Alas, the long break did me in. I finally got Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits to work again (sometimes) only to find that I didn’t care any more how the story ended. I still played on anyway, since I was quite close to the end. And so I pressed on and finished it after 32 hours and 41 minutes. There’s a long sequence of cutscenes and at least two battles between the final save and the final battle, meaning if you lose you have to watch everything all over again. I therefore advise any potential players to do like I did and FAQ the last boss before taking him on. Heck, I’ll just go ahead and share the way I did it.

My final party was Kharg, Darc, Bebedora, Volk, Camellia and Maru with an average level of 28. If I had to do it again, and luckily I don’t, I would fill the party with long-range attackers like Paulette and Tatjana instead. The last boss has a shield around him that absorbs any damage. Early on he’ll spit out brain cells, which are mini-bosses. After you defeat a number of them, the boss’s shield vanishes.

Here’s the trick: as long as you hug the walls and stay out of the path directly in front of him, he will never regenerate his shield. And not just that, but he will almost never directly attack your party. Once in a long while he’ll absorb some HP from those standing close to him, which is why it’s best to have as few close-range attackers as possible. Basically stay close to the walls, stay away from the area in front of him (I can’t stress this enough. The Return to Darkness attack hits for an average of 275. I know because I tried to tank it), pack lots of Luminous Mosses because he’s weak to Light and then go to town on his ugly eyeball.

After that it’s just a matter of hitting him for about 5 minutes so he can die and you can watch the ending. Which wasn’t as cheesy or as sappy as I’d expected. Part of the reason I watched it was to learn how the romantic subplots turn out, but there’s no closure on that front. I’m betting Kharg gets with Paulette and Darc may or may not end up with Lilia in the future, but it’s up in the air as far as canon goes. The game ends right after the boss fight with everyone wondering “What are we going to do now?” and then deciding that they’ll find a way somehow. It’s not a very conclusive ending, but I actually like it that way. The differences of opinion (to put it mildly) between the Humans and Deimos are far too deep and serious for your regular “We killed the boss and everything worked out” JRPG ending.

So that’s all good and well. I got to see what ‘Arc the Lad’ is all about, at least. I liked the Deimos world with all the different races and character models. The music is good too, if a little out of place. Sometimes they play a fast-paced action tune when you’re just walking on the world map, then when you’re in a serious battle they play this quiet, barely-there tune instead. Some of the characters annoyed me a bit, but in general the good outweighed the bad.

All in all it wasn’t a bad game, but it needed a bit of work in a lot of areas. The encounter rate in the last dungeon is too high. The moral about working together and not hating each other was heavy-handed and over the top. Save points are few and far apart near the end. The majority of items and accessories are useless due to limited slots. The characters made stupid decisions all the time, like leaving Lilia Sue alone in a village when they knew the Dilzweld army was after her. Bad guys – really bad guys who just killed thousands of people – are easily forgiven. But the worst flaw of all is the slowness of the battles. It’s not quite as bad as FFT or FFTA, but it’s getting there. Animations can’t be skipped and even a regular slash takes a while to play out, so even the simplest random battle takes far long than it should.

It’s hard to care about all that though. I’ve played worse and I’ve played much better. It was an average experience and there wasn’t any moment when I was actively enjoying myself or raring to get back into the fray. It’s not something I regret playing, but I’m not super-happy I played it either. Mehhh. I think I’ll give the sequel a miss and just get on with my life at this point. Wild Arms 4 is the next item in my PS2 backlog, but I might play an otome game or two before I jump into that.