0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Arc the Lad III

    

Arc the Lad III is a tactical role playing game developed by G-Craft and published by Sony Computer Entertainment and released exclusively on the Playstation on the 28^th of October 1999. The game is the third entry in the main Arc the Lad series and released three years after its predecessor. The game would also be a part of the Arc the Light collection release a few years later and would as well get a worldwide PSN release between 2008 and 2012.

The gameplay is very similar to its predecessor with battles taking the form of turn based battles, with the player able to move freely around the battlefield and being able to position your characters how you want them, weapons are upgradable by forging them with special materials, the players characters also have access to various techniques and magic spells.

While the game is still a tactical RPG there is a definite move away to a more Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest style of battle system a couple of changes from Arc The Lad II as well, party size has been reduced from a maximum of 5 characters to 4 characters, summoning can only be performed by one character Theo who uses monster cards as summons.

The games is set several years after the conclusion of Elk and Arc’s story in Arc the Lad II, with the player controlling Alec, a teen who’s entire village was destroyed by the events of the second game, an event known as The Great Disaster.

Saved by a mysterious hunter and taken to a village which would become a new home for the survivors of The Great Disaster, safe here Alec would grow up always dreaming of meeting again, the hunter that saved him and becoming a hunter himself.

The village of Sasha where Alec lives is attacked one day by bandits, he and his best friend Lutz must race to the nearest village Itio for help, there they hire a hunter to save the village, on the way back to Sasha they face off against monsters and realise the rush they get while fighting, after the village is saved the pair decided to set out to become hunters.

Alec and his best friend Lutz set out on their adventure taking small scale hunter jobs around the local area, the pair then cross paths with a mysterious organization called The Acadamy, and the pairs adventure really beings.

Only a handful of critic reviews have been found for Arc the Lad III and overall they are pretty average with a review high of 78 from RPGFan, with their review summery saying this is by far the weakest Arc the Lad game yet which is saying a lot seeing as the first game was very limited.

RPGFan concluded with, combined with the lack of an outstanding plot, its relatively slow-paced gameplay discourages a recommendation to anyone other than diehard fans of the series, especially in light of the fact that there are many better strategy RPGs out there.

RPGDreamers were the next highest review score for this game with a 72 while they did enjoy the game it offered nothing special to make it stand out from the many RPGs that are currently on the market. They did recommend playing it if you have it but for those that don’t not to worry about missing out on the game.

From here the remaining two critic review scores take a nosedive with both Legendra and Brash Games both scoring the game at a 50/100, Brash were critical of the dull story and gameplay add in the 50 hours to complete the game and it is quite hard to do.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who don’t currently stock this title as an individual game they do stock the Arc the Lad collection but I will be covering that later on, so moving on to Retrogames.co.uk who don’t stock this title neither do eStarland.com

So moving quickly on to Amazon.com where we find a plentiful supply of copies available, with the title listed twice with a combined total of 59 new and used copies available at the time of writing this. With prices for a complete good or very good condition copy both currently sitting at $8.89.

If you are looking for a like new used copy of the game I am afraid you are currently out of luck with no like new copies currently available, a good number of new copies are available for this title, however like the previous entry in the series prices do take a significant jump in price with the cheapest sitting at $53.85, this copy if fulfilled by Amazon so comes with free shipping.

Any other new copy that is currently on the market you are looking at a minimum of around $75 however prices continue to rise from here with prices for a new copy of Arc the Lad III reaching a current high of $111.30.

Written by

P J Gibbon