Aarklash: Legacy is an underappreciated little thing. It's not perfect, held back by balancing issues and a bit of tedium towards the end, but nonetheless it provides some of the best combat in any RPG, some of my favourite ever characters and a fascinating world.
The best way to describe Aarklash's combat would be "DotA, but you control 4 heroes at once", but that's not going to be very helpful if you don't know DotA, so I'll try harder. You control 4 heroes, each with 4 abilities, in the manner of a real-time-strategy, I.E. you select them and right-click for orders. But calling it an RTS wouldn't be fair, as the core of the combat is the ability to pause at any time to survey the battlefield and give orders.
It's from that simple mechanic that Aarklash's brilliance stems, with a majority of skills in the game reliant on positioning, precise aiming, timing and synergy with other skills. Enemies will have you dodging incoming projectiles and avoiding danger zones, and you'll likely have to move allies out of the way of your own skills unless you want to clout your team-mates with a sniper bullet to the face. Except maybe you actually do, because there's enough nuance in the skills that that will SOMETIMES have a use.
Add to this that each character's 4 skills can be upgraded to change their functionality in 2 ways. Frequently it's a choice between a continuation of the original function and a more dramatic change, though some skills deviate wildly between both options, and each of the two paths has a choice between two final skills for even more variance. And you can respec at any time too, so you're free to experiment with the different combinations for everyone as you wish.
And you won't just be experimenting for giggles, oh no. Because Aarklash gets HARD. There will come a point where failing to manage control effects and not having a super-efficient team setup will be the death of you in less than a minute. Honestly, it feels a little TOO intense, with every encounter requiring a complete rethink of your party, skill setup and strategy. That said, a victory against those odds is a magical thing. A perfect execution of a well thought-out strategy gives you a sense of satisfaction unlike any other, and Aarklash is basically designed to give you the purest shot of that feeling after every encounter past the mid-point.
Aarklash's environments range from forgettable to gorgeous, but it's real visual distinction comes in it's character designs. As far as starting parties go, Aarklash has one of the strongest 4-character line-ups you could ever begin with. An artificial Raptor-Taur(or Raptaur if you will) lady with a big fuck-off sword, a Dog-lady with a throwing glaive and some painful-looking piercings, a goblin man in a top hat with a mouse living in it and a... human mage, but she's a COOL human mage, I swear. Her shoulder armour floats. She's bossy and I like her.
The story in Aarklash is an odd little 10 hour rollercoaster. It starts strong, with a really likable cast and an engaging setup, but while there are some fun twists and turns when it actually kicks into gear, there's a lot of meandering between these moments. It's the kind of meandering that I can deal with though, thanks to the characters all being fun to be around and it still being, you know, a videogame, with other things going on besides the story. Like fighting.
One thing Aarklash's story does consistently well though is worldbuilding. It never really sits you down for a detailed exposition dump about what a place is, what it's connection is to somewhere else etc. It drops in titbits about the world naturally into dialogue, letting you build a bigger picture to compliment the main story. Knowing it was a pre-established world of a tabletop game before I went it, it was pretty obvious. This is a world with more going on in it than what the game shows, and it does an excellent job of getting you invested in it with an actually quite small amount of information. It's a world I'd love to see more of, though despite ending on a cliffhanger I'm not going to get expectant about a follow-up any time soon.
So yeah, Aarklash: Legacy is a real gem for those with the genius and tenacity to survive past the middle. It's core concept and world are both things I'd love to see more of, even if the latter is unlikely. Well worth a look for strategy RPG fans.
Next week, I'll have been playing No Man's Sky, though I doubt I'll be writing about it so soon. I feel I must write something about The Fall sometime, and I've been enjoying the hell out of Kingdom: New Lands, so expect them sometime too.
The best way to describe Aarklash's combat would be "DotA, but you control 4 heroes at once", but that's not going to be very helpful if you don't know DotA, so I'll try harder. You control 4 heroes, each with 4 abilities, in the manner of a real-time-strategy, I.E. you select them and right-click for orders. But calling it an RTS wouldn't be fair, as the core of the combat is the ability to pause at any time to survey the battlefield and give orders.
It's from that simple mechanic that Aarklash's brilliance stems, with a majority of skills in the game reliant on positioning, precise aiming, timing and synergy with other skills. Enemies will have you dodging incoming projectiles and avoiding danger zones, and you'll likely have to move allies out of the way of your own skills unless you want to clout your team-mates with a sniper bullet to the face. Except maybe you actually do, because there's enough nuance in the skills that that will SOMETIMES have a use.
Add to this that each character's 4 skills can be upgraded to change their functionality in 2 ways. Frequently it's a choice between a continuation of the original function and a more dramatic change, though some skills deviate wildly between both options, and each of the two paths has a choice between two final skills for even more variance. And you can respec at any time too, so you're free to experiment with the different combinations for everyone as you wish.
And you won't just be experimenting for giggles, oh no. Because Aarklash gets HARD. There will come a point where failing to manage control effects and not having a super-efficient team setup will be the death of you in less than a minute. Honestly, it feels a little TOO intense, with every encounter requiring a complete rethink of your party, skill setup and strategy. That said, a victory against those odds is a magical thing. A perfect execution of a well thought-out strategy gives you a sense of satisfaction unlike any other, and Aarklash is basically designed to give you the purest shot of that feeling after every encounter past the mid-point.
Aarklash's environments range from forgettable to gorgeous, but it's real visual distinction comes in it's character designs. As far as starting parties go, Aarklash has one of the strongest 4-character line-ups you could ever begin with. An artificial Raptor-Taur(or Raptaur if you will) lady with a big fuck-off sword, a Dog-lady with a throwing glaive and some painful-looking piercings, a goblin man in a top hat with a mouse living in it and a... human mage, but she's a COOL human mage, I swear. Her shoulder armour floats. She's bossy and I like her.
The story in Aarklash is an odd little 10 hour rollercoaster. It starts strong, with a really likable cast and an engaging setup, but while there are some fun twists and turns when it actually kicks into gear, there's a lot of meandering between these moments. It's the kind of meandering that I can deal with though, thanks to the characters all being fun to be around and it still being, you know, a videogame, with other things going on besides the story. Like fighting.
One thing Aarklash's story does consistently well though is worldbuilding. It never really sits you down for a detailed exposition dump about what a place is, what it's connection is to somewhere else etc. It drops in titbits about the world naturally into dialogue, letting you build a bigger picture to compliment the main story. Knowing it was a pre-established world of a tabletop game before I went it, it was pretty obvious. This is a world with more going on in it than what the game shows, and it does an excellent job of getting you invested in it with an actually quite small amount of information. It's a world I'd love to see more of, though despite ending on a cliffhanger I'm not going to get expectant about a follow-up any time soon.
So yeah, Aarklash: Legacy is a real gem for those with the genius and tenacity to survive past the middle. It's core concept and world are both things I'd love to see more of, even if the latter is unlikely. Well worth a look for strategy RPG fans.
Next week, I'll have been playing No Man's Sky, though I doubt I'll be writing about it so soon. I feel I must write something about The Fall sometime, and I've been enjoying the hell out of Kingdom: New Lands, so expect them sometime too.
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