Enchanted Arms

Enchanted Arms

Enchanted Arms is the first Japanese RPG to appear on a “next gen” (XBOX 360, PS3, Wii) system but sadly however this is about the only “next gen” thing about the title. Enchanted Arms is a cookie cutter JRPG to the extent that it has a linear path, a basic story, random battles, a cast of quirky characters and is lengthy. Fortunately this in itself is not a bad thing as, if you enjoy JRPG’s then your bound to enjoy Enchanted Arms.

 

Our lead is Atsuma (pictured above on the left). He’s a student at the enchanting university in the city of Yokohama albeit a not very good one. In fact Atsuma (not only being rather stupid, headstrong and in possession of a rather firey personality overall) has a magical ability in his right arm that appears to nullify enchantments.. which isn’t a good thing for an enchanter to have. However, being the rather carefree person he is Atsuma studies at the university with his best friends “I am officially great at everything, ever” Toya and “gayer than a San-Francisco Mardi-Gras” Makoto. All is well as the three boys sneak out of classes to see the festival in Yokohama, however something is of course about to go terribly wrong. Atsuma and company live in a world where there are beings known as Golems designed for certain tasks, however long ago some super powerful variations of these known as Devil Golems triggered a war and many people died. The Devil Golems were eventually sealed away by the various cities in the world… unfortunately (on carnival day too!) the one in Yokohama appears to be slightly more awake today and thus Atsuma’s adventure begins.

 

So Atsuma travels the world with his companions going to various cities, and dungeons as the plot unfolds before you. While occasionally characters like Makoto and Toya are with you, for the main bulk of the game your companions are Karin, Raigar and Yuki who you encounter on your adventures. Your party can also be made up of golems you catch during your adventures. There are plenty golems to collect and find (in a similar vein to Pokemon) and it adds a nice extra dimension to the game when it comes to tracking them down.

 

In Japanese RPG’s the most important things are story and combat system, and while Enchanted Arms storyline isn’t entirely up to scratch (its rather generic and simplistic) it excels a great amount in its fantastic combat system. The combat takes place on a grid similar to a chess board with both teams (your four chosen combatants and your opponents) facing each other and you take turns to move and unleash a variety of moves on your opponents or take actions which protect your team. The turn based combat and grid movement make the battles very tactical and actually require you to think on what actions you take. Each characters range of abilities make you consider what order to move them in for maximum effect or damage against the enemy and it’s wonderful to see your battle plans prove successful. Your combat and defensive skills are learned, found or purchased throughout the game with more advance abilities appearing in shops or found deeper into the games plot so you don’t become too overpowered and a good balance is achieved. Obviously fighting causes you to level up in the game too as you gain experience, but in Enchanted Arms it also gives you points which you use to boost your statistics, learn skills you have found and generally make you more powerful. Raising your statistics and learning you skills are far more important than gaining actual levels in the world of Enchanted Arms and while it was a nice system in itself I thought it made having actual levels mildly redundant and pointless.

 

Graphically Enchanted Arms is a beautiful game to look at. At first glance the environments may seem a little barren (and some of them are) but as you progress through the game you uncover more and more beautiful scenery and effects and by the time you reach the Ice Palace for the final showdown you will be blown away by just how good it looks.

 

Sound wise is perhaps the one area where Enchanted Arms is pretty bad rather than good or average the experiencing worsening depending on whether you play it in Japanese or English. The background music in itself is pretty uninspiring and mildly irritating but if you combines that with the dire American actors hired to voice the cast the experience is on the verge of making your ears bleed. While this is almost something that seems required when a game is dubbed from a different language, it still irritates me a lot. Play it in the Japanese (assuming you value your ears), I tolerated the English at first but it seemed to get gradually more cringe worthy as it goes along. The only good thing I say about the dub is it doesn’t ruin the slick jokes and quirky sense of humour apparent in many of the games dialogue exchanges in fact occasionally it adds to it with its awfulness.

 

Length wise there is certainly a lot to play through here, about 50-60 hours for the main plot and the few subquests and much, much longer if you intend to level everyone up to maximum statistics. There’s also a nice little online mode in the style of Pokemon where your golems can duke it out to see who the best Golem Trainer out there is.

 

Overall Enchanted Arms delivers a decent JRPG which considering the almost complete absence of this style of game on the original Xbox is a good start. The game has its faults, bad sound, merely average plot, and not really bringing anything new to the table but on the same hand it’s still an amazing amount of fun with plenty to sink your teeth into, great combat, a good cast, and some truly amusing dialogue. It’s not the golden JRPG it would like to think it is, but it’s one that is worth playing through as your bound to enjoy it.