In addition to your three main characters, during the course of the adventure you are joined by Thomas Kemper the cat, Anne Clare (Tycho’s niece), and a surprise third character who act as your support squad. These extras are basically “summons” who can be called in when they’re gauges fill in order to aide you with their special attacks. The most amusing of the three is Thomas Kemper who, normally when summoned will simply groom himself and cause one point of damage, but holds a one-in-two-million chance of producing a hairball so massive, that it will utterly destroy anything.

To add yet another layer of depth to the combat, the title also features a large inventory of items, all of which you will need to utilize in order to be successful. Aside from your standard healing devices, there are a number of buffs and debuffs, as well as specific “distraction” items which only work on particular enemies and may give you a brief respite when you feel overwhelmed in combat. For a packrat such as me who tends to collect items in RPGs and never use them, the game forces you to use what you find constantly in order to survive battles.

With all these different elements combat can become somewhat complicated, and if you aren’t constantly monitoring the actions of your characters and the enemies, it’s easy to find yourself hurting pretty badly. While the menus are as streamlined as possible, it’s just nearly impossible to keep up with seven or eight characters on screen that are all acting at once. You’ll likely get the hang of it after a couple hours, but it still feels like things could have been a lot more manageable if the game were purely turn-based.

The only other significant flaw in the gameplay itself is the lack of upgrades for weapons and the complete lack of armor or accessories. While you can bring spare parts back to Anne Clare to upgrade your attack power, there is no way outside of leveling up to augment your defense or speed, and there is absolutely nothing out there (save perfectly defending from an attack) to protect you from status ailments. I remember one boss fight in particular where the enemy used an attack that hit everyone and reduced their attack power to an insanely low number. He used this attack at almost every opportunity (sometime two or three times in a row before I even had a chance to attack), and each time I found myself to be utterly puny. I ran out of strength boosting items quickly, and the rest of the battle basically consisted of me trying to shoehorn in special moves in the rare moments where my attack power was back to normal. It would have been nice to be able to equip an item which would prevent such a status effect on at least one character before heading in, but there’s nothing like that to be found anywhere.

Aside from a few gameplay decisions that seem to make the game harder than necessary, there’s very little about this game not to love. New Arcadia is presented in such a way that it seems to have leapt right off the e-pages of the comic and into the real world, and the relative lack of sound (this is a comic after all, not a cartoon), is offset by wonderful voice work from the narrator and a great song on the closing credits as composed by MC Frontalot. Everything about the game, from the dialogue and humor to the way the characters look and interact draws you in and makes you feel a part of the Penny Arcade Universe. Furthermore, even though the elements moving you forward are little more than a series of fetch quests, you’ll still likely have so much fun on the journey that you won’t even notice.

Truly, Penny Arcade Episode One is a must-buy for fans of the webcomic, and a strong recommendation for those who may be unfamiliar with the work but enjoy a good, challenging RPG. While the price is a bit steep at 1,600 Microsoft Points, it is a sound investment, especially with the promise of more episodes to follow in the coming months. For a funny, creative, funny, enjoyable, funny, challenging, funny game, look no further.