Diablo II is quite possibly the most revered of the dungeon-crawling games. I would be playing it today if B.Net let your character last on their servers more than 30 days. Though when creating Arkadian Warriors, Wanako Games was not aiming for a Diablo II level role-playing game (RPG), a few comparisons will necessarily be made.

Starting out in Arkadian Warriors, you select one of three character classes: soldier, archer or sorceress. Each one has unique characteristics including strength, magic and available weapons. You can go into the game in single-player, local co-op or XBL co-op. Your headquarters is a small walled-off town where you can refresh your mana and health, buy and sell and meet NPCs that will give you quests.

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One of the main differences between Arkadian Warriors and other similar games is the addition of a third meter, the yellow alter-ego meter. Your alter-ego meter increases with each successful hit on an enemy. Once full, you can turn into a huge, powerful Phoenix, Lion or Dragon. This was a surprising change and especially enjoyable the first few times you use it.

Each quest takes you to a new dungeon where you must kill a certain type of enemy (a number of wild boars in one level), collect items, or defeat a boss. The unfortunate thing about this system is that when you feel the need to grind to gain a level, the only way to do it is to repeat a dungeon. While usually challenging the first time, the dungeons are often a cake-walk the second time. Additionally, the dungeons are sorted from earliest to the latest when you visit Artemis to repeat one. Since you will almost always want to repeat one of the more recent ones, you will have to scroll through a long list just to get to it.

While dungeons in Arkadian Warriors have several different possible textures, they are essentially basic mazes only complicated by the need for keys to get through certain gates. After a while, they can get repetitive. Hidden rooms are a little too easy to find because the gold in them shows up on your radar when you get close.

As in many RPGs, some weapons have magical properties such as poison or stun effects. To simplify it for the intended audience, no percentage chance is mentioned. So a Bow of Frost may have a 20% chance of freezing the enemy but the player has no way of knowing that. Some are magical but the effect is not noted in the description (Jewelled Dagger, Tranquil Bow). These distinctions are a necessity in Diablo II and missing them here left me feeling naive about how the game would play.

The three classes have different styles. Certainly the soldier focuses on close-range combat while the sorceress and archer focus on long-range. While these differences result in varying gameplay when changing classes, the alter-egos play exactly the same way. No matter which beast your class turns into, it always attacks with a slow, highly-damaging area-of-effect attack. Just turn into your alter-ego, get surrounded by as many enemies as possible and have at them. I was really looking forward to seeing what kind of powerful long-range attack the sorceress’ alter-ego would have but was disappointed when it was the same as the warrior’s.