New Arc Line, a turn-based role-playing game set in a world of conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution, launched in Early Access on November 26, 2024. While the initial release provided a preview of the game's potential, it was evident the full experience is still under development.
With only two classes, roughly 10 hours of gameplay, and some systems not fully implemented yet, the current build was quite limited. Additionally, the combat and story, at the time of this review, were underwhelming. Despite those shortcomings, the exploration aspect of the game was quite enjoyable. Overall, New Arc Line showed promise but will require significant improvement to reach its full potential.
There are not many choices available during character creation.
Before you begin your journey, you must create your character.
The Early Access build's limitations revealed itself quickly. You can only choose between two clases, Diesel Engineer and Voodoo Shaman, and two races, Humans and Elves. Either combination will affect your stats and skills. You receive points to put into six different stats and 18 skills. You're free to select all 18 skills for your character, as there are no trees or other conditions that must be met to unlock a particular skill. Lastly, you can select a trait to further modify your stats or skills. However, none offer unique abilities.
The citizens of Tatterhold are celebrating, but not your arrival.
You find yourself thrown into a dying world filled with chaos. Houses lie in ruins, the ground is crumbling, and total destruction is near. Awakening in nothing but your underwear, your first task is to find your equipment. This initial area of the game acts as a tutorial, guiding you through the basics.
You soon find the exit, and you're transported to a courtroom. At this stage, the reasons for your presence are unclear, but it quickly becomes apparent that you stand accused of causing the chaos you just witnessed. After a futile attempt to defend yourself, your real journey begins a few months before your court date.
You arrive in Tatterhold, a bustling city that serves as the gateway to the New World, where a conflict between Arcane Magic and the Steampunk Revolution is in full swing. You possess a mysterious artifact that must be delivered to a man named Mr. Simon. From this moment on, you can explore the vibrant streets of the city.
The importance of finding this handwheel is minimal.
One thing you quickly notice is the abundance of skill checks throughout the game. They occur in dialogues, during exploration, and while interacting with items. Unfortunately, these skill checks are open: for example, as you approach a point of interest, you'll often need to make an Observation roll. A successful roll will highlight the point of interest. If you fail, it won't be highlighted with a blinking effect, but you can still find it by exploring the area.
In dialogues, opportunities for skill checks are also common; they are not only open but also display the target number you must reach. In most scenarios, failing skill checks does not have negative consequences.
For instance, even if you have only a 10% chance of avoiding a fine, you can roll for it and pay the fine afterward if you miss. The same applies to stealing: You can always attempt to loot the chest next to the merchant, who won't care if you fail and will continue minding his business.
There are many things to discover in Tatterhold.
Tatterhold is home to merchants, thugs, and citizens, all of whom need your help. The game included two main areas: the arrival port and the slums, both of which offer multiple side quests to supplement your main objectives.
Some side quests are merely brief stories that require little time and reward you with a small amount of money instead of experience points.
In contrast, other side quests are more substantial, providing valuable loot and experience. However, these quests are often not creatively designed and can be characterized as straightforward fetch or kill quests.
A positive aspect of some quests is they often provide multiple solutions to a challenge, some of which can influence the game state through the Magic vs. Technology level. Each region has its own balance, and shifts in that balance impact combat strength for that particular style, as well as other elements. However, in the current version of the game, those effects were barely noticeable.
You are probably secretly carrying a Bag of Holding.
Another issue with the often lackluster quests is the rewards.
You start the game already overwhelmed with equipment and, in particular, money, which you can use to easily pay off any thug or bribe any merchant.
Most items, except for weapons, only provide stat boosts or skill modifiers, and you have plenty of options at the beginning. As a result, there's little excitement in finding loot or receiving rewards because you’re fully equipped from the jump.
While you might improve a certain skill by a few points, that's about the extent of it. Additionally, there is an abundance of random junk to loot, and, after a certain point, I stopped bothering to sell it because I didn’t need the extra money, nor did merchants offer anything of interest to my party.
One of your companions is Letta, the sharpshooter.
You can recruit up to three companions in the Early Access build. However, each companion joins at level 1, regardless of your own level. While companions offer typical banter, they lack extensive backstories or personal quests. They react to some of your decisions, either positively or negatively, but these reactions don’t impact gameplay.
This mob stands no chance against my party.
The combat system is turn-based, and each character has a pool of primary points for abilities, such as attack abilities and spells, as well as secondary points for complementary actions, like throwing grenades. You'll also need to manage your pool of movement points.
The order in which you expend these resources is entirely up to you. Your primary abilities have cooldowns, with some being so lengthy they are only usable once per encounter. In a pinch, your companions can lend you their weapons in combat.
One notable feature is that each character on both sides rolls for initiative individually in the classic manner.
While the developers wisely chose not to fix a nonexistent issue here, they have implemented a somewhat unusual armor system: the impenetrable armor of both sides refreshes every round. Before you can deal damage to a target's health, you must chip away his armor. So far, these armor values are not massive, but depending on the enemies, the first or second strike each round may not inflict any damage. This also means you need to estimate the damage of your final strike. If you can't defeat the enemy, you may as well take any other action instead.
Combat can be approached through two distinct methods: Magic and Technology.
Currently, players have limited insight into the variety of each approach. For example, for Magic classes, you can only choose the Voodoo Shaman, which is a hybrid of crowd control and damage dealing, and the only other magic user available, a Celestial Mage, isn't recruited until late in this version of the game.
You can acquire new spells by combining magical cards.
A major difference between the two approaches lies in access to skills and spells. For characters focused on Technology, your weapons determine your attack abilities, making it beneficial to equip multiple weapons for each character.
In contrast, players can combine magic cards found throughout the world to create new spells. The game highlights which cards can be combined and even provides a preview of the resulting spell.
This also means that you cannot acquire talents or spells as you level up, which weakens the character progression system. Each time you level up, you allocate a limited number of skill points, and, every few levels, you choose a perk. However, these perks only enhance existing skills or stats and, as mentioned earlier in this review, don't offer any unique features.
The effects are uncertain, but they are unlikely to be positive.
Using magic also raises the Magic Corruption level. However, the effects of this increase remain largely unclear. Upon reaching Corruption Tier 2, I had to choose one of three effects. While ambiguous, they seem to be debuffs for a particular area.
Overall, combat was exceedingly easy. With the exception of one fight, I used the same strategy in every encounter without ever feeling at risk.
Sometimes it's better not to look too closely.
The overall presentation of this game felt quite AA.
While Tatterhold featured some visually appealing areas to explore, certain aspects such as animations, lighting, and facial expressions were clearly constrained by the budget.
The musical score followed a similar pattern: while it generally complemented the atmosphere well, the transitions into combat or conversations were rather clumsy.
Full steam ahead toward a hopefully improved 1.0 release.
New Arc Line is an Early Access title, and a very Early Access title at that.
It crashed frequently, had numerous bugs, and suffered from poor performance.
Additionally, its very limited scope in terms of length meant that many gameplay systems did not come into play. For example, the Magic vs. Technology level and companion reactions had not been properly implemented.
Because of these issues, I am not optimistic about the final result. The main story is uninteresting, and I found myself more focused on exploring Tatterhold than progressing through the main narrative. The combat lacked depth and consisted of easily defeating each enemy group within two or three rounds. The game's strength lied in its exploration and the flexibility to approach various situations.
For the developers, it will be a significant challenge to bring those unfinished ideas together, polish the game, and improve what is already present.
