Luminous Arc or Hoshigami Remix?

They're both pretty mediocre. Full of flaws. I would go with Luminous Arc I guess. I playing/played them both, but only because there arent a lot of alternatives in the genre on the DS just yet.

Off the top of my head:

Lumious Arc:

- Pretty standard, by the books story. The actual dialogue is pretty terrible as well.
- voice acting (bleh)
- touch screen is unusable sometimes
- 2nd screen isnt used well. Showing persistent stats of the character you've selected really isnt that useful.
- you cant rotate the screen
- battle lacks depth (for instance, no options to push people off ledges)
+Its fairly pretty, I guess

Hoshigami:

- Massive level grinding required. I mean spending 75-80% of the game grinding. Why? Because every battle has you outnumbered by 2-3x with disadvantageous starting positions (geographically).

- Permanent death to characters who are not raised by the end of the battle can be a massive bitch.

- Magic system is overly complicated

- Story is on par with Lumious Arc, that is to say, not anything new at all. The presentation is uneven. You have to sit through really long dialogue sequences.

- Touch Screen is technically usable, but they set it up to where you wouldnt want to.

+You can rotate the map.
 
How about getting neither Lumionous Arc and Hoshigami Remix? Like the post above me, both of them are mediocre rpg. There are better games out there. I rather invest that money on a psp slim. At least I get to play disgaea, final fantasy lions of war or Jeanne d Arc.


When I first played Hoshigami for Nintendo ds it seem like pretty good game in comparison to ridiculous difficulty of Playstation version. Faster leveling up, trading items, better controls, new cut scenes and three selectable difficulties. But in long run it become so boring , and mundane to level up you characters in constant bases. Even with experience bonus from the ds version doesn't help that much. Most of stages you will be a severe disadvantage such as elevations or outnumber in troops by two to one.

Tutorials are extremely weak for newcomers trying to learn the Ready Action Point system (RAP). Rather then progressively teach you how to play the game the further you go. They immediately force understand the game play right from start of game by reading big glob of texts.


Luminous Arc isn't that great either, but it slightly better then Hoshigami. It's cookie cutter rpg. You get to fight your monsters, level up, then improve your gear in next town you visit. The biggest distinction between this or any other srpg is introduction of flash drive sort like limit breaks, and relationship meter. Both of these features are nice addition to srpg.

Now back to bad parts of game. Similar to Hoshigami, Lumionous Arc is guilty of same crime, very weak tutorial. Forcing you to understand the game play right from the start of game by reading big globs of texts. The dialog is complete joke, even with good localization won't help this game. The movement interface is very slow, dub voice acting is really bad, and some frame rate problem. I dislike how they manage your equipment. In this game, you constantly have to upgrade you gear. You buy, equip, then sell it. You have to this for every freakin town you visit, rather then putting a system that automatically upgrades your gear and sell it, found in some rpgs. They force you to do it manually.
 
Thx Dr. Mariokart and fatbeer for your help and lovely details. I might consider a psp slim model. But I should look at my backlog first. PSP started get all these good games. I'm feeling envious. :cry:

Oh yeah, final fantasy lions of war retailing for $39.99 is kinda of whacked. With this and a psp system purchase, it is so close to wii price range.
 
Wow, the people in this thread must not have played the same Luminous Arc I'm playing. I can't comment on Hoshigami, since I don't own it, but Luminous has fun characters, lots of humor, it's well-written, the voice actors are over-the-top in some instances and appropriate in others...in this regard, they pretty much totally fit the characters so far. The game is fun, though I will say that it does have some technical flaws in that you can't rotate the battlefield. People always complain about the stylus control with this game, so I suppose that might be a con...if I had ever planned to use it in the first place, which I didn't. The graphics are nice, the character portraits in the story advancement sections are gorgeous, the sound is fantastic, and there's lots of customization to do (especially with the New Game+). Basically, there are a lot of little things they could have done to make the game play better, but for me at least, they're hardly deal-breakers. I like this game way more than Final Fantasy Tactics, which seems to always be the metric people use to measure other tactical RPGs. This game is far from dry, it has lots of opportunities for strategic gameplay or level-grinding, whichever you like, has little relationship-building segments after each battle, online vs. play against either Friends on your list or random opponents, and a New Game+ mode.

I guess it's similar to the reasons why people used to complain about Working Designs and their translations...some people just don't like a humorous slant in games. The technical flaws? I can see why people would gripe about that stuff...but griping about the writing or the story or the voices in this game just doesn't really seem right to me.
 
I'm playing Luminous Arc now, and I find it a fun diversion. Recommended. Also, Luminous Arc 2 is in the works (Japan release only for now)...so it must have some redeeming quality to it, right?
 
I'm in a similar boat, except I'm debating between Luminous Arc or Heroes of Mana. I've heard both are pretty mediocre.

Aside from Advance Wars, it seems the DS is pretty weak in the SRPG genre. I keep having to remind myself, "Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is coming..."
 
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