is one of those rarities that are hard to find and never heard of. But when you do finally stumble across it, it's well worth the search (?)..

I decided to write this as many people haven't heard of the game at all, and therefore don't know whether to invest time into looking for it. Hopefully this will help make your choice.

To start of with, Luminous Arc is a Strategy Role Playing Game. But unlike other SRPG's, in this game, your battalion are your people, some being Tanks, others Swordfighters and some Mages.

The storyline is that 1000 years ago, a huge war ensued, where the witches fought the Church and rained terror and fright down upon the land. When the battle finished, nothing but destruction lay in its wake. The witches were banished and never seen again.

Until now...

1000 years after, you follow the story of Alph, a rifleman and member of the Garden Children, a group devoted to condemn witches, who have started re-appearing. The witches plan to steal the Elemental Lapistiers and defeat the church, while preventing the coming of God.


The gameplay is, for me, the thing that made the game when I started playing.

On the battlefield, the world is your oyster, you can move around to any tile you want (as long as it's in your characters range) and get to enemies to blast them away. No two battles are EVER the same.

The fields involve different levels, obstacles and trials that can either help you, or put you at a disadvantage. You may think you have a brilliant strategy then get plunged into a field where there are a lot of gaps, that completely throws you off. Using the environment to your advantage is something you have to master if you want to win.

The Computer's AI is incredibly sneaky. They will always try to attack you from the behind or side to get in the maximum damage, or surround one of your characters and pummel them to death. The AI isn't relentless, and it puts up quite a challenge, which I found to be fantastic. Nothing is worse when the battles are long and easy you start getting bored.


Each battle (excluding boss battles) lasts about 10 minutes, and while that seems like a long time, it's not. The time passes quickly while you try to master the battlefield and all of its trials.

As you can see from the picture, the top screen is where the battlefield is shown, and the bottom screen is where your allies and enemies stats appear so you can analyze situations and try to get the best outcome. Things such as spells, skills and item selection also appear on the bottom screen with easy maneuvering.

You encounter random encounters on the world map, while each place you go to is considered as a new 'Chapter'. In each of these Chapters, you will have a special fight, one that is considered as a boss fight to test your skills and strength.

Leveling up is easy, but can get a bit tedious after a while. Each character needs 100 Exp points to get to the next level, and you get those EXP points by battling monsters. When you just hit a monster, you get around 15 - 25 Exp points. But when you kill monsters you can get anything from 50 - 80 Exp. the only thing is that if you have 80 Exp points, kill a monster and gain 70, you get a level, but the rest of the EXP points aren't carried over, and you start at 0 again, meaning that a lot of the time, EXP can be wasted.

You get to buy your characters own weapons, armour and accessories, just like in any game, although acquiring the money can sometimes be hard and you find yourself having to go out of your way to get into fights because the normal income through the storyline boss battles isn't enough.

The one thing that is a let down for the gameplay is that the only place you control the characters are in the battles. The storyline develops on it's own, giving you not much freedom outside of battles, other then being able to shop and talk to people to try to develop more of the storyline.

Overall though, the gameplay in battles is extremely exciting and puts you on the edge of your seat. One wrong move, and it could all be over.

Overal Gameplay Rating: 9.5/10


The graphics in this game are smooth, clean and precise, even though the sprites and characters you play with can be small, you can still see detail in each one of them. One thing that I found with the graphics is that I'm never getting my characters confused on the battle field, which happened a lot in other games when the sprites were this small.


The storyline graphics are Body Avatars of the characters as they talk and develop more of the storyline. These body avatars change emotion, and flick between people to show who is talking to who. Each character has high levels of detail in them, and even characters such as Civilians who have a 5 second role have vast amounts of detail in them.

The world is almost the same as any other world map. The scenery itself is what looks to be hand painted and the locations you visit are small moving sprites.

One thing I found is that while the graphics are good, there are no 'Wow' factor moments like in Final Fantasy, where there are scenes that take your breath away. I know that this is only a DS game, but watching two people talking can get slightly tedious in the longer scenes.

Overall Graphics Rating: 8.5/10


Sounds are the section of the game I struggle with, as not all of it is great. Don't get me wrong, it's still really good, but some of the voice overs can get extremely irritating.

Any who, moving on. The background music, as well as World map and battle music are all fantastic. Nothing irritating, just your usual, run of the mill battle music that sets the emotion and pace of the battle, as well as getting your heart racing when it's getting close.

The SFX, such as swords and bows and arrows are also extremely well done, each of them being accurate and on time with the animation.

The voice overs are something else though.

Characters such as Alph and Leon are fine to listen to, they have the burly "I'm and RPG main character" typical voices that many RPG fans would come to expect now.

Characters such as Cecille and Nikolai can get extremely irritating, extremely fast. One scene, where it was both C and N having a conversation I had almost ground all my teeth away. It may (could well) just be me, but their voices really get on my nerves for some reason.

That being said, everything else about the sounds is perfect! ^.^

Overall Sounds Rating:7.5/10


The controls are extremely easy to get used and also incredibly versatile. You can choose in the menu whether you want to use left handed stylus or no stylus, or right handed stylus, or no stylus. each way you choose means the buttons do different things, which is all explained in the instruction manual (a large section spanning three pages that would take up far too much room here...)

The menus are easy to navigate through, and you can find your way around quite easily. Two of three times after using the shop and main menu and I was pretty much set.

The Battle Menu, on the other hand can be a bit confusing sometimes, as selections will come then go on different people and different rounds due to the ever changing circumstances. It took a lot more then two or three tries to get the hang of the battle controls, and I still find myself messing up on them sometimes now. I suggest that you take the time to fully master the battle controls, as on several occasions I have gotten confused and ended up wasting a vital turn in battle.

Overall Controls Rating:9/10


The replay of this game is something that is interesting. While you could, potentially play this game again and again, it may become very tedious, very fast, although that can be the same as all games. The factor that helps this is that no two battles are EVER the same, so something you found very easy the first time through, may become very hard the second time through, and vice versa. This, combined with the ability to challenge your friends to battles online with your own trained squad, makes good replay value.

Overall Replay Value Rating:7/10

[center]Overall Ratings:

Gameplay: 9.5/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Sounds: 7.5/10
Controls: 9/10
Replay Value: 7/10

FINAL SCORE: 83/100

An extremely good game, but only to those interested in the genre. Make sure you really look into this game before purchasing. You can check out many videos of it on YouTube, which will help you make your decision.