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Role-playing games on the Pocket PC have been a scarce commodity. There have been a few first-person RPGs, a few Diablo-like games, and the Palm-oriented "Kyle's Quest" engine, but despite gamers' pleas no developer has dared to take on a true console-style, turn-based RPG. After years in the making, PDAmill has finally come forth as the brave knight in shining armor to rescue us fair gaming damsels in distress with their newest offering, "Arvale: Journey of Illusion". For the first time, Pocket PC gamers all over are being treated to a full-length, original role-playing game comparable to Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy. But does PDAmill deserve to be granted highest honors by the king, or should they be locked up in the dungeon to rot?
Arvale's controls are very well suited to the Pocket PC. You can move your character either by using your device's D-Pad or by tapping a location on the screen. However, should you choose the touchscreen method, there had better be a direct path between you and your destination – the pathfinding is rather poor. I also found that the higher the sound quality (selectable in the options screen), the slower my character moved on my iPaq 2215. When you are not in battle, there are four on-screen buttons at the bottom of the screen; each of them corresponds to a hardware button you can also press. "Use" lets you talk to people, search through barrels, and any other action that needs doing. "Stat" shows you a screen where you can check up on your character's attributes, your current quests, and your inventory, among other things. "Zoom" lets you temporarily zoom out and survey your surroundings, and "Menu" takes you back to the main menu where you can save, load, tamper with the settings, or quit. Tapping on a person or item supposedly yields the same result as the "Use" button if you are standing next to them, but I found that to be a rather unreliable method. A similar control scheme is in place during battle: you have four different options (fight, magic, item, flee), and each one can be selected by a stylus or by pressing the appropriate hardware button. As a lefty, I felt that the "Use" button was rather ill-located. I can imagine that most right-handed wouldn't have this problem, but it would be nice to have the choice to reconfigure the controls.
The graphics in Arvale are excellent. The character closeups – such as when in battle and during dialogue – are simply stunning. Everything is vibrant, detailed and sufficiently cartoony. When on the world map, the sprites are slightly less impressive. They still share the game's signature vibrant, cartoony look, but everything just feels slightly more like pixel art. 
Jason Surguine, who has composed music for Pocket PC games of all genres, once again proves his versatility with Arvale's soundtrack. The game is filled with your standard RPG fare of synthesized fantasy-esque tunes. The score is filled with calm village background music, rousing battle marches, and adventuresome world map themes. The sound effects are also good; you will hear appropriate noises when you attack, open a door, and so forth.
Arvale is a flashback to the old days of role-playing games, with gameplay very similar to old classics such as the earlier games in the Dragon Warrior, Ultima, and Final Fantasy series. The story appears to be rather cliché – an evil dragon awakes from his sleep every twenty years and tries to destroy humanity. Every twenty years, a new Hero of Legend arises to put the dragon back into his slumber. You – surprise, surprise – are the Hero of Legend. After a while, though, there is a totally unexpected plot turn and the game turns in the opposite direction, greatly satirizing the clichés of the genre. I don't want to give away too much, but suffice it to say that Arvale's story is both very satisfying and very funny. 
After the somewhat lengthy opening sequence, you are sent off on your journey. Just like in the old games found on the NES and Super NES (though I would say this more resembles an original NES RPG in its style), you wander from village to village. You talk to the villages' inhabitants (a nice touch is the inclusion of multi-path dialog trees, might I add), swashbuckle through dungeon after dungeon, and encounter numerous plot twists until you finally face the big cheese of evil dragons. Overall, Arvale is a BLAST. At the heart of every RPG's gameplay is its battle system. Arvale features traditional turn-based battles, with you and one opponent taking turns attacking each other. One interesting innovation is the rock-paper-scissors-esque relationship that PDAmill has set up between weapons. Whenever you choose to attack your enemy, you can choose your weapon. Swords are most effective against enemies wielding clubs, spears are powerful against swords, and clubs are particularly powerful against spear-using foes. I'm not quite sure how this figures out when you fight animals, but it still is a very interesting concept. All weapons also have a limited amount of times you can attack with them before you must buy new ones. Similarly, the strength of your armor is measured in battles; if you buy a buckler with defense 10, after ten battles you will have to buy another shield. There are also magical items you can use to cast spells on your opponents. These too have a limited number of uses, which vary from item to item; a scroll may be a one-time use item, but you can cast a spell with a staff thirty times. These restrictions can be a pain, though, when you're in the middle of a gigantic dungeon and suddenly find yourself armorless. Additionally, there are places set up generally near big boss fights where you can pay money to boost your stats for the next battle. You have three stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Knowledge. Generally speaking, Strength is your offensive ability, Dexterity is your defensive, and Knowledge affects your spellcasting. 
One of my favorite things about Arvale: Journey of Illusion is how detailed the world is. There are enough side quests to keep you happy for days on end. You can really tell the effort put into this game when you read the little descriptions of the various items. The scriptwriters clearly enjoyed taking every chance to point out the fact that you are just playing a game. Even the story is tongue-in-cheek. For example, when the king is first trying to convince you (a brown-haired gardener), that you are indeed the Hero of Legend, he recalls that the hero is supposed to be a brown-haired servant of the King. "Big deal," you respond, "That covers seventy percent of the people in this castle!". The King continues, informing you that the hero spoken of is very good at gardening and, ironically, math. One minor annoyance I had with Arvale is that it features the dreaded random encounter. There are many times when there are enemies walking around in a dungeon that you can see and avoid if you so wish, although oftentimes you will just be walking along your merry way and suddenly find yourself combating a foe.
Arvale: Journey of Illusion is a prime example of a top-quality Pocket PC game. It is an otherwise stereotypical RPG, which fills in a much-needed niche, made extraordinary with a fantastic story. It is of exceptional quality and has been sorely needed as no other games like it can be found on the platform. Pocket PC gamers have been begging developers to make a game like this for years, and PDAmill has finally delivered with gusto.
Pros:
- Innovative battle system
- The first Pocket PC game of its kind
- Hilariously witty in-game dialog and descriptions
- The story is a brilliant satire of the RPG genre's cliches and strereotypes
- Beautiful graphics and perfectly fitting music
- Plenty of gameplay to be found, with enough side quests to last you a long time
Cons:
- Random encounters on the world map are unnecessary and annoying.
- Slowdowns when sound is enabled
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