| Arcturus: Curse & Loss Of Divinity [K] | Sonnori Co., Ltd., Gravity Corporation / WizardSoft, Falcom | 2000 | |
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Arcturus is a traditional RPG featuring what has been slowly fading into obscurity since the advent of the "next generation" consoles, and was nearly non-existent on the PC: 2D sprites. Arcturus uses these vividly colored anime-inspired sprites on crisp and well-detailed 3d backgrounds. An evil is growing in the world, and two adventurers leave home in search of a better life. It has splendid 3D special effects of Alpha-Blending, Camera Walk, Bump-Mapping and Particle. Gorgeous graphics with or without 3D accelerator cards. Diary mode in which you can find your own information at any time. More than 70 background music titles from classical to heavy metal. Two different story modes of political and religious. In the beginning one gets to chose between two runaway kids who end up as a magician's apprentices, and an aristocrat pretty boy who's sent out to search for powerful magical artifacts by his uncle, the nominal governor of a republic actually ruled by a council of cloaked old men, who hopes to use them to change the political situation in his favor. Eventually both stories are connected to finish the game with one single party. Not only the graphics engine resembles Grandia with its 2D sprite characters in a polygonal world, the action time bar in combat works similarly too, although the whole system is more akin to the more dynamic variant in Grandia II (which was released only a couple of months before Arcturus. Untypical for the genre, however, combat plays a minor role overall. The focus rather lies on the dialogues and story, and Arcturus contains lots and lots of text. In Korea, Arcturus was originally published in a luxurious limited edition package, including a scarf, six CDs (with soundtrack), an art book with concept sketches, a huge colored manual, a poster and cardboard flaps with papercraft buildings from the game. The art book soon became subject of a plagiarism scandal, as 17 monster designs contributed by an external illustrator were stolen from Yasushi Nirasawa's works. A team called Mirror Moon had been working on an English translation for Arcturus, based on the Japanese script of the Falcom version, but eventually it was put on indefinite hiatus. | ||
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