First RPG of 2024 finished! And with it, a whole collection! Yeah, I really don't care about the flak Working Designs gets, as long as the games are fun to play, I think it's cool. And you know what? The third game is more fun than the second, getting rid of some micromanaging for a more fine-tuned gameplay experience that works. Now you can use spells on spaces instead of centering on a target. Now you got plenty of sidequests. And of course, fanservice in the form of characters who return, with Tosh, Shu, and Elc being the ones who become playable. But with it are new things, the Cardish mechanic, weapon and item synthesis, some actually okay minigames.
Arc the Lad III is, in essence, a game full of sidequests in a world that is healing from the apocalypse that happened in the previous game. Witness the silly antics of Lutz, the swordsmanship of Velhart, the chivalry of Alec, the interest in monsters of Theo, the gunslinging of Cheryl, and the wit and charm of Anrietta. See how even the most mundane of jobs is elongated because there's a ton of dialogue. There's 102 guild jobs in the game and all are completable, but not entirely too quickly in most cases due to the dialogue. There's many recurring characters, including Alba's rival hunter gang, the silly Rainbow Bridge gang, Raia who aspires to be a singer, the merchant family who's gifts are often detrimental and they are sorry for it, the love-seeking ninja Spicy, the orphanage and Kulara, literally anything involving Anrietta, etc. Returning characters have their own jobs, Poco travels being a musician, Shante has a new pub, Sania's fortune telling again, Iga does his archmonk stuff, Gruga is running the arena, Lieza's got a monster ranch, and Gogen's a recluse.
Battles are not that bad overall and are quite easy, though the discrepancies in stats is weird. Our villains are just know-it-all scientists and elite guards who are quirky, but they try to at least mean well, and the big bad of the game (not counting the revived Dark One) at least turns around. Well at least I can hang this franchise up temporarily, until the Twilight of the Spirits game comes around. Quick-paced tactical roleplaying is fun, and the jobs have tons of variety making this game have tons of variety.
