Usually, I wait to play more of a game before I write something about it, but I’ve played a couple hours of last week’s indie release Arco and need to tell you how cool its take on turn-based combat is. Caveat: it probably (or at least hopefully) gets cooler as the game goes on.
Arco came out last week for PC and Switch. You play as multiple heroes seeking revenge in a Western tale, with fantasy elements and a welcome air of anti-colonialism; you begin the game cast as Tizo, a member of a nomadic tribe whose family is slaughtered by “newcomers” in the game’s opening, who reflects on balancing his identity against the newcomers’ effects on his people and culture. There’s a wonderful sense of place and history to discover, as you travel to towns set against sweeping vistas that swallow up your little pixel characters.
I’m still at the beginning, looking for a gang that killed one of Tizo’s old friends, so I can’t say much about where the plot goes. So far I’ve delivered some packages, met some monks, and fought human characters, big lizards, and giant bugs. I’ve picked up a bunch of items whose purpose I’m not totally sure of yet, shared a meal with a stranger instead of attacking them, and pet every animal the game allows me to pet.
On our podcast last week, a reader asked whether we preferred turn-based combat with or without grids; we all said “grids,” but Arco has a gridless, kind-of turn-based combat that is making me change my mind. Here’s how it works: when you enter combat, both you and enemies plan and execute your moves simultaneously. In the planning phase, combat is paused, and you can see what your enemies intend to do and make choices accordingly, planning to move a certain distance and selecting from abilities, which cost Magia to use. Since I’m still in the early game, I’ve only got a handful: a ranged bow called an arco that I’ve upgraded through experience points to lob arrows or shoot multiple projectiles, and a dash that lets me get further away from enemies at the cost of a lot of Magia.
Magia regenerates as you move or wait, so you have to think about where you’ll end your turn and how much Magia you’ll have to use once you get there. So you need to think about a lot of things simultaneously–what’s actually happening now and everything that’s going to happen, as far as you can figure, and whether you’ll be able to do anything to counter whatever situation you get yourself into. Some abilities, like my arrow lob, take more than one turn to land, but I can only see what enemies are going to do on the next turn. This means I have to predict where I think the enemies will go if I want to actually hit them. The game helps you out here–not with a grid, but with extendable lines that show your range or where a character will be. It feels both precise and a bit like a guessing game–I have to aim not at the enemy, the way I would in a turn-based game like XCOM, but at where they’re going once my arrow’s flight time is factored in.
Combat’s mix of turn-based planning and real time effects has been a little hard for me to wrap my head around. An enemy will fire their gun, and the bullets will travel very close to me and then, if I'm lucky, stop. Then I’ll have to think about where to dodge out of the way while taking all the bullets’ trajectory and speed into account, and without getting in the line of fire of another enemy’s shots, and without leaving myself Magia-less too close to a melee enemy who plans to attack. Combat has the thoughtfulness and pre-planning of traditional turn-based combat, but also the in-the-moment effects of combat in a regular game. Positioning is key–I spend a lot of time running away and then carefully inching closer to enemies–but fights still feel brisk without being too chaotic.
Not everything in a fight is turn-based, either: depending what you do in the game’s story, ghosts will sometimes spawn during a fight, representations of your guilt. Ghosts move during the planning phase, and they’ll damage you if they make contact, adding some pressure to finish up your turn if they’re getting too close. This can make even the planning phase feel active, and when combined with my love of panicking and the fact that I’m still in the early game, has made even introductory encounters pretty tough.
It’s all a little hard to explain in words, and has definitely taken some practice to help me get something resembling a hang of. Here’s a gameplay trailer so you can see it in action.
Despite how many times I just said it was hard to get, and how tough I’m finding it as I learn the ropes, it’s exciting and compelling. Even though I’m struggling with these early game fights, I keep getting into combat so I can practice it. As you level up, you unlock stronger attacks and more slots for consumables like healing items or explosives, and I can tell that controlling more than one character will definitely help as I keep playing through the game.
It’s a neat system in a game full of neat things, from its charming pixel art to its navigation, where you select from a variety of paths on a map, some of which can be traversed multiple times and others of which are only one way. Arco is another cool entry in a year of excellent indie games, and I’m excited to see more of it.
