Luminous Arc didn't really offer anything new on the table, basic SRPG elements, but it still does its job!
The story took place around a bunch of youths who were raised by the "Luminous Church," having only one goal in their life and that is to condemn all the Witches they come across, taught by the Church into believing that the Witches are the cause of the Planet's suffering of course as with all organized religion there's isn't a lot of truth to that this is where the twist comes in. Aha! Sounds interesting? Not really, the story is actually very predictable the little things they try to hide from you almost always give it all away, I was disappointed with the way they try to bring this story about it's poorly executed.
The battle system on the other hand though is very stripped-down, very basic: you attack, cast magic, use items and move around the map, you get to deploy up to 8 characters max on the battlefield (very generous number in my opinion), my only gripe is that the game doesn't allow you to position your characters where you want them to be, this really destroy any potential strategies you may have in mind when starting out your map (you can't preview the map you're gonna tackle), but nothing dramatic "Luminous Arc" is rather forgiving as long as you level up and outfitted your party with the best available equipments, you're good to go wherever you are on the map also, all the enemies in the random encounters are "fixed" in a sense, you won't see the enemies being positioned randomly or see a new set of monsters. You will get the same thing over and over again.
L.A. also sport a nice gain-full-HP/MP-at-level-up-feature; characters gain full HP/MP at every level up, so if you're low on health and magic points and you're about to hit the next level, just perform an action (provided it accumulated enough EXP) and voila! Fully healed, but alas this also what made the game a tad easier, in my opinion. Money is also very, very generously earned I love that I could earn a couple of grand by just defeating only a couple of random encounters, and equipments in the game are not all that expensive either.
Of course as the saying goes "nothing is perfect," the animations in this game are really lacking, I think they blew quite a budget on the Voice-Acting department (which I think are mostly corny and unnecessary and very "ugh" at times, pay attention to Nikolai and Theo), some animations are even reused and only slightly updated, case in point: "Aqua and Hail" magic spells, the "Flash Drive" (some sort of a "Limit Break" type skill ala Final Fantasy) are not as "flashy" as it sounds or look. I'm pretty disappointed, cause a little eye-candy wouldn't hurt right? "Luminous Arc" is also rather... buggy/glitchy? I've noticed a couple of "graphical issues," just to name a few: like random line flashing across the screen, in one part of the game there's even an awakward moment when the witches uses their teleportation skill, spots or black patches could be found scatter around the screen. All these minor flaws really brings down the quality of the game, it feels "rushed" like the developers just wanted to release this game quickly and shove it down the masses' throat. Bottomline if you're expecting another "Final Fantasy Tactics" for the PS1 then you're looking at the wrong title.
BUT If you're new to SRPG and would like to give this genre a try, "Luminous Arc" for the DS is a very accessible (in other word: "easy") title. It's also a good filler until the release of "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2"