With a name like New Arc Line, I genuinely didn’t know what kind of game to expect. While it’s true you can’t judge a book by its cover—or a game by its name—a title really is supposed to give you some idea of what to expect. Animal Well is about a well full of animals. Lies of P is about a guy named P telling lies. But New Arc Line? As far as I could tell, that could be a subway building sim.
I’m only joking of course, but one of the things I always enjoy about doing these previews is getting to be surprised by things I was mostly unaware of. While, based on a few screenshots, I assumed New Arc Line was a kind of tactical turn-based game akin to XCOM or Fire Emblem, it’s actually a full-on RPG pulled straight from the tabletop and adapted to a videogame.
I was immediately floored by the depth New Arc Line offers in player creation. So many modern RPGs today feel as though there’s barely any role to play in them, but, perhaps with the exception of Baldur’s Gate 3, New Arc Line gives players a host of abilities and skills that truly matter to how you want to approach the game.
While it’s a little light on the ground for character races and classes—the Early Access release features Humans and Elves and the mechanical Diesel Engineer class, or the magical Voodoo Shaman class—the moment-to-moment gameplay feels so incredibly fleshed out and deep that almost every choice matters or more importantly matters to the player.
New Arc Line really takes the best of the tabletop sensibilities and applies them to a game that’s genuinely interesting and captivating. Almost immediately every character encounter provided me with a wide variety of options for interaction depending on whether I wanted my character to be a hero or a scoundrel. These options were further expanded by ways to incorporate abilities that Dungeons and Dragons players will be familiar with—such as Athletics, Slight of Hand or Persuasion—all punctuated by making actual dice rolls in order to pass or fail the check.
The combat in New Arc Line takes this a step further by incorporating the basic rules of combat seen in Dungeons & Dragons. It may seem like a lot to handle at first, but if you’re familiar with the concepts of initiative, primary, secondary and move actions, you’ll have a solid grasp of what’s going on. I was surprised that New Arc Line didn’t attempt to simplify things for broader appeal—which is especially bold for an indie studio’s first game—but this level of depth creates a combat system that is truly involved and requires careful consideration.
“It allows for some truly incredible locations and a really fun mix of monsters and automatons to flesh out the narrative and the combat.”
Combining both fantasy and steampunk, the world of New Arc Line seamlessly blends technology and magic in a way that feels earnest and unique. It adds a lot to the gameplay, giving players either practical or ethereal solutions to problems, and forms the basis of the narrative as these two forces face the brink of a new war after magic users were forced into the shadows by the era of Reason. It allows for incredible locations and a fun mix of monsters and automatons to flesh out the narrative and combat.
If there’s one thing I don’t like about New Arc Line, it might be an over-commitment to these old-school sensibilities. For starters, movement is restricted to clicking around the map rather than using WASD. While this harkens back to the days of classic RPGs like Fallout or Diablo, it can feel awkward here. I’m just saying that having more choices would have been nice.
Secondly, there’s a strange system for making skill checks that I’m not sure how I feel about. Typically, performing a skill requires players to clear a numerical threshold—if the check requires a skill of 45, then players need to roll a 46 or higher to pass. However, in New Arc Line, skill checks have a success range that players need to stay within, and rolling higher can actually cause the check to fail. At the very least, I’d say it is interesting—like the idea that every action must be performed with a certain balance—but it feels odd that you can roll higher than a check requires and still fail.
It’s still early, but Dreamate has laid the groundwork for an intense RPG with incredible potential. What’s on offer already feels deep and well thought out, and players hungry for something as intense as Baldur’s Gate 3 will regret passing this one up.
