Luminous Arc - Finish!

I've returned to the realm of tactical RPGs, and Luminous Arc is the latest completed in the collection.

Story - 3.5/5
Insanely predicable and cliche ending. But happy endings are good and I shouldn't be complaining. And the plot twist when a certain character totally changes from a goodie two shoes into a badass lolita. It was a good change though. Interesting how they used the whole Christian philosophy and warped it to the extreme.

Gameplay - 3/5
There's so many obstacles in using a stylus in this game. You'd think it's the greatest idea in the world, and it is, but some of the problems I encountered regularly obviously weren't addressed. The biggest annoyance was during cluster fucks, some other guy (could be your own guy or a bad guy) would be blocking the square you want to select. Then you'd be screwed and have to go around for another strategy or end up hurting all sorts of people you don't want to hurt. Not only did other people block the way, but map OBJECTS (a THICK POLE for example) even got in the way. Highlighted squares weren't all obviously highlighted. For example, Vivi who was on a carpet covered her whole square so you can't see weather her area was selected or not. You'd be blowing up your own mates and not know it until it's too late. I also disliked the fact that you couldn't see the stats of the other players on the map at any time during anyone's turn, especially your own (except the person you're currently controlling).

Finding Vitae is a bitch. One, you don't know what the real names are until you go to the workshop to check (or unless you memorized the names). You can only view your vitae list at the workshop too. You also don't know where they drop either. So you'd be running back and forth, hoping it was the one you were looking for. Luckily, I was able to make more than half of my ideal weapon/armor sets.

This game LAGS. Sometimes wiping out most of the enemy doesn't save you from the lag either.

Characters - 4/5
The characters were great. The voice acting was decent, some parts sounded very direct-script-reading and some of the stresses for voices were... stressed in the wrong part of the line which made it really awkward. Nikolai's voice is probably the worst plus the angel was purposely annoying, I assumed. Poyon is plenty amusing, although his tech sucked so I stopped caring for him.

Sound - 3.5/5
There were a lot of reused sound effects. The beginning few bgms were great listens... I think I enjoy the character selection screen the most. I can tell it's composed by Mitsuda too... I swear that's not my reason for liking it!

Overall 4/5
It's been a while since I played a tactical RPG so it was refreshing. The game was overall quite easy, especially after when you get the Twilight Witch (Restore was my best friend on the last boss). It was also very cheap to level up, if you really wanted to. A heal or a stat up granted you 30exp instantly, and 4 turns of that gave you a new level. My winning team consisted of Alph, Theo, Leon, Cecille, Vivi, Mel, Heath, and Lucia. Unintentional balance between magic and physical. It's safe to say the character's were well balanced, which was why... minus Poyon, who had the shittiest tech (accuracy) so why bother with him. I even had faith in him at first.. until I noticed his tech wasn't going to go up anymore if I were to level him anymore. 10+ minute battles are quite exhausting though... however they are quite addicting. I experienced quite a number of red lights during my playtime.

After completing this, I actually look forward to Luminous Arc 2. But I think I'm going to take a break from stylus gaming -- too stressful for your controller gamer.