Arch Menara

Arch Menara is a short RPG that begins without any introduction whatsoever, I mean none. You get a cut scene with three people walking into a cave, one of whom collapses and has to be carried in, but as to whom they are, why they are there and what they hope to achieve, you've got nothing. All you do see is that the strongest member of the party seems to be a bit of a bully.

Still, lack of story notwithstanding, onwards through the cave we venture towards some unknown fate for unknown reasons. Oh wait, game page description, right so it seems that we've got Mia and her two companions, Varen and Tairo. Mia is looking for her sister, Tairo is seeking a way to save his village, and Varen is uh, along for the ride and the abuse it seems.


Why not, aren't you the comic relief?

So onward the party heads and runs into some rats, well they're visible so that's always a plus, and they drop cheese, okay so maybe there is a sense of hidden humour at play here I haven't discovered as yet.

Battles are classic turn based without any customisation except that there appears to be an auto mp regeneration each round though oddly no skills to start except for lock pick for Varen, which allows him to open those chests that are scattered around. That explains why the others wanted him on this journey, not so much why he decided to come along. However after closer inspection it seems this is a passive skill because I never actively use it and indeed I can still open chests when Varen has just died in a fight and I haven't got around to reviving him yet. Oh wait there is an auto revive as well post battle, and that auto MP isn't just battle based, it is movement based. So that actually helps with resource management as healing potions are few and far between but if you can dodge the visible enemies for a while you can build up enough MP to heal the party before the next battle. It's an artificial way of making the battles more difficult, but it does make the avoidance track of dungeon crawl a more viable option, since I've decided that's what this is, as there is no story and all of the action takes place in one cave.

The graphics are all RTP, but even though this is the first game from this developer they are used with a bit of care, the cave where all the game play takes place has multiple rock outcroppings, flowing streams and waterfalls, small patches of plant life and irregularly shaped caverns which makes for a change from some first time attempts I've seen recently.

So after wandering around for a while, finding a shovel left conveniently by a dead man and being given a morality lesson more easily summed up as de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est by the bully Tairo the party finds a glowing jewel on a pedestal and I hope for a little exposition as to the point of this adventure but what I get makes less sense that the preceding 20 minutes of rat and bat killing.


What freaking pendant?

So the jewel reacts to a pendant that our female protagonist is not actually wearing or carrying, then they get jumped by a random guy who insults Varen, but since that's de rigueur I'm hardly surprised, a fight ensues which just like all the others is pretty much a cakewalk, and then a dialogue box pops up asking if we'd like to exit the dungeon.

Final cut scene around a campfire and we do finally find out why Varen was there, he's waiting until his companion go to sleep and then he steals the jewel and walks off, which is the first really funny thing I've seen since the cheese. ...and that's all folks.

I'm not sure what the developer was aiming for with this short game, but they didn't achieve it, especially as the game page lists as the first of its features ' Strong emphasis on story and character development.' There isn't any, really there just isn't. Even the game page hints don't help, as there is never a mention of a missing sister or a village in peril. The only thing I can conjecture is that there was once a intro section outlining just why retrieving this jewel from this cave was so important to the fate of Tairo's village and Mia's sister but it somehow got missed. If so, I wouldn't mind seeing it, if only to try and work out why I just spent 30 minutes of my life on this game.