Watch out! Lord of Arcana is a BRUTAL Action-RPG...

[Yggdrasil]

...if you have balls and a PSP, you should buy this. Because you know, it got blood and all that cute stuff.

Official website(s): http://www.lordofa.com/ & http://na.lordofarcana.com/

[insertnamehere]

but square did it.
I'm sure this'll be something for me to wait and find out if it's good or not.

[beach1]

Hmm, I'm not liking the overall aesthetic look of the game or the colors used. The music in the preview kind of gives me an Ys vibe. I wonder if the actual in game music is like that too. I'll have to see others' impressions of the gameplay.

[Uru]

....or we can continue to play monster hunter?

[Fei]

....or we can continue to play monster hunter?

That's what I thought too haha.

If it weren't for PSP, I'd care.

[Dizzy]

Looks interesting to me. I may check it out.

[Dincrest]

Checking out the official site, looking at the screens, watching the video, the whole interface and general gameplay flow screams Phantasy Star Online to me.  A medieval/traditional fantasy form of PSO.  Even the character creator borrows some PSO hairstyles.  Call me Captain Obvious, but this looks like a game where the multiplayer is where it's at and the single player campaign may be bleh.  Hopefully it's not like Ragnarok DS where you couldn't access multiplayer till you were practically finished with the crummy single player campaign. 

[Ramza]

I kinda doubt we'll be covering this one on RPGFan. We'll see. :P

[Yggdrasil]

I kinda doubt we'll be covering this one on RPGFan. We'll see. :P

Why? This is too BRUTAL for RPGFan standards?

[Tooker]

It is, one might say, Legendarily Brutal.

Of course, if one were to say that, one might get beaten up in the back alley. :)


The real reason, of course, is that after much deliberation on multiple occasions, we have determined that Monster Hunter doesn't fit our coverage definition of RPG.  I might have slipped in a review for one Monster Hunter game after much whining about the work I'd put in, but even if I did, we're not covering that series any more.  If Lord of Arcana is pretty much "Monster Hunter with more blood," we wouldn't cover it either.

[Draak]

Lock on, HP bars and when you encounter a monster you are taken to an arena screen? Do not want.

[Yggdrasil]

@Tooker: I see. Either way, I don't think that we are losing much with this game to be honest.

[Fei]

You guys decided that Monster Hunter doesn't count?  You said you debated it several times so I won't bother arguing, it's just kinda surprising to me.

Actually I am pretty interested in Lord of Arcana after all.  I'm considering getting a PSP after all these years, and I like the music in the trailer.

[Tooker]

Yeah, we did.  It was a really tough call, too.  That kind of debate doesn't happen a TON, but it does happen from time to time, and for a site with volunteer staff, it's a necessity.  We've got a lot of games to cover, and only so many people to cover them, most, if not all of whom have families and jobs and/or school, so if we feel like a game's on the borderline between an action game with RPG elements and an actual RPG, we sometimes have to make the call that we're not going to cover it, or risk adding a bunch more games to our backlog of "games we need to review when we get the time."

I realize you weren't on the attack there - actually, your polite response drew the explanation out of me. :)

[insertnamehere]

Since we're talking about monster hunter, I've been thinking about getting into it but every time I do research on it, I'm unable to find anything like a story in any games so is it pretty much all fighting without story?