Play Time: 1½ Hours
Progress: Level 6 Soldier
This is an Xbox Live Arcade Review. Arkadian Warriors should cost you 800 Microsoft Points ($12 CDN). Life shouldn’t be completely about thinking, put down your tactical shooter and prepare for a mindless hack and slash fantasy-styled game, but with a mindful review.
Visuals & Audio:
Arkadian Warriors is a very colourful game. The grass is green, the sky is blue and the endless tunnels are a dark dirty brown. The characters have a nice look to them, they are well-rounded and all have funny looking faces. The environments are quite “blocky” though. You will be seeing a lot of the same things while running around. You will often be wandering in the same dark tunnels through different missions, but they try to mix things up a little bit by making you fight different coloured enemies in different coloured areas. The visuals are not as important in this title as you will be focusing more on just try to survive the hordes of enemies rushing at you.
The audio is interesting… The soundtrack includes some drums… and some flute noises. So the soundtrack isn’t the greatest, and even if it was, you’re not going to be able to hear it over the sound effects that are constantly being shot out of your speakers. The enemies have their own unique squeals as you chop at them. They were able to get the ting of a sword hitting metal (sfx) really well, it’s just too bad that that’s the only noise your weapon makes, no matter what the weapon, no matter what surface its hitting, you will always here the nice ricochet of a sword. Other sound effects like breaking boxes and slicing enemies sound about right, I’m not sure what exactly that would sound like but I’m guessing this would be about right.
Gameplay:
You will find the gameplay to be quick and merciless with the exceptions of choosing missions and shopping for items. You will start off by choosing what class you would like to be: a male soldier, a male archer or a female sorceress. Obviously, women have to right to wield weapons, unless they’re sticks or spoons according to the dev team. Upon choosing your class you will then be placed in a small town area where you can choose to walk over and buy something from a market, or go and accept a mission from the one and only guy giving a mission at the time.
The game is very linear when it comes to taking a mission, you can not choose which mission you want, only the one that is given at the time. You will be able to play missions that you have previously completed but with all of the missions being so alike, I doubt that you will want to. When on your mission you are sent through a portal into a dungeon, where right off the bat you will be rushed by countless enemies and will be shot at by countless fireballs. You are given the option to hold down the left trigger to target a single enemy but I suggest just tapping the A button and running through the groups of enemies with the hope that you will not be hit by their slow moving attacks. Use the A button to attack and the B button to use your powers. Your powers are nothing to be proud of really, because they will usually do minimal damage and leave you standing still just waiting to be killed in a barrage of actual attacks.
What really makes this game interesting to play is what they call an “alter ego” where when you have killed enough enemies and filled up your “alter ego” bar you can then transform into a large beast and wreak havoc on the small insolent monsters. Each class will have their own alter ego, the soldier transforms into a lion, the archer into a dragon and the sorceress into a phoenix. When in your beast form you only have one attack and its just a sonic boom that does enormous amounts of damage to everything within its relatively small radius. After a short period of time, you will be transformed back into human mode.
While destroying your enemies you will find treasure chests around the map. Usually these chests contain either gold or potions to heal yourself. Every now and again you might even find a weapon or armor that can be equipped at any time. When done your mission, you will be transported back into the town area. The gold you find can be used to purchase new armor or weapons at the market place, though there isn’t much point because you will probably be given or you will find stronger weapons on your quests.
Online:
Online allows you to play with one other person in co-operative play on any of the missions. The best thing about the co-op is that you can play with your character that you have leveled up in single player mode. When online you can drop any item you have for your friend to pick up and use. The system isn’t amazing, but it works.
Pros:
+Different Classes
+Co-op Play
+Over 200 Items
+Up to Level 20 Characters
Cons:
-Poor Graphics and Sound
-Magic isn’t Great
-Only 19 Missions
-Missions are Repetitive
6/10