Arco Review – An astounding artistic achievement

Arco is about consequences. In it’s unique setting of the Mesoamerican frontier at the turn of the century, small choices can cause huge aftershocks. Some of that manifests in the story-telling, as you follow a dour journey of revenge, regret, and colonisation’s cruel effects on a native population. In other ways, those consequences manifest through combat, exploration, and seemingly simple conversations with other NPCs. All those elements come together to create not only a mechanically sound and well designed game experience, but an evocative one that challenged not only my tactics prowess, but my moral compass too.

Arco is a western revenge story, but told from the perspective of the native peoples who so rarely get the spotlight in traditional spaghetti westerns and cowboy fantasies. Over five acts, you play as different characters with roots in various native tribes spread across the the land. You initially control a young Iyo boy named Tecolotl, who’s part of a family making their pilgrimage to The Sacred Tree to leave offerings. As the family makes their journey and goes about their usual habits of running errands and dealing with wildlife, though, mysterious people with ill intentions begin to appear near The Sacred Tree. As the tension these Newcomers bring simmers and boils before coming to a head, the story changes focus to a new character, but that undercurrent of a growing invasive threat remains throughout the duration of the game.

As act two opens, your perspective shifts to that of Tizo, a grizzled wanderer seeking out an old friend for some work. That one innocent job quickly escalates into a blood-soaked investigation into Newcomers who have been razing and looting native tribes all over – and Tizo takes up the task to deal with them permanently. Other protagonists follow in the next couple of acts, each with their own origins and goals. Each story that Arco tells is equally poetic and well-written, but each one establishes very different kinds of characters going on very different journeys. This makes it all the more rewarding when all of those journeys come together in the final act, and the way these various story threads link and feed into each other is so satisfying to see.

Across each of these acts in Arco, you’ll be digging into a blend of point-and-click exploration, dialogue-choice interactions, and incredibly unique real-time turn-based combat encounters. Each screen you explore in Arco is beautifully rendered in rich minimalist pixel-art, but those pixels can hide unexpected encounters and secret items depending on where you click. Some of these encounters will involve interacting with other characters, and the choices you make in these moments can have a lot of results – from losing HP after failing to de-escalate a confrontation to unlocking a hidden fight after getting a little too nosy about an overturned cart full of food. In some cases, having additional characters in your crew can even contribute to how well you do in these moments – in Act Two, I had a well-traveled hunter in my party who immediately recognized the tribe that some mysterious figures approaching us belonged to, and sternly instructed me not to wave to them, saving us from an unnecessary culture-offense and difficult battle.

Often, though, battles are inevitable. And frequently, they are incredibly difficult. Fights in Arco are a blend of fast-paced bullet-dodging and tactical decision making that will never give you an easy way out. Your goal in combat is to use your time while the action is frozen to predict where enemy attacks will land, position yourself to avoid them, and dish out attacks of your own based on where you think the enemies will be once the next turn plays out. Once your decisions are locked in, time resumes for a few moments as every character moves and attacks and you get to see how accurate your predictions were. It’s kind of a bite-sized strategy game where positioning is your ultimate resource and your biggest threat – some stages have hazards or traps, and ghosts will frequently come at you while you’re making mid-turn choices to deal damage to you if you take too long.

Almost every battle in Arco will have your brain firing on all cylinders to not only get through it alive, but with enough HP and resources remaining to ensure you’re capable of surviving the next battle that’s just around the corner. Resource management is just as much of a struggle as the battles themselves, and the scarcity of health and supplies really smartly feeds into the storytelling of a Mesoamerican people struggling to survive on the changing landscape of their once-familiar frontier. Arco so smartly blends all of these parts together, and the struggles of a difficult combat encounter or a punishing dialogue decision feel intertwined with the narrative struggles of your protagonists. It’s a strategically sad game, and punishing in all the right ways.