Arkadian Warriors Can’t Cut it in Battle

cboxarkadianwarriorsAt first glance, Arkadian Warriors, Sierra’s newest hack ‘n slash title for Xbox Live Arcade, feels and plays like a scaled-down version of classics like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, or Champions of Norrath. However, after completing a few missions in the game, one thing becomes painfully obvious. Despite its charming look and simple gameplay mechanics, the game is extremely shallow and repetitive and over time becomes more of a drag than a pleasure to play.
 
Picking between an archer, soldier and sorceress, you must defend Arkadia against the evil serpent Gorgon and her evil minions. The only problem is that both the archer and sorceress are extremely tedious to play with, forcing the gamer to either play with the soldier or die during every difficult mission trying to rely on ranged attacks while being trampled by a screen filled with enemies. Luckily for gamers looking for some Action/RPG goodness on Xbox Live Arcade, the soldier is an enjoyable character to play as and has the versatility needed to get you through the game.

However, there are even bigger problems in the game that may make you not want to finish it. The quests are often boring and lack challenge or are so hard that you’ll be forced to play older missions over to get the experience needed to complete your current mission. While the uneven difficulty is one thing, the dungeon design in Arkadian Warriors is a disaster. Through 19 quests in the game, you’ll see perhaps a half dozen different environments, making each mission feel like a continuation of the last and not like something new. While the polish and depth of most original Xbox Live Arcade games aren’t much better than what’s available here, the fact that a dungeon crawler only has a few dungeons in it makes for a repetitive and dull overall experience.

On top of that, the game’s camera is flimsy at best and will often force you to rotate it to see everything on the screen. Playing online with another player can also be a problem as the camera doesn’t zoom out when players move away from one another. This will often force one gamer to get stuck in one room fighting enemies, while the other looks through half of the next room. The game’s map is also extremely juvenile, making it ridiculously easy to find secret areas and loot and items that you didn’t pick up [as well as enemies and mission objectives], making the game much easier than it could have been otherwise.

However, there is one quality that Arkadian Warriors possesses that makes it playable. All 12 of the game’s achievements are unlockable by simply playing through the game and don’t really require any strenuous effort on your part to unlock. For that reason, achievement hungry gamers may find this worth the 800 Microsoft points it costs. Fans of the hack ‘n slash genre may also be able to accept this shallow download for what it is as well, looking past its lack of options and depth.

For what it’s worth, Arkadian Warriors is a decent game that could have been so much better had its developers focused more on giving the game the personality, polish and brevity it needed to stand on its own two feet. Instead, it feels like a haphazard clone of a dozen other good games and leaves its owner wanting to play something else.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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