Sony had a complete version of Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits on the floor at E3. There were two save spots available to check out, though I only explored the first, which starts at the beginning of the game.

The general presentation of the game is rather mediocre, and the graphics are rather ugly. It might just be that the game was running on high-end Sony VEGA TVs, but the aliasing on the characters is quite distracting. The music is decent, but not exceptional. Portions of the game make use of voice acting, which is of a bland quality, but more on this later. There's really not much to be excited about as far as audio/visual is concerned.

The beginning of the game sets up the story pretty well, and rather quickly. Within about ten minutes you're up and running with the first primary character, Kharg, and his lifelong friend Paulette. The general setup of the world map is nearly identical to Grandia II, meaning that you move directly between towns without traversing the world yourself.

The battle system is pretty interesting, and, again, a little reminiscent of the Grandia games. At the start of each character's turn, the possible range of movement is shown, and then the character is allowed to pick up any items that are dropped by enemies and attack. By holding down the R1 trigger, a doughnut shaped attack region is displayed. The inner ring show the minimum distance, which is at the character for sword fighters and a bit away for range fighters. The outer ring indicates the maximum range of the attack. There is also a radial slice that shows the exact region that will be affected by the attack. This slice is can be controlled accurately using the right analog stick, and by positioning your character effectively it's possible to attack multiple enemies. One major annoyance is the use of voice acting during the battles, which makes them take even longer. Initial battles are painfully slow, but as you level up they take place progressively faster.

This latest installment of the Arc the Lad series is shaping up to be a rather mediocre experience. The battle system might be of interest to some people, but otherwise it seems to be a rather forgettable experience.