Square Exit: Part 2

More of what Square hath wrought...

G-Craft
There isn’t a lot of info out there about the 90s Square defectors that would form G-Craft, the studio behind the first two Front Mission games and Arc the Lad I-III for the PlayStation. Honestly, the only tangible knowledge that we have that these guys came from Square at all other than the Front Mission connection is from old issues of Diehard Game Fan that previewed the first Arc game back around 1994/95 (and that’s not an exactly credible source). But even though there isn't a ton of info floating around about them, these were developers that worked, at least to some degree, with one of the biggest Japanese developers in the world.

Still, the Arc games are worth mentioning, especially now that they’re readily available for PSN download on the cheap. If the above information can be proven factual (and I'm pretty sure it is), then the acquisition of ex-Square staff at the birth of the PlayStation’s life was something of a coup. Remember that the PS was released in Japan in December of 1994. Square was still developing for the Super Famicom/ SNES, and RPGs were just starting to get some attention in North America. Sony had proven that they weren’t stupid with the launch of its first console and had a wide variety of genres represented at launch with a good supply of titles released and ready to be localized by the time the machine was ready for other regions in September of 1995. Even though games like Jumping Flash!, King’s Field, and Tekken were clear indications that Sony was more interested in 3D than sprite-based 2D, having a good old fashioned Square-developed RPG near launch would have lured away 16-bit holdouts toward the Next Big Thing. Logically, this makes good business sense.

Arc The Lad

What the Japanese players of the time got, though, was more like an extended tech demo than a full game. Though well animated and not without its charm, Arc I was a very short, almost toothless experience. A strategy RPG more akin to the Shining Force series on the Genesis/ Mega Drive, Arc I was definitely a product of its time complete with boy-hero-takes-on-evil-empire plot. Enemies on the field were overly aggressive and could be easily bated by the player, and some areas featured repeatable battles so one could easily power level the seven team members and steamroll upcoming foes. An optional, 50-floor dungeon was available to pad the length of the game, but it was the only minor diversion from grinding levels and finishing the main plot.

This isn’t to say that Arc I is bad. In fact, it’s a very competent game and still fun to play. In a move that may have influenced later PlayStation RPGs like Suikoden, clear data could be saved (after watching Arc I’s Empire Strikes Back downer of an ending) for further use into Arc II. The backgrounds still look very good after all of this time, too.

Arc The Lad II

If Arc I was an appetizer, G-Craft’s second Arc game was definitely the meal (and other overused metaphors). Substantially longer than the first and loaded with piles of side quests, Arc II is fair example of a game that took what was good about its predecessor and built something larger around that framework. The strategy RPG battles were still present and encounters were again repeatable, but now players had towns to explore and guild hunts to accept to flesh out not only some of the play mechanics (like monster taming) but also more of the plot – though it still isn’t exactly Dostoevsky.

As mentioned above, one of the better additions to the game was the ability to import your clear data from Arc I; essentially bringing in your wrecking ball characters from the first game. This turned out to be a downfall of sorts as these characters could basically shit all over your enemies while still gaining levels far outside of the team you already had, making them the only logical choices for most boss battles. Balance issues aside, though, the longer game and monster hunting (more on that in a second) makes it perhaps the best in the series. Plus, the main character wears the hood ornament of a Mercedes Benz as an earring. If that isn’t a sign of quality…

Arc Arena: Monster Tournament

Not much to say about this game other than what the title basically implies, Arc Arena is a small, though separate side game that allowed players to import their tamed monsters from Arc II to duke it out in arena battles. Players could also trade and import saved information for further, um, monster battling.
Remember: there are monsters. These monsters battle in an arena tournament.
There you have it.

Arc The Lad III

Along with the general lack of knowledge about G-Craft is a void of information concerning ARC Entertainment, the team behind Arc III, though it would be pretty logical to infer that G-Craft reshuffled themselves into a new studio. No matter; they made more Arc, and if Arc II was your thing, Arc III will give you the payoff that you’ll certainly dig.

Ditching the pleasant 2D art in favor of more contemporary 3D models, the core game didn’t change much and still offered an import feature to bring in your cats and kittens from the first two games, though a bit more limited in their involvement. Arc III also puts a period on the series in some ways as it ends the story of recurring main (and more often side-) character Arc before the license moved on to two PlayStation 2 games: the moderately successful Twilight of the Spirits and the more universally maligned End of Darkness (which, for some reason, was also an online game).

Both of the PS2 Arc games are listed on Wikipedia as being developed by a studio called Cattle Call. Again, without some concrete information we can’t exactly be sure of this, but it’s not so outside of the realm of possibility that that G-Craft was owned by Sony Computer Entertainment (the publisher of all of the Arc games in Japan), which begat ARC Entertainment, which then begat Cattle Call –something that happens all of the time with studios that work directly for large publishers (RIP Sacnoth/ Nautilus). Since the last Arc game was something of a flop (and not entirely loved by the Arc fan base, such as it is), we can also assume that Cattle Call was wholly absorbed by either Sony or another one of its second party studios, or disbanded altogether.

You can get the first three Arc The Lad games and Monster Arena on PSN, or get the whole PSOne box set (released by Working Designs in NA) in all of its absurdity on eBay for a pretty reasonable price, all things considered.