Whatever did happen to Game Arts? As far as I can see looking around online they do still exist with 20+ employees but haven't released a new title in over 10 years. Shame as Grandia is one of my favorite RPGs ever but considering they also made Lunar Dragon Song maybe I shouldn't lament them too much.
Alisia Dragoon leans a little more towards Lunar Dragon song than Grandia in terms of my enjoyment sadly though it does do some interesting things. It's a 2D side scroller where you play the titular Alisia, a lightning wielding sorceress who commands a selection of familiars on a quest to avenge her father. The game plays over 8 stages with bosses and various enemies thrown at you. This is almost literal as they will drop down out of sight, come in quick swarms or teleport in and the issue is it just feels cheap. I took a lot of hits through these quick attacks and if not those by the projectiles they fire I simply couldn't see due to Alisia's lightning.
Speaking of lightning, it's pretty much your only ability outside of swapping between a few familiars that auto attack as their bar fills. The lightning itself has a charge bar for how much you can fire before it replenishes and when you leave it to fully charge it will do a much stronger attack. There is a degree of resource management with it I found interesting as a mechanic but unless you stay still to charge it between each encounter it will rarely be used that way as enemies come at you frequently if you keep moving that you will need to attack.
When not charged I found Alisia's attacks feel pretty weak. You can find level up upgrades for both her and the familiars throughout the levels which are permanent to make them stronger and you will need it, mostly for bosses. Their health pools are frankly, massive. Some of them took far too long to kill and the issue with that is they are also in most cases just kind of boring to fight. A couple of basic looking attacks on repeat that go on for too long just isn't enticing. Interestingly though beating a boss isn't always the immediate end to the level with small sections afterwards for some of them I couldn't understand the point of. Kinda unique but also pointless.
The thing is, I like a lot of the ideas here, they just don't gel well. The familiars feels more in the way visually than actually useful, level design isn't that fun to play through, lightning blocks sight of incoming attacks etc. but on the flip side the platformer RPG mix is good, a female protagonist with lightning hands and resource management for power are all great it just needed more time in the oven. I really do like the artwork though for both the Japanese release on backlog and the Western cover art. The latter is very Boris Vallejo.
+ Interesting Lightning management mechanic.
+ Good presentation and cover art.
+ Nice side scrolling and RPG genre mix attempt.
- Bosses have too much health.
- Lightning hides incoming attacks.
- Level and enemy encounter design aren't very good.
Alisia Dragoon leans a little more towards Lunar Dragon song than Grandia in terms of my enjoyment sadly though it does do some interesting things. It's a 2D side scroller where you play the titular Alisia, a lightning wielding sorceress who commands a selection of familiars on a quest to avenge her father. The game plays over 8 stages with bosses and various enemies thrown at you. This is almost literal as they will drop down out of sight, come in quick swarms or teleport in and the issue is it just feels cheap. I took a lot of hits through these quick attacks and if not those by the projectiles they fire I simply couldn't see due to Alisia's lightning.
Speaking of lightning, it's pretty much your only ability outside of swapping between a few familiars that auto attack as their bar fills. The lightning itself has a charge bar for how much you can fire before it replenishes and when you leave it to fully charge it will do a much stronger attack. There is a degree of resource management with it I found interesting as a mechanic but unless you stay still to charge it between each encounter it will rarely be used that way as enemies come at you frequently if you keep moving that you will need to attack.
When not charged I found Alisia's attacks feel pretty weak. You can find level up upgrades for both her and the familiars throughout the levels which are permanent to make them stronger and you will need it, mostly for bosses. Their health pools are frankly, massive. Some of them took far too long to kill and the issue with that is they are also in most cases just kind of boring to fight. A couple of basic looking attacks on repeat that go on for too long just isn't enticing. Interestingly though beating a boss isn't always the immediate end to the level with small sections afterwards for some of them I couldn't understand the point of. Kinda unique but also pointless.
The thing is, I like a lot of the ideas here, they just don't gel well. The familiars feels more in the way visually than actually useful, level design isn't that fun to play through, lightning blocks sight of incoming attacks etc. but on the flip side the platformer RPG mix is good, a female protagonist with lightning hands and resource management for power are all great it just needed more time in the oven. I really do like the artwork though for both the Japanese release on backlog and the Western cover art. The latter is very Boris Vallejo.
+ Interesting Lightning management mechanic.
+ Good presentation and cover art.
+ Nice side scrolling and RPG genre mix attempt.
- Bosses have too much health.
- Lightning hides incoming attacks.
- Level and enemy encounter design aren't very good.
3 Comments
@HylianBran - It's just sad to see both Treasure and Game Arts trundling along like a shambling corpse of what they both once were. Like the ruins of a fallen empire.
@FallenGrace to be honest I don't have anything wrong with them not doing anything now, but it weirds me out that they somehow still exist. What are they even doing now? For all we know, the information about their current employees is inaccurate though. I started noticing this when it was announced that Yuji Naka's studio had one employee (Yuji Naka) after Balan Wonderworld. I guess I never considered that they don't need lots of people to exist. I bring this up to say that I find it difficult to believe that like twenty people are clocking in Monday through Saturday every single week to not do anything. Maybe it's a conspiracy...
HylianBran
10 months ago