It's important to remember that this is a PsOne game; the score in this section is referred to that machine, so it's not directly comparable with the ones given to Ps2 titles.

Visually, the first two games in the box - Arc The Lad I & II - are nearly identical. They are beautiful 2D sprite-based games; special lighting effects, the brilliant colors, the ever-changing environments are still a sight to see. Working Designs also edited the original animations of the super-deformed characters to improve them for the U.S. release.

Arc The Lad III features visuals that are closer to the 32-bit standards. This time, the environments are entirely in 3D, even if the player can't control the camera. The characters are still in 2D, but the quality of the sprites has been substantially improved over the older games. Particular care was used for the monsters and for the new lighting effects. The magnificent CG movies featured in Arc The Lad III are close, in quality, to the ones of the Final Fantasy games for PsOne.

Arc Entertainment did a memorable work here. All the three games - also the first instalment - feature good quality voice clips during the battles, extremely varied and realistic sound effects and a stunning, truly epic soundtrack executed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Excellent.

The special box set marvellously packaged by Working Designs can offer you much more than 100 hours of gameplay. Ten hours are need for the first game, and at least 45 hours for each of the following episodes. Arc Arena adds other hours of fun, especially if you have a friend with his own save game, and Arc The Lad III also features a little mini-game for the Pocketstation. Considering that The Arc The Lad Collection retails at a suggested price of $74.99, I can easily say that this package is worth twice the money it costs.