Magical rocks

In addition to the usual increases in HP and strength with each new level, your character can acquire new skills and magic abilities. After a certain accumulation of experience, you will unlock a new class of learnable skills. You can then spend your battle-earned skill points to acquire advanced attacks or healing spells.

Check out my particles

Hey, that's not Pikachu

Instead of magic points, Arc the Lad uses spirit stones as a limiter for your special abilities. Interestingly, and unlike magic points, spirit stones cannot be recharged – after all, they’re stones. Rather, you pick up spirit stones dropped by defeated foes, or if you’re really desperate, you can fork over gold to buy them from merchants.

Really, really big guns

Later on in the tale and after you’ve acquired an airship (every RPG must have one, it seems), you can spend your spirit stones in powering the ship’s cannons. In the place of big, powerful summons, Arc the Lad lets you call in the big, powerful attack of your airship’s guns to help you blast some fools sky-high during a battle.

Double-teamed

Darc picks a fight

As fresh as the battle system is, Arc the Lad doesn’t force them down your throat. There are no random battles, which we feel are a dated RPG convention. The only times that you’ll be forced into battles are during story-critical moments or when traveling from location-to-location on the world map (though the latter can all be retreated from). Other than that, you’re free to run freely around the environments and not be afraid that the game will suddenly toss you into a fight that you never saw coming.