Enchanted Arms Xbox 360

Good RPG

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Oct 25, 2006

Pros: surprisingly natural, funny dialogue for a role-playing game; unique battle system is fun and challenging; the collectible golems are all unique and useful.

Cons: awful English voice acting; too much tedious backtracking through large, vacant, and uninteresting areas; aside from some flashy battle animations, the visuals are unimpressive; it's frequently difficult to get a good view of the battlefield.

Enchanted Arms is the first Japanese role-playing game for the Xbox 360, and while it isn't overly impressive or memorable, it's a capable representative for games of its type. The game sticks closely to the console role-playing template made... popular by the Final Fantasy series, to the point that even the victory music that plays after each battle sounds eerily familiar. Androgynous characters, melodramatic plotlines, random encounters, and ridiculously overblown battles form the basis of Enchanted Arms, and if you have any previous experience with this type of game, you'll feel like you've seen it all before. Despite that, if you give it plenty of time, you'll find that Enchanted Arms is still worth playing if you have any interest in role-playing games. You've heard this story before. A feisty young man with no memory of his past discovers within himself a hidden power capable of saving--or destroying--the world. His name is Atsuma, and he's a student at Enchant University, where he studies a type of weak magic known as enchanting. However, some people seek a more powerful form of magic, which has been lost for the past 1,000 years. Turns out that a millennium ago, humans were quite proficient with magic and used it to create artificial servant creatures, known as golems. As you might expect, the golems one day went berserk and turned on mankind, nearly destroying the world in what's known as The Golem War. The most powerful of these creatures, called devil golems, were sealed away to prevent another disaster. Flash forward to present day, and some conniving megalomaniacs start fussing with the seals to draw upon the powerful magic that lies within. At this point, Atsuma's destiny as savior of the universe is revealed, along with a mysterious power that resides in his right arm. As Atsuma, it's up to you to keep these nasty golems in check, which you do by running around the world battling not only golems, but also the humans who are attempting to manipulate them. Enchanted Arms plays like a traditional console role-playing game. You spend most of the time running through dungeons or down long, linear paths from one city to another, engaging in random encounters, collecting money and items, and developing your characters to make them stronger. Between battles, you'll often be treated to some heavy dialogue or the occasional prerendered cinematic sequence The story sequences in the game can be quite lengthy, with conversations lasting several minutes. You might be tempted to simply skip through all the chatter, but if you do that you'll miss out on a lot of the charm that Enchanted Arms has to offer. The dialogue, while sometimes a bit overdone, is relatively natural and engaging for a role-playing game. There aren't many characters in the game, but that works to its advantage by letting you focus on the dynamic between four entertaining personalities. There's also plenty of humor, and although a lot of it is downright silly, it doesn't feel forced and is funny enough to prevent your eyes from glazing over during every story sequence. Read more Less