Arco

Arco was provided by Panic for review. Thank you!

This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out at a later date.

2024 has seen many fantastic indie titles, and Arco is among them. If you like tactical games with deep world-building, or if you want a challenge, it will sate those taste buds. I like both, and although Arco pushed me to hell and back on the difficulty front, it deserves its Overwhelmingly Positive score on Steam with every juicy mouthful of berries, and it is a great Steam Deck performer.

Arco draws upon Meso-American culture for its world design, blending some fantasy elements into a delicious RPG. After a short prologue, when players grasp the basic mechanics through an integrated story tutorial (and the massacre of your village), the game picks up many years later with you as a grizzled, grumpy old veteran jaded with the world who has to find those responsible for another village massacre. Expect some great plot twists throughout the story to keep you on your toes.

You will navigate the map through small pixel-art locations to get to your destination, where you will find resources for battle or little mini-quests that open up more places on the map. Every scene brims with detail and little bits of lore, which makes the simplistic exploration more satisfying than it has any right to be. Some games are too heavy-handed with world-building, preferring to vomit lore to the player in overly long dialogue sequences. Arco favors style over substance, and despite the simple graphics and pixel art, I felt emotionally tied to the world.

Many maps hold secrets and their dangers in the form of wild animals or pissed-off bandits looking to make a quick buck. Other areas, such as villages or towns, offer places to barter and a nice way to sell off any loot you pick up. The quests are usually very basic, with little more than fetch quests or clearing infested places, but I never got bored doing them, and they do not feel out of place. You will swap characters in different acts, and they come with unique skill sets but are easy to understand.

The combat is the meat of the game, and it makes me wish we had more of it! It is hard to think of a phrase to summarize Arco’s battle system because it is not seen much in this genre. ‘Superhot Turn Based’ might be the best way to describe it. Enemies will only act when you do, and they are a healthy mix of melee and ranged attacks to keep you on your toes. Some combat arenas have hazards to dodge or use, including fatal drops and spikes. It sounds very simple, and it is, but it is what makes the combat so satisfying. Successfully dodging a gauntlet of bullets and killing all the bandits while hanging on to my last shred of HP, I felt I had achieved something grand. You can only take two items into battle, so I habitually used a health-replenishing item and an offensive tool for my available slots.

With so many deaths plaguing our past, they haunt you in battle with unkillable ghosts that damage you on contact. Unlike other enemies, these little guys move during your turn, adding another little dynamic to the gameplay. You can take your time, but do not dawdle when these spirits come at you.

Arco is not an easy game. Enemy attacks hit hard; you must be strategic with your movement. You have an expansive skill tree to put points into new abilities or upgrade your stats, and you must take advantage of everything possible. Fortunately, Arco boasts a good amount of accessibility options. You can restart a battle at any time with no penalties, and if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you can withdraw and try again another time. There is also an Assist mode that allows you to skip some battles if you are struggling and gives you unlimited Dynamite.

A few fights are extremely punishing, and I spent dozens of attempts ramming into a brick wall. By the end, I was pretty sure my character would reach through the Steam Deck screen and sucker punch me in the face. I admit I turned on the Dynamite mode for several of these boss fights. While this greatly improves your damage output, you must still dodge attacks to avoid dying. It's a perfect balance, offering an easier difficulty but still requiring skill to survive the battles.

However, the game has a couple of shortcomings. On the technical side, Arco experienced a troubling launch with quite a few bugs. While Arco has received a lot of bug-fixing patches over the last few weeks, it will crash now and then. I had to force restart the Deck more than once as the game froze mid-combat, and your character can get stuck on terrain during battle or exploration. I also found a bizarre jittering bug with the controls while selecting my weapon during combat.

I encountered an unfortunate freeze upon Act 3, and no matter what I tried, I could not continue. While this was unfortunate, going by the forums seems pretty rare, and I probably just had awful luck. I will keep searching for a solution and update the review if this is fixed.

Despite my bad luck with the technical state, Arco is an easy game to fall in love with. With its fairly unique battle system and great world-building, this is a shining example of how to do strategy games well. It needs a few more performance patches and I would like more graphical options to tweak in the settings. Still, my disappointment with the unfortunate corruption has not sullied my impressions of Arco much.

Arco - Steam Deck Performance

Arco is classed as Verified by Valve for Steam Deck compatibility, and I find this to be accurate. With its pixel art visuals and full gamepad support, it's a lot of fun on the Steam Deck while performing well with battery life. There are no real settings to tweak in a game that impact performance, so what you see is what you get. If you are running on battery and don’t mind a little extra framerate drops, the 3W TDP setting gives more than an hour extra battery life, at the cost of some more dips.

Recommended Settings

If you have the Steam Deck docked or plugged into the mains, the default mode with 60hz refresh rate is the way to go for maximum performance. While I appreciate the extra battery life on my Steam Deck, keeping a stock mode with 40hz refresh rate provides the best balance between battery life and performance.

As usual, I began with stock settings (Unlocked TDP, 60hz, 60fps), and Arco was perfectly playable at these vanilla settings. I thought the standard Gamepad controller profile might be a detriment compared to playing it on a PC. Still, I could control my character very well in both the exploration and combat sections. The frame rate stays fairly solid at 60fps, although occasional frame dips occur during intense combat scenes. Thankfully, these are few and far between. The power draw is also decent, even at full power, with an average of 10 watts in most cases. Most of the time, this will be enough for you.

With no way to tweak graphical settings, our options are limited. We can do better on the battery life at the cost of some performance in extreme cases. Capping the refresh rate to 40HZ shaves a little off the power draw while maintaining that smooth framerate. If you want full 60fps, you will have a grand time in Arco while still enjoying over 4 hours of gameplay on the LCD Steam Deck. There is no performance impact by capping the refresh rate to 40hz while gaining a little more battery life: up to an extra hour in most cases, so I recommend this mode the most.

Battery Saving Settings

I experimented with TDP settings, and Arco is one of those games that can work at a 3-watt TDP limit! Those little frame dips are a little more frequent at minimum power, especially during combat sequences, but the power draw savings are significant. At this setting, I recorded an average power draw of just 7 watts, granting the LCD Steam Deck an average battery life of nearly 6 hours.

For the smoothest experience I recommend stock settings with 40hz refresh rate, but the turn-based nature of Arco’s combat makes that extra couple of hours in battery life more appealing, while sacrificing only a little performance.

Accessibility

Arco is only available in the English language right now, although more language support has been planned.

The Assist mode can toggle infinite dynamite, turn off the Ghosts, and skip combat. You can change the font style from Normal to Pixel version, adjust volume freely, and adjust the camera pan, screen shake, and hit stop amount. There are no ways to change controls or any graphical settings, and it lacks colorblind support.

Despite the disappointing accessibility options, I had no problems with the controls or reading the text.

Conclusion

Do not let my unfortunate save issue downplay Arco’s strengths. The Meso-American world is breathtaking to experience with its subtle approach to writing and world design, and the combat system is the perfect mix between punishing and engaging. While I hope Arco receives some more patches to squash the last of the bugs, Arco is an easy recommendation.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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