Customer Reviews

Enchanted Arms

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I'd first like to say that I have played through the whole game, unlike the reviewers before me. I'd also like to mention that this is very much a JRPG (linear-style, turn based role-playing game), so if that's not your cup of tea, you might want to give this title a pass.

That aside, Enchanted Arms is a worthy opening act for traditional RPGs on the PS3. The graphics are pretty good, though hardly ambitious. The quality of the cinematic sequences are likely to give Square-Enix a run for their money. Thankfully, the game gives the user a choice between the English voice acting and the original Japanese (most English redubs are fairly poor, and this game is no exception). But what people really care about in a JRPG is characters, plot, and combat.

The characters start off as nothing special. In fact, they are stereotypes through and through. A few past reviews were exceptionally turned off by a lesser character during the opening and tutorials; that character quickly leaves the plot, but I happened to find his antics amusing (and opening the game with a homosexual character is quite progressive in my opinion). The story is fairly generic to start off, but develops a subtle complexity that is actually quite refreshing when compared to the epic plots of the Final Fantasy series. This, I think, helps the character development some, as any development (particularly in the case of Atsuma, the protagonist) is surprising. Even without Atsuma's torturous inner struggles/demons, the other characters still play an active role and are far more three-dimensional than the game would have you initially believe. Combat has been built from the ground up, and the result is a unique experience. It combines the elements of strategy RPGs in the vein of Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics, with the simple turn-based elements of traditional JRPGs. In addition to your natural party, you can build a team of golems (monsters, essentially) to assist in combat. The mix of strategy and action helps this game stand on its own amongst the competition.

I for one think that this title doesn't get nearly the amount of respect it deserves. If you enjoy a classic RPG, check this game out. If you can't be patient for an hour and let the game develop, it's certainly not for you.

This game is no work of art. It looks like a PS2 title.

That said, the game is a lot of fun. The dialogue is awful, which the english voice cast obviously recognized because the whole thing is tongue-in-cheek. The game constantly parodies itself and its genre (other JRPGs). It's not just the dub cast - the "great martial arts master" that the group eventually seeks out is... a hippy. The "mysterious stranger" character is just another character wearing sunglasses, yet no one recognizes him.

The entire game is stupid-funny. It's a wonderful romp through silliness that offers the player little but... fun.

As far as complaints and game mechanics, well, the programers did screw up in a few places (hence the four stars). Combat is WAY too slow - the "fast forward" button speeds the attacks up to what should have been the standard speed. Also, with such a small "game board" in which combat takes place, it sometimes makes it difficult to move.

That said, I'm not sure why people had such a problem with the rest of it. The strategy element is very well done, with attacks demonstrating their area of effect to the play when chosen. The golem-collecting sidequests are mildly pointless, but mostly serve to fill in for absent party members during plot moments, since anyone not using the four PCs for every single battle is wasting resources.

Oh, and the "dancing" to refill your super moves - yes, it is absoutely awful. That's why it's so much fun. In any given dungeon, you can unload your most powerful super moves effectively cost-free if you don't mind doing some awful 70s disco dancing between battles. It is one of the funniest parts of the game, and is worth it just for the hallarious stupidity of disco-dancing in the middle of a dungeon. Also, for the record, attacking an enemy and taking damage also fills the meter, so if you just fight random battles and never dance you will eventually end up walking around with a full meter anyway. But why wouldn't you want to dance?

I think that addressed most of the criticisms I've read. If you want a serious FF style title, this probably isn't the game for you. If you want an uproariously funny PARODY of a FF game, full of stupidly funny game-play elements, characters, and plot, then you could do worse than Enchanted Arms.

As soon as I put the game in my PS3 I thought, "Oh God, all the reviews I read about this game are right..." and I kept playing the game and I was right. What surprised me was how much fun I had playing this game despite its many flaws. I definitely wouldn't have paid full price, but believe it or not this IS a surprisingly fun game if you are a JRPG fan, and at 20 bucks you really can't go wrong.

The main thing that Enchanted Arms is guilty of is having a slow intro and an obnoxious character. I found myself frowning for the first 1-2 hours of this game, but then enjoyed it greatly after that. The majority of the poor ratings this game has gotten come from people who played it 15-30 minutes. Don't trust those reviews.
Graphics - Graphics are mediocre for next-gen, but look good if you are coming from a PS2.
Sound - Decent voice acting for the most part, typical RPG music fare.
Gameplay - Deep battle system requires much thought and planning, each individual battle feels like a fast paced Tactics battle. I recommend this game based on gameplay and battle systme alone.

Is this game great? Probably not. But for 20$ it fills the gap of RPG's that the next-gen systems are currently feeling.

I actually enjoyed this game. The storyline was pretty deep and interesting. The battle system had a lot of faults but what game in the rpg world has been perfect. There is a lot to do in this game and although many people are complaining about the back tracking, I remember the days when we had no choice but to backtrack. I think the back tracking is sometimes really good for building up your characters levels. I will say some of the bosses are extremely difficult, but if you train your characters to a level above what it is suppose to be, you will be fine. If anyone is a fan of rpg's, then I believe you will appreciate this one. It's not the best, but it is certainly not the worse.

I hesitated in purchasing this game because of the lukewarm reviews, but I loved it! Considering the lackluster (and that's being kind) choices the PS3 currently has in RPG's, I was desperate, but in my opinion, it paid off. I think the graphics are amazing. The plot is pretty good as well as the voice acting. I've seen an increasing trend in RPG releases for Xbox 360 and frankly, I'm upset at some developers like SE for Xbox 360 exclusives coming out. Anyway, I would recommend Enchanted Arms...you can't beat the price. I would also recommend the strategy guide.

This is great game at a great price. The game sticks closely to the console role-playing template like in the Final Fantasy series, to the point that even the victory music that plays after each battle sounds familiar. Enchanted Arms is defintely worth playing if you have any interest in role-playing games.

When I got this game I figured it would be one of those I would pick up for an hour, then ignore it for 2 months, then come back to it again. But I have to tell you... I was pleasantly surprised. I've found myself addicted to this game... The character interactions among your main characters is priceless... had me laughing the whole way. My only complaint is the fact that in some levels you have a golem fight every time you walk 7 feet. It can be annoying when you are working on a puzzle. Other then that... this game is great. The poor ratings are undeserved.

I realy enjoyed this PS3 video game. I thought the graphics and music were great and the story line was quite good, what you find in most RPG games, but with it's own twist. It's has a turn-based fighting system, which I enjoy and the ability to level your party members up into powerful charactors. All four of my main characters were level 92, with over 5000 HP, each, when I entered the final boss battle. The game offered a challange wihout being too difficult. There was a great diversity in different locations and dungeons so you didn't feel like you were constantly repeating the same thing over and over. The game has a great map system which was very useful. I didn't find anything offensive in the game, maybe annoying, but not enough to dislike this great game. I especially enjoyed the feature that allowed saving the game progress any place on the map. I would recommend this video game to anyone who enjoys a great RPG. I rated the game 4-stars because, as good as it is for an early PS3 RPG, I expected even better. I've seen previews of some upcomming PS3 Action/Adventure & RPG video games which look great. The future is looking better for the Sony PS3 RPG gamers.

This is actually the first game I picked up for the PS3. I was looking for a good RPG (which the PS3 was lacking at that time, and still is, to some degree), and I decided out of all the meager options, that I wanted this game - and Eternal Sonata. I chose this game because at the time, Eternal Sonata was quite expensive, and this one was much cheaper. Warning! Bargain bin alert! Sometimes games are cheap for a reason; and sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised. So, how does it fare? Well, let's find out!

Graphics (score 7/10): The graphics are not bad. There are good points and bad points. First off, the backgrounds are quite lovely; there are scenic vistas of rolling hills and beautiful blue skies that are quite nice. Also, there is a good amount of graphical detail (for example, seeing individual leaves and blades of grass in a forest). The in-game character models are not exactly great in the faces, but the cutscenes look awesome. Unfortunately, there are bits of graphical laziness here and there. For example, there's an area where you are on a cliff overlooking an ocean. The water doesn't move, ripple or sparkle at all. It's just a giant blue unmoving blob. I mean, come on guys! Even games on the PS1 had some kind of moving texture on water to give the illusion of movement. This game also seems to suffer from what I call "DQVIII Syndrome" - there are numerous and embarassing re-uses of the same NPC character models over and over again. Once I even saw them use the same character model for two NPCs speaking to each other in the same scene. Wow. Overall, though, the negative points I mentioned aren't really so distracting that they outweigh the good parts of the graphics, so this section gets a 7/10 for "average".

Music (score 6/10): Well... Let's see. The voice acting isn't exactly thrilling, and the music is kinda bland and forgettable. First, let's talk about the voice acting. It's not very good. It's not the worst I've ever heard (that honor forever belongs to the first Grandia), but it's not top quality work either. In fact, I'd say it was average, or slightly below. There is a notable exception; Yuki's voice is the most annoying thing I've ever heard (worse than Momo from Xenosaga II). However, her voice seems to grow less annoying over time - either the voice actor decided to do a better job on her later recordings or I've gotten used to it with repeated exposure. Now, as for the music. It's not terrible, but not great either. Most of it won't grate on your ears or make you wish you were deaf, but it's not very memorable either - and some of it's rather repetitive. There are a couple tracks that are irritating (the song that plays in the resistance hideout comes to mind), but there really aren't that many of them. You're not likely to recall any of the music after you are done with this game (other than music that irritated you), and you won't feel motivated to go out and buy the soundtrack or anything.

Characters (score 6/10): Oh boy. Here it comes. What do you suppose is the most important part of an RPG? Yes, the story, I know. But what's the second most important part? The likability of the characters! I'm not sure that Enchanted Arms is succeeding here. Let's start off with the first people in your party - Atsuma, Toya, and Makoto. Atsuma is your main character, and boy is he stupid. The game makes it glaringly obvious that he is possessed of a lesser intellect. Since he's your main character, players can find this kind of insulting, and thus dislike poor Atsuma. Toya is deeply intelligent, having what I call the "calm, dispassionate logical mind of a philosopher". I rather like Toya, and I can't help thinking that he might've made a better main character (and let Atsuma be the sidekick best friend character). It's rather unfortunate that Toya and Makoto are removed from the story about an hour or two into gameplay (not much of a spoiler since it happens so early). Oh, in case you're wondering why I haven't talked about Makoto yet, I'm saving him for later (you'll see why). So, since Toya and Makoto leave your party, who do you think will replace them? Likable characters that you instantly identify with, right? Wrong! The first person you meet (who will obviously join the party later) is a young girl named Yuki. She possesses an extremely annoying voice, and a spoiled bratty personality to match (I kept wishing she would die). Strangely, the second she joins the party she stops being less of a brat -but that really isn't good character development since it's incredibly spontaneous. So, who does join the party first? Karin and Raigar. Raigar is an okay dude, kinda quiet and mature, so maybe that's why I don't mind him. Karin immediately makes it known that she is a b*tch. She does develop into slightly less of a b*tch, but she is still annoying at points. So, let's take a tally so far, of the four people who wind up in your permanent party, how many are likable? Well, there's Raigar, and maybe Atsuma (he never gets any smarter but you do start to sympathize with his plight). And maybe Karin, if you find her argumentative personality endearing. And, nothing can save me from Yuki's voice actor, so there's no helping her character. Are you beginning to see the problem? Out of four characters, the only one you can really like right off the bat is Raigar. As for the villains? Well, the Devil Golems (sort of robotic monsters) seem like stock one-dimensional villians to me. Furthermore, other villains have personalities and dialogue that really drives home what douches they are in a very stereotypical and cliché way. Subtlety, what's that?! Okay, now that that's all out of the way, let's talk about Makoto. Yes, he's gay. This seems to be the most talked about point concerning this game. I kind of have mixed feelings about Makoto. I was excited to play an RPG with an openly gay character (it sounded progressive), but then I was disappointed to find that Makoto is a blatant stereotype, complete with just about every gay cliché there is. So, basically, he's only here as comic relief fodder. In addition to that, he has a fawning immature crush on Toya and he spends all his time jealously bickering with Atsuma. Toya must have the patience of a saint to put up with those two. The strange thing about Makoto, though, and the reason that I have mixed feeling towards him is that after awhile, he becomes less annoying (and he does say some genuinely funny things!). In fact, by the time you are in the first dungeon of the game, he's actually the voice of reason. Furthermore, (THIS NEXT PART IS A SPOILER SO WATCH OUT!) at the end of the dungeon, you're party is attacked by the Ice Queen Devil Golem - she knocks out Toya and does some sort of mind control thing to him. Makoto actually attempts to fight the Devil Golem with the last of his strength, and is crushed under a block of ice for his efforts. I was actually touched by the fact that rather than just having an immature crush on Toya, Makoto actually loved him enough to risk his life to save him. So, I've decided that I like Makoto. RIP, dear friend. As for this game being progressive towards gay people, it's really not since Makoto is a walking stereotype. Unfortunately, I think it'll be a really long time before an RPG featuring a serious gay character is ever made, due to the fact that we haven't quite progressed enough as a society for such a thing to happen. I'll be the first to buy it though, if I live long enough to see such a game.

Story (score 6/10): Well, the story starts off innocently enough. A group of friends decide to cut class and go to a festival. Everyone's having a good time until everything's suddenly thrown into chaos. By the end of the events, the entire city is destroyed by an ice golem. The rest of the plot basically revolves around trying to prevent other cities from being destroyed in a similar fashion. I think the main problem with this game has to do with the way that the story itself unfolds. Good stories show things, not just tell them. This game's main method of advancing plot points is to have character's loudly talk about them. It feels like every other conversation is merely exposition explaining some important plot point rather than genuine character development. This is especially bad in the villians, who spend a lot of time standing around explaining their evil plans to each other just so some character hidden in the room can overhear it. One villian actually spends his entire death scene just explaining the concepts behind how devil golems work and all of his motivations for being evil. A good story would've gradually shown us his motivations over time, not have the character exposit it all at the end. Gah! Well, what can I say? This game's not exactly very deep, but I still had fun playing it and the story, while kind of poorly told, still held my interest enough to keep me going. As for the ending itself, it leaves some questions unanswered, but I was satisfied enough with it.

Battle System (score 7/10): Hmm... This game has one of the more unique battle systems I've come across in an RPG. You basically control characters on chess-like battle grids. Every time you get into a random battle, it takes you to a grid, one half is the enemy side and the other is your side. Each character has attacks and healing abilities that have a certain range of squares. In order to hit an enemy, they need to fall within your range, obviously. There's this gauge that fills up over time called the "Combo Gauge". Basically, if your combo gauge is full, and you manage to line up several character's attacks on the same enemies, you get a special combo that does much more damage. So, the battle system is very tactical. This should please fans of strategy RPGS. The downside to this is that battles move at a slower pace now because you are constantly moving people around the grid and lining up attack ranges and such. This can become very tedious after awhile. Fortunately, there is an "auto" option that will automatically run the battle for you if you are level grinding or something boring like that. Surprisingly, it works very well; I was shocked at how well the A.I. here performs. Most in-game A.I. is horribly stupid, but in Enchanted Arms, it's really quite competent. So, hat's off to the developers. Also, if you hold down the Triangle button, battle animations will speed up. There's one more thing I'd like to talk about, that's the element system. Lot's of RPGs have the concept of elemental weaknesses and resistances. In Enchanted Arms, there are six elements that oppose each other, fire and water, wind and earth, and light and dark. That means that if you have a fire person out against a water person, you can do much more damage to the water person. However, the water enemy can do super effective damage to you as well. This basically means that exploiting elemental weaknesses puts your character in just as much risk as the enemy. That's no fun. I mean, Final Fantasy X had diametrically opposing elements too, but the difference was that your main characters merely possessed elemental magic, they didn't have elements imbued directly into them. That means that they could exploit an enemy weakness without having any particular elemental weaknesses themselves. It would've been different if Enchanted Arms had employed elemental properties similar to a game like Pokemon where each element had things it was good against and things it resisted (ex. like having fire be super effective against ice type, but having it be weak to water, but resistant against grass type). As it is, though, when you try to use an elemental advantage, which one of you survives comes down to who has more HP and stronger attacks, which kind of kills the strategical quality of it. The only strategic thing you can do with the elements is to bring out characters of the same element type to get the defensive bonus and then use non-elemental attacks (ex. Bring a water type to fight a water type enemy, you'll get added defense). So, the element system is kind of disappointing. One other thing I need to mention - there is no defense stat in this game, and no equip-able armor. Because of this, the only way to get better at weathering attacks is to increase your HP. No defense stat at all? Strange.

Gameplay (score 7/10): This is a bit of a catch-all category for me. I don't have many complaints here; the camera isn't bad, the movement works fine, interacting with your environment is simple and intuitive. I also really like the pacing of the game; they did a very good job of pacing out non-combat portions between the dungeons. Also, this game is very forgiving. If you die in battle, it lets you try that battle again, and it heals your party to full HP and EP after a battle. On top of that, your reserve characters get full experience (they just don't get any Skill Points). So, you ask, if you are all fully healed after each battle and you get to retry battles you lose, what makes the game challenging? Well, there's this thing called VP. For each turn in battle you take, you lose VP. If you reach zero VP, that character is rendered useless - they are stuck in a state of only having one HP and they cannot attack. So, obviously, if you are stuck in a long dungeon, and you run out of VP, you are hosed (oh, and if you run from battles, you have an automatic escape, but you lose VP for it). I mean sure, you could run from every battle, but if you reach the end boss with zero VP, there's no way you can win. How to overcome this? Well, there are only two methods to recover VP that I know of. One is the VP recharge station, and the other is an item you can buy later that heals VP. So, in the end, it's not that bad if you stock up on that VP healing item. Speaking of healing items, there's my other complaint, you can only hold 9 of any particular item. That blows. Also, you cannot sell off old Golems or weapons, so they start to clog up your inventory screens. This becomes a very irksome problem by the end of the game. Other than those things, I don't really have any complaints.

Overall (score 6/10): NOTE this score is not an average; it's my subjective overall score. Hmm...Well, overall, I liked this game. It's got a lot of flaws, but I had fun playing it, and that's what counts, right? Still, it doesn't deserve any higher than the score I've given it. If you are desperate to get an RPG on the PS3, then you might want to pick this up (it's gotten even cheaper at the time of writing this). However, if some of the flaws I mentioned earlier are pet peeves for you, then you might want to pass on this game.