Arvale Reviews

Before finding this game i was lost, confused, wandering steam for a reason to open my eyes every morning... i've found it, and after over 5 minutes of game play i have determined this is the greatest game to ever exist and is now my reason to live. 11/10 would recommend.

I play Witcher 3 on this PC on Ultra settings and don't lag. This POS game lags unimaginably. It is literally unplayable. For a single-player RPG, on a 2d engine, this is unacceptable. I see a lot of comments about the snark, and the fun of the game. Apperantly this is a recent bug or glitch that the developer has not fixed. I will edit this review if the dev ever updates and fixes this game. P.S. Horking with compatibility settings did not work for me. It may work for you. YMMV

Really enjoy this game going to finish it for sure. Graphics: good and some original some rpgmaker re-used Music: higher end, good, and not "the same old rpgmaker" songs i remember. Game: Story: good. Character are: good. Battle: good. -------------------- Compatibility: Windows 10 and Joy. First Joy. You have to select Options -> Keyboard for PS/2 Controller to work fully. If on mouse it only works 1/2 and you'll have to juggle both. Odd, yes, but it works fully. I have a plain intel i5 PC, nVidia 1050, 8G ram intel chipset motherboard (asian board): (was) extremely typical. I tried a grab bag of "Compatibility Mode Settings", all failed UNTIL... In addition to suggested settings*, YOU MUST CHOOSE THE "RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR" COMPATIBILITY OPTION. You will only need to do it once. (for me, it kept asking for password like 7 times, wrote to disk,, exited). I shut off admin mode (needed 1x only) and WHALA: game runs fine. I chose "Windows Xp release 3" and "16 bit color mode" Compat settings too. YOU MUST START THE GAME FROM THE PROGRAM FOLDER (game.exe somewhere in steam's folder system). You cannot launch it from Steam's front end wrapper thing. AFTER THAT: runs like most RPGMAKER games, windowed mode runs fine too. The game has a big an EXCELLENT completely game guide (.pdf) (hidden) in the Steam folder somewheres.

Arvale is an adventure game, with 40 hours of gameplay, made in RPG Maker. The highlights of the game include a choice of multiple party members, and a diverse skill set for each character which evolves as they level up. The game starts out with only the main character, and other party members are acquired as part of the plot progression. It is of the "save the world" variety, and the setting is the world map. The game is mostly linear, with a handful of side quests. By game's end, you have eight party members, and must choose the main character plus three more to use in battle. You may only alter the party at certain locations on the map, so you are stuck with the party you have through the enemy zones. In some parts of the game, your troop is separated, and you must play each party in turn, using the characters on hand. The story is fine, and mostly plot-driven, but the characters also chat amongst themselves a lot, mostly with silly dialog. The gameplay alternates between safe towns, with weapon and item stores, and maps with enemies and a boss at the end. The enemies are visible, stationary, and can be avoided if necessary, but you must fight a lot of them for the purpose of levelling up. Just before the boss, there is always a pool which restores all HP and MP. On most maps, it is possible to walk all the way to the pool without fighting any enemies. If you leave this map, the enemies will all reappear; if you beat the boss, they will be gone forever. The gameplay is not perfectly balanced between these enemy zones, and safe towns. I found that both went on longer than necessary. The enemies are moderately diverse, but not much thinking is required to beat them. The bosses, of course, are more challenging. Gold can be used to purchase equipment and items in the store. For most of the game, it is not possible to buy all the equipment you would like, meaning you always have to play catchup in each new town. Each character has lots of skills to choose from, and many of these become useless against the new enemies. Levelling up regularly brings new skills to use. Overall, the game was fun as each new development progressed the plot, but often got tedious while going through the long parts.

If your game is running very slow and laggy, you need to run the .exe file as an administrator. If you are stuck at the fireplace and can't interact with it (if you know you know), it's an issue with the keyboard controls, use the mouse instead (you can go back to using the keyboard right after). This is a solid game, it just gets negative reviews from people who don't know how to get around those two bugs. It gets pretty grindy towards the mid-game, you'll spend a lot of time farming encounters for the money to buy the oppressively-priced gear, but then towards the later third or so of the game the encounters drop so much money you'll never have to worry about having enough.

As someone who has played earlier games about Duncan, Arvale etc, I was excited to see this pop up. Lots of mixed reviews, but the previous games were so charming I thought I'd give it a go. And I'm glad I did! First the cons: the game is a little laggy (not horribly so, and it gets better once the second character joins), and the walking speed is painfully slow. I mean slooooow. But the game! The best part is the story and the characters. Duncan, our hero, has lost his memory of all his previous exploits, and goes on a quest to get his memory back. He meets a lot of different characters along the way, all with their unique personalities and abilities. The dialogue is witty and fun (don't forget to talk to the wheelbarrows, pots, barrels etc), and it really helps develop the story. Game play is pretty much standard RPG - you level up, get more abilities, get better equipment. I loved that foes were visible and you could generally walk around them if you wanted to (and they don't chase you!). All in all, I really enjoyed this game, and am looking forward to more of Duncan in the future!

“Arvale” could be characterized as a standard JRPG with decent gameplay, relatively good graphics and funny story. The protagonist, a gardener called Duke, is apparently a great hero who had saved the kingdom from terrible evil – but the problem is that he remembers absolutely nothing about it. So he needs to set out on a quest to find his lost memory and recover his heroic skills, all the while being confronted by facts that he was probably responsible for dooming an entire village or abandoning his elven girlfriend and so on. On the technical side, the game has nicely assembled and rich environment, standard music and workable combat system, even though it gets a bit grinding at times. There is one serious technical problem though: the game is incredibly lagging to the point of being unplayable, fortunately this can be bypassed by running it in administrator mode. Once this is sorted out, Arvale becomes quite an enjoyable game of high adventure spiced with cool humor.

Unfortunately this is going to be a short review, as the game is sadly quite buggy and constantly crashing. It's a pain in the arse to get it running, and once you overcome one problem another springs up to replace it. It's a pity, as the game is fairly amusing and charming, but there doesn't seem a whole lot of point going into detail about it. Of the 1 hour or so play-time I've clocked up, I'd say it was a max of about 20 minutes actually spent able to run it. It controls well, looks nice enough and has quite bouncy tunes, yet I can hardly recommend it when you might not be able to play it.

On sale for pretty cheap so I thought I'd give a chance. No regrets so far. Something I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet is the Music! I'm not sure where these tracks came from, but many of them (the castle music and the first town in particular) are fantastic. Happy that the creators took the time to procure (or hire/make? I have no idea since there are no title credits) great tracks, a total must have for an RPG and in this case, it definitely ticks off that box. Looking forward to the rest!

Well I was all excited to play this game when I read the discussion groups on the web. And I really enjoyed it until... Until it got so incredibly slow that I could not get through a minor battle in less than 10 minutes. It also lost any charm after a certain point as side-quests became few and far between, then non-existent. Just go from one major boss battle to the next. I finally quit playing as it was just too tedious going from battle to battle just to level up, then another 10-15 minutes trying to beat the boss who is ridiculously strong and ends up killing every party member just before his health runs out. Such a bummer as this was so fun to begin with. I'm sorry to say I would not recommend this game even at the really cheap price I paid for it (I think $2 or something like that).