Arc of Alchemist

Verdict:
Not Recommended

Content Warnings:
Climate Change, mass extinction

Do you play as a woman?
Yes, the main character is Major Quinn, a woman.

Do the women drive the story?
Kind of? Quinn has a mission to do and that main story.

How many men are there?
Quite a few, including several major speaking roles.

What are the Romance options?
None

Is the game any good?

A story about a dying world ravaged by climate disaster, with the last humans reduced to tight pockets and warring for the few remaining resources feels like it would make for a very poignant story in our current real world circumstances. There is a lot of potential to make a very real and impactful statement, to say something important.

Arc of Alchemist does not seem particularly interested in doing that. It doesnt seem interested in doing much of anything, in fact. While the tagline is ‘build and conquer’, the game we are presented with is a barely passable rpg with tacked on base building elements.

The story opens very strong, setting the stage of a dying world with the people in it becoming more and more desperate. You take the role of Major Quinn, a leader of the expeditionary forces of her nation who has been sent to find and recover the “great power” that is believed to be the last chance to save the world.

Major Quinn is accompanied by her team, a motley collection of men and women who have all known her for years and trust her with their lives. Together, you have to fight through automatons, wild beasts, and maybe even members of rival expeditions in order to reach your goal.

The problems start early, the game takes the time to set up Quinn’s backstory, and she has a lot of potential as a character, but none of the other characters get the same treatment. There’s no weight to them, no sense of importance or attachment. In a lot of ways, Arc of Alchemist feels like it’s act 2 in a bigger, better game, and the lack of characterisation only reinforces this.

The issues with the narrative arent limited to the characters though. The main narrative is given very little room to breathe, and is delivered suddenly and in tiny snippets that feel disconnected from each other. While some of the story beats are very interesting, it never congeals together to become something more, making the entire experience disappointing.

Gameplay is similarly poor, with movement and all actions feeling clunky, imprecise, and awkward. Combat feels hard to follow, impossible to predict, and yet trivially easy. The lack of information displayed really hurts the game, since attacks will do seemingly random damage, or no damage at all, and there doesnt seem to be a clear reason why. Enemies barely react to your presence either, making most fights a tedious task of going from one enemy to another and smacking them a few times.

I focus on combat because that is almost all of what you do in the game. There are a few environmental puzzles, mostly to get treasure or access side areas, but most of the time you walk forwards and fight enemies in your path.

I haven’t even touched on the base building, but I find myself struggling to think of anything uaeful to say about it. All it does it dictate what equipment you have available, and it lacks any kind of depth or comolexity. It’s more of a waste of time than anything.

There are interesting systems to be found in the game. You have a lunagear that gives you ways to interact with the environment, and lets you combine elements for unique effects, or the system of gathering items and selling them to make your money. It’s clear the team you made the game had cool and fun ideas, they just failed to execute on them in such a way that leads to a game that is worth playing.

Arc of Alchemist is not worth playing, it isnt worth your time or money. I makes me sad to say this, but I have to be honest. The only way I’d recommend this game was if you were on the moon and it was the only game left.