Arcus Odyssey

About Arcus Odyssey

Arcus Odyssey (1991) is Wolf Team's isometric co-operative hack-and-slash game in which four heroes try to stop the dark sorceress Castomira from returning to the land of Arcus.

Arcus Odyssey in Depth

Centuries ago, the dark sorceress Castomira tried to turn the land of Arcus into a place of chaos and darkness, until Princess Leaty, a good sorceress and granddaughter of the legendary King of Light, defeated her after days of battle and banished her to the Dark World. Foreseeing her return, Leaty forged a magic sword, "The Power of Leaty", and entrusted it to the King of Arcus. A millennium later, Castomira's followers steal it to revive her, and four heroes set out to stop them: Jedda Chef the swordsman, Diana Fireya the archer, Erin Gashuna the warrior-maiden and Bead Shia the mage. At the end, players choose whether to use the sword against Castomira or help her regain her power.

Players choose one of the four and work through the levels in order, moving, attacking, blocking with a shield and using offensive, defensive and healing items and magic found in chests. Some levels require sub-quests to proceed, such as putting out a fire blocking the door, and others provide an ally. The view is mainly isometric, but characters move freely in eight directions, and most bosses give a power boost to health or strength when defeated. ACE's David Upchurch scored it 863 out of 1,000, calling it "one of the finest examples of the arcade adventure genre to appear on the Megadrive".

Making Arcus Odyssey

Wolf Team developed it, and Renovation Products released it for the Sega Genesis and X68000 in 1991. A North American SNES version was cancelled following Sega's acquisition of Renovation, the American publisher of Wolf Team and Telenet games, and a planned European release by Loriciels also fell through. Reviews were mostly mixed.