Enchanted Arms
September 17,2006 - There are very few console-styled RPGs on the Xbox line of consoles. So few, in fact, it’s hard to think of even one. But at the same time, there are a handful of RPGs on the Xbox and Xbox 360 that rank among the best of the decade; they’re just action-styled or open-ended. Games like Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, or this year’s absolutely stellar Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. On the flip-side, From Software, the company that brought you Otogi has now hopped to it and made a rather decent console-styled RPG for the Xbox 360 called Enchanted Arms. Though it doesn’t come anywhere near the quality of the best in the genre, it’s the only game out there that’s remotely close to it in style and gameplay mechanics, so needless to say, it comes together for an interesting, unique experience that you can’t match on the system.

You play the game as a young boy named Atsuma. He is a hot-headed imbecile—or so people call him—that takes everything by the moment and doesn’t think too fast. In the start of the game he is coupled by two of his classmates at the Enchant University, Makoto and Toya. Makoto is a flamboyantly outrageous personality who follows the footsteps of his obvious crush, Toya, a smart, strong-willed, and extremely well mannered young man who the entire world seems to be absolutely in love with. Yes, if you didn’t catch that, Makoto is a homosexual, or at least they pound you with that over the head without quite yelling it out to the world. This may be one of the first times there is a supporting character of this persuasion outside of a few instances, but it never hurts the game in any way.

The story starts off where the three boys want to sneak off campus to attend the town festival nearby. Once they are there Atsuma decides he wants to start battling golems, which are like their version of Pokemon, and become a champion at the festival. Just after he wins his first battle there is an earthquake that rocks the city and literally destroys it. The boys all rush back to the University and end up going to the sealed ward, where they are not otherwise allowed to be. Eventually we start learning more about these golems and find out that there was a war 1000 years before called the “Golem Wars,” and after a series of unfortunate events, the story sets it all up for it to repeat itself.

It’s a pretty clichéd plot with a lot of the same plot archetypes you’ll find in these games with some really basic characters, albeit they are interesting and charming in their own ways. Right from the get-go you’ll find yourself readily attached to these three main characters, but about five hours in, there are some switch ups and you’re stuck with some new characters—and still Atsuma, as he’s the main character—that aren’t nearly as interesting.

Fortunately enough for the central gameplay mechanics, the battle system is quite fun. It’s like a mixture between Pokemon or Monster Rancher and Final Fantasy Tactics. Though both of the aforementioned gameplay styles are relatively different, it takes the standard turn-based menu combat and mixes it well with the grid-based movement and tactical setting. That being said, however, it significantly reduces the strategic elements in the grid-based gameplay from that of the standard tactical RPG. It uses a 4x6 grid where you can move your party of four around on one half and attack the enemies on the other half. Most attacks you have are based around different points on the grid, so, for example, you’d want to build your party around where each attack will hit the enemies and not try to position your character in a place where they are blocking a teammate. It can get a little tricky at times to get the right attack in at the right place, but it works pretty well.

The Pokemon-esque aspect of the game is in collecting the golems. There are roughly a hundred golems to collect and each of those has a different use in battle. You could associate this with any one of those “collect all the characters” type gameplay elements, but it most closely resembles Pokemon. You can generally only have one golem in your party at a time and they each have different attacks or abilities that can make you do certain things. For example, in the beginning you get one golem called Tiem-Tops that is kind of a mix between offensive and defensive attributes, and soon after you get one that focuses heavily on battle tactics and not really much of any support abilities.

From a technical standpoint the game doesn’t have much going for it. The character models are decent looking but they’re pretty standard in terms of art design. In general, you’d have probably thought you’ve seen these characters a few times in other miscellaneous games in the RPG genre. The level design in the game is pretty boring actually. Other than a couple of the areas you traverse they are all forgettable and incredibly archaic in terms of what sort of puzzles you’re actually doing. It’s all button pushing, lever pulling, and other things of this nature. Not to mention it’s also incredibly linear, which is both a good and bad thing in a game like this with a high rate of random encounters. Audibly speaking the game is okay. It has interesting music that doesn’t really sound like much else in the genre, and its sound effects are good enough. The voice acting is very iffy, on the other hand. Some of the characters sound fine and others sound terrible. For the most part, it’s pretty standard for an anime-inspired RPG though, it’s usually hit or miss.

Enchanted Arms is a completely standard RPG with some charming gameplay and plot elements that make it slightly better than average. It isn’t going to bowl over fans of the western-styled RPG market and make them go actively seek out what they’ve been missing in the past, but hopefully it will capture a couple of new fans in the process and make them more excited for the big few coming to the Xbox 360 like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. If you’re an RPG fan who owns an Xbox 360, it’s a worthwhile game to play, especially since Oblivion is the only other one on the market. If you’re not much of an RPG fan to begin with, this one isn’t a game you should go out and play over the other good games that have just hit shelves recently. Enchanted Arms is a good, but not great RPG that can be enjoyed by a lot of people if they can look past the few problems it has.

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