A ton of screenshots from the upcoming Arvale: Treasure of Memories, Episode IV. There have been a lot of overhauls to the menus to make them sleeker, more usable, and honestly, sexier, especially for mouse users (you keyboard users out there, stick around, as there is still some cool stuff below) 🙂 Take a look around.
As seen above, you’ll notice the main HUD (heads up display) has been slimmed down and added a new button for loading any of your save games at any time. Comes in handy, trust me. Also, the main cursor when walking to-and-for on the maps has been updated to a nifty little walking dude icon.
When you mouse-over things on the map, the cursor will change depending on what you can do with it. As in this picture shows, you can open up that treasure chest and grab the contents inside (oh, and these cursors are animated, and look super cool when you do the mouse-over).
Same applies for when you can chat with another character…
Open or Close a door….
Or inspect/read an item on the map.
You might have been thinking, hey, that HUD is now slim and sexy, but what about the information? Maybe I don’t know what those icons mean! Well, know all you have to do is slide your mouse over the icon, and you’ll get a slick little text description pop-up telling you what that button will do when you click on it. Looks really cool, and is really handy.
Oh yes, and if you can fight a monster, this little attack mouse-over will happen. Speaking of battles…
Enemy Hit Points are now clearly visible with a nifty little bar by them (just like your characters!). In addition any status ailments they have will show up under that bar (i.e. sleep, poison, stunned, etc).
Also notice the brand new battle menu stuff for the Escape and Attack selections (also animated, you should see that little guy run when you mouse over him!). Oh, and the main cursor changes to that metallic cool-looking cursor as soon as you enter a screen when you have to select from menus. You’ll love it!
The main actions in the battle are also spiffed up (and animated) and add a really polished feeling to the battles now. Hard to describe in words, you’ll just have to see it in action!
After you spend all that time fighting a monster, now you can see the actual results in detail. If your character leveled up, if they learned a new skill, and as a personal touch, each character will say something regarding the situation (this is really, really cool actually).
And enemies will drop more stuff now. For some reason they didn’t in the last few episodes and I couldn’t quite put my finger on how to make it fun. Now I have 🙂 Although, in this case, the monster didn’t drop anything…
But in this case, they did! (although Sakyra feels a bit hesitant about touching it) 🙂
I know you Old-Skool Keyboard control enthusiasts are feeling left out, but fear not! The new battle menu stuff is all working swimmingly with keyboard controls as well as….
You can now switch smoothly and effortlessly back and forth between keyboard controls and mouse controls (if you switch to keyboard controls, EVERYTHING will return back to the oldskool style of playing, such as in Episode I and II) including…
The oldskool menu system you came to love to much 😉
And everyone, I’m sure, will enjoy the new save file system which allows you to save up to 20 slots for your save games, includes a neat little preview of the map you were on, playtime, gold, character stuff, and the map name.
That’s it for now. More to come soon.
I know, it’s a lot to take in. But remember, Episode IV will be the Final Episode of Arvale: Treasure of Memories, so I’m planning to do everything I can to make it the awesomest (yes, that is now a real word) it can be!
See you soon!