New Arc Line Preview

When designing a fantasy world it’s important to look at what you want your world to be based on. Will it be rooted in magic, dragons, and monsters? Or will it focus more on technology and how it affects the growing world? Alternatively, you could always go with a conflict between the two. That’s where Fulqrum Publishing’s latest title, New Arc Line, wants to focus. I had a chance to play the Early Access of the game to see if this is one to watch or if you should let nature reclaim it.

New Arc Line has you take the role of an immigrant travelling to New Arc, a land that is praised as a beacon of progress. However, that is just the sell, as the real New Arc is filled with corruption, danger and not a small amount of prejudice. When I came to the land I was carrying a secret, a mysterious piece of technology that I would really rather not be found. However, my case was waylaid, leading me to hunt for it and my contact at the port. 

Well, at least I had to after I created my character. There weren’t many options in the early build, with only two races to choose between. You also have a selection of classes and backgrounds to pick from. You have a set of different stats and skills, but they tend to get a bit overwhelming, and the game isn’t amazing at explaining what they all do. However, I soon figured it out after a bit of digging. You can pretty much build as you want, but on an initial playthrough, you might find that you’re unsure of which skills will do what. 

With my witty diesel tech specialist built, I was ready to go on the hunt for my suitcase. Well, after I dealt with something of a tutorial/prequel sequence. This is where New Arc Line introduces its skill check mechanics. Now, these don’t quite work as you would expect: When your character is doing a test, you’ll see a small wheel appear with a number that relates to what you need to score to pass the test. The odd part is that the numbers appear random, so it's next to impossible to tell what will happen. 

Anyway, the brief introduction gives you a good idea of some of the conflicts affecting the world, and the kinds of choices you will make. The odd part is that everyone is blaming you for what happened, even though you have no memory of what took place. As it turns out, this is all part of a court case against you for doing something truly horrible when you first came to New Arc. With that, we begin our plot proper. 

Now, the quest lines in New Arc Line can be pretty engaging, for instance helping to run a play by choosing to either stick to the director’s original vision or using the new dialogue that praises New Arc’s president. However, the issue is that the party characters are just a bit dull at first with most appearing pretty bland. I will note, this is an RPG, so they likely get better as the game goes on. The writing for some of the conversations is good enough that you won’t mind too much, thankfully. 

However, you’ll need your companions to help with the combat, which can get pretty overwhelming rather quickly. The combat is simple at first, you have a set amount of action points to move and attack. It all works well enough, but I never really got the reactions to work properly. In theory, you should be able to either block or counter when an enemy moves past you or attacks. However, I never managed to find out how to get it to work properly. Also, for some reason, the participants in the fight all get a white bar above their health that can tank a small amount of damage. This wouldn’t be an issue, but it regenerates each turn, meaning fights take slightly longer than they really need to.

Exploring the world is entertaining enough, and it’s helped by the character and world look unique. However, the characters can tend to look a bit Ken doll-ish and they don’t emote as much as they could do. Likewise, the music is nothing to write home about and I don’t think I’ll be buying the soundtrack. 

Overall, New Arc Line isn’t a terrible game, and there’s something special here, but it needs a bit of work. If the characters really do get better over time then the game needs to make that clearer and add more interactions at the start, just to give us a glimpse of what to look forward to.