Description
A playthrough of American Sammy's 1990 action-adventure game for the NES, Arkista's Ring.
This playthrough includes all four loops to show the final win screen.
32:40 Stage 32 (Loop 2 begins)
1:02:54 Stage 63 (Loop 3)
1:32:03 Stage 94 (Loop 4)
The idyllic elven city of Arkista has long been the keeper of three legendary magical artifacts. Its ever-lasting peace is attributed to the power of Arkista’s Ring, its prosperity to the Wealth Amulet, and its immunity to evil influences to the Elf Mirror. However, the forbidden castle lying at the fringes of the realm is ruled by a cruel-hearted shogun who covets the treasures.
The shogun has sent ninja assassins to steal the treasures and flooded the land with an army of monsters, plunging the elven kingdom into darkness. Christine, a young archer, now sets out to end the shogun's reign of terror and return the lost artifacts to her people.
Arkista’s Ring consists of 124 stages, all of which are played from a top-down perspective and require Christine to kill enemies until the key to the exit appears. Upon defeating the Shogun and reclaiming Arkista's Ring in stage 31, the next loop begins. On each successive loop, the enemies become faster and more resilient.
To help keep pace with the enemies, Christine can grab permanent upgrades to boost her health, defense, inventory capacity, and the power and range of her attacks. There are also several single-use use items to collect, including reserve healing potions, a fire wand (to shoot through walls), a thunder wand (to kill all weak enemies instantly), a holy stick (to kill undead creatures), and a ninja stunner (to temporarily stun ninja). The three magical treasures provide the biggest benefits: Arkista’s Ring replenishes Christine's life bar as she walks around, the Elf Mirror deflects enemy projectiles, and the Wealth Amulet grants 100 points for every step taken.
The first 31 stages are fun, fresh, and quite reasonable in terms of difficulty, and the second and third loops continue to ramp up the challenge at a fair pace.
The fourth loop, unfortunately, exploits the limitations of the controls and game mechanics to kick the challenge into unfair territory. Christine can neither move nor shoot diagonally, and she has to walk in the direction that she wishes to aim. Once the enemies hit their top speed, it's often impossible to line up a shot without being hit, and because the period of invulnerability after taking a hit is so short, Christine will usually take massive damage trying to get away. This problem is compounded by the enemies' tendency to swarm and box her in, and without careful planning and item management, the final loop becomes a controller-smashing gauntlet that feels virtually impossible to complete.
Unfortunately, this balance issue is a major stain on an otherwise good game. The graphics are clean and colorful (though it would've been nice if they'd fixed the HUD jitters in certain stages), the music is memorable, and the controls are good. Even though it falls flat on its face in the final stretch, Arkista’s Ring is, for the most part, a novel and enjoyable take on the tried-and-true overhead action game formula.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!