Arco Review - Turn-Based Combat, Gut-Wrenching Drama, and Beautiful Pixel Scenery

Fill up your canteen, stock up on rations, and saddle up for my review of Arco the latest indie game published by Panic. A turn-based RPG, with pixel art style, and the best soundtrack of the year.

Aug 27, 2024

Fill up your canteen, stock up on rations, and saddle up for my review of Arco. A new indie title by a wonderful team of Max Cahill, Franciszek Nowotniak, José Ramón García, & Antonio Uribe. Arco was published by Panic. Warning spoilers ahead!

Saddle Up

Arco is a western-themed indie title with a focus on a turn-based battle system. The game is divided into five acts, with the first four introducing different lead characters who are all, in some way, involved in a story of redemption.

Arco centers around three major characters with deeply intertwined backstories. It’s a tale of vengeance for a small child, a young woman warrior proving her worth, and a sibling who faces loss at every turn—all set in a magic-filled world inhabited by ghosts, creatures, and terrible humans like the Red Company, a greed-driven group of oil-rich men destroying the land of the people—a story that resonates all too often.

Each main character you meet is strong in their convictions, with humor sprinkled in to keep tense situations light-hearted, and powerful dramatic beats that are heart wrenching at times.

Act 4 and Act 5 endings were paced perfectly and powerful. My eyes started to well up as each act ended because I felt a connection to the characters through the engaging dialogue and story building.

Decisions, Decisions

One crucial aspect of the game to keep in mind is that every decision you make has consequences. For example, from my personal playthrough, I faced difficulty in a battle because I didn’t stock up on rations. So, I searched YouTube for a playthrough to see how other gamers handled this section of the game. I was shocked when the companions they had in battle were not the same characters I had. How did this happen? What choice I made along the way gave me my outcome.

At the time, I didn’t realize these actions would not only define whether I was good or evil but also determine who joins me on my journey and potentially affect the ending of the game. This is where I believe the game’s replay ability will thrive.

Pixel Perfect

The game’s environments often feel like pixel-painted landscapes, with the area you interact with occupying just a quarter of the screen. The background features beautiful parallax scrolling, showcasing stunning Midwestern scenery. When you open your map to navigate you get a nice chunky pixel detailed points of interest you can navigate through. The art direction is a stand out throughout the game. It feels like it's simple, but the attention to details in the small characters, items, and destinations give Arco so much character

Heavy Battles or Beautiful Melodies

I had a brief conversation with the soundtrack composer, and one thing became clear early in the game. I mentioned how moving the soundtrack was and that, since its release on streaming sites, I had been enjoying it. He appreciated the shout-out and explained how much it meant to him, saying, “Poured a lot of myself into that [Arco] one.”

With each story being deeply personal and every act filled with themes of redemption and revenge, it’s evident that this project is truly special to José Ramón “Bibiki” García.

“Poured a lot of myself into that [Arco] one.” - José Ramón “Bibiki” García.

A great example of the powerful soundtrack is how, as you conclude each act, the protagonist returns to an old watering hole, and as they travel, a song plays over the animation. The powerful vocals awaken deep emotions, especially given the often sorrowful endings to each act.

The battle songs rock hard and even feature some record scratching that complements the faster-paced aspects of the turn-based combat system.

Here is the soundtrack you can buy on Bandcamp to support Arco and José Ramón “Bibiki” García.:

Exploring

The two main parts of Arco are exploring the beautiful world, with its pixel-perfect miniaturized map, and engaging in turn-based combat. Let’s start with exploring:

On each side of the main scene, you’ll see a small map you can click, and you’ll open a beautiful pixel map with paths leading to your next destination. A star marks the main quest line or any side quests you pick up along the way. You might help a sheep herder recover stolen sheep, retrieve a lost ball for a youngster, or catch fish for a salesman. Sometimes, these tasks reward you with gold for rations; other times, you’ll receive items that unlock something in a cave or a new path to an area. Arrows on the paths indicate the direction you’ll take, but once you proceed, you can’t go back, so make sure to complete your side quests before moving on. These side quests are key to powering up your characters.

On your travels you have the decision to speak with people who pass by you and you can even decide to ignore them. Based on the dialogue and outcome you can end up assisting them to their destination or making this stop their last. Which brings us to combat.

Combat

You can gain experience points by completing quests, but the best way is to battle anyone who crosses your path while exploring. With your saved-up experience points, you can choose to increase your character’s health, boost magia (equivalent to mana), or unlock new moves for close range, long range, healing, or defense. Make upgrade decisions thoughtfully, as they can significantly help in battles. I spent time upgrading ranged attacks and movement but later wished I had focused more on health, as healing items become rare during long stretches of fights away from merchants.

Melee characters are positioned for close combat, while ranged characters stay back to attack from a distance. Turn-based combat can get tricky as more enemies fill the screen, so it’s crucial to keep track of when enemies are firing, reloading, or moving. More often than not, I found myself dying due to quick movement mistakes. A bullet may come from the far left side of the screen when I was focused on the enemies on the right and ending my turn I would quickly get sniped and have to restart the battle.

Ranged characters were my favorite because they use speed to outmaneuver bullets, sometimes stacking arrows into three hits while circling enemies. Some combat types also have an interrupt ability, which stops an enemy in their tracks, even if they were about to attack on the next turn. This is especially important for enemies with gatling guns that spray bullets across the battlefield.

A unique part of the game is that battlefields are also inhabited by ghosts. Ghosts in the game reflect your conscience. The more evil your actions, the more ghosts will appear on the battlefield—as if they are the ghosts of those you kill while exploring, coming back for their own story of redemption. I completed the game with low guilt, as I tried to make the best choices and remain positive—though occasionally, I would get frustrated with an NPC and just kill them to keep the story moving. So, I had a few ghosts lingering around from time to time.

Ups and Downs

I was provided a key by the team at Popagenda on behalf of the Arco team. I want to not only give them a shout out but also shout out Latin American Games Showcase because the work they do to bring Latin American games more coverage has brought a few titles to my attention I would have missed otherwise. For example, Desvelado is a hand drawn metroidvania which I am reviewing right now and Mexico 1921 A Deep Slumber whose demo is live now with a release coming later this year.

The developers and sound designers of Arco are in no particular order: Max Cahill, Franciszek Nowotniak, José Ramón García, & Antonio Uribe. The game ran at a locked 60 fps on my PC, with occasional frame drops only when loading a battle here and there.

I only experienced one crash during my playthrough, but I’ve heard that some Switch players have encountered performance issues, so keep that in mind. Luckily, when my game crashed, it wasn’t during an important moment, but I can’t imagine how frustrating it would have been if it had happened during the final battle of Act 3, which took me much longer than I wanted it to.

When too many elements are on screen, you might experience frame drops, and the audio can glitch out. This happened to me a few times, but it was easy to restart the game and continue. Fortunately, it never occurred during any story beats or cutscenes between acts, which were the most powerful moments in the game. I’m not sure what the mushrooms that grow throughout the battlefield are called, but they add pressure to finish battles quickly instead of just running circles around enemies. The issue was that as they increased, the frames would drop as low as 5 frames per second, so I would just restart the fight and work towards completing it before encountering that issue again. This isn’t a game breaker for me at all, just a minor inconvenience.

Exploring and Fighting

A beautiful western landscape in simplified pixel artwork—sprawling deserts, forests, caves, temples, statues, and native architecture give Arco its unique style. Complemented with a rich turn-based battle system and a deep skill tree, with its sights on my heart, aiming down the barrel of the beautifully western guitar-strumming, drum-thumping, and female lead vocal-brilliant soundtrack, I was an easy target. Arco is hands down one of the best titles of the year. Panic has a charm for publishing great games, and that makes it 2 for 2 this year for me with Arco and Thank Goodness You’re Here

Arco is out now on PC, Mac and Switch. The key for the review was provided by Popagenda.

🔗Arco | Steam | Mac | Switch