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I'm a big fan of RPGs, I've played most of the Final Fantasy series and I enjoy them. Enchanted Arms is definitely different than the FF series, but this is a good thing and adds to the games interest. Battle is the most important aspect of these games and Enchanted Arms uses a grid system, similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, although much smaller. Your characters (up to 4) are on one 4X3 grid and your enemies (sometimes up to 6) are on another 4x3 grid. You can't cross into the opponents grid, but this still offers alot of strategy opportunity. There are a variety of attacks to hit different squares on the enemy grid, offering a wide range of options when fighting an enemy. Healing after battle is a thing of the past in Enchanted Arms, you merely need to get through the battle and all your health and EP (like MP in FF, but you use EP for all attacks, even physical ones) will be restored. As always if your character is knocked out in combat, he or she won't gain any EXP or SP (allows you to learn new skills and up your parameters like attack and health), but will still revive to full health at the end of combat. Of course there is a price to pay. All your characters have an attibute called VP, which decreases several times during battle, including taking damage, getting knocked out (a whopping 10 VP, I'll explain why this is a big deal in a moment), and even going through turns. Its because of this last one that you want to defeat your enemies ASAP. If you can defeat all the enemies in one turn, then you lose no VP. VP is replenished at health stations located throughout the world. I found they are placed at good enough locations that you don't have to worry, so long as you don't let your characters get knocked out alot or take too long fighting battles. Your main character has 100 VP, but your lowest human character has only 50. In addition to human characters, you will find Golems throughout the world that you can use. They level up just like humans and have attacks, but they cannot learn new attacks or skills. Depending on the Golem, they have varying amounts of VP (I noticed that the more powerful the Golem, the less VP they have, figures right?), from 100 to only 12. You can buy items that restore your VP, but you can only carry 9 of them and they don't appear til mid-game. Learning skills for your human characters requires that you first buy them from a shop and then use SP to "teach" it to them. Like FF8, there are only a limited number of spots for actions (attacks, healing spells, and powerups) and supports (effects like cancel poison and HP +20%). One of the coolest things about this game is that you can save anywhere. I mean anywhere you can open up the menu you can save. It's great. Some things that bother me about the game I will just quickly list because they aren't that big a deal but I figured I'd mention: In talking sequences, they do use voice actors, but after every sentence, you need to hit A to continue. It gets alittle annoying because I like to sit back and enjoy it, instead of mashing a button every 5 seconds. Another problem in battle is that powerup buffs (like Damage -50% and Parameters +50%) do not stack, the new erases the old. I'm running out of room, but this game is definitely worth the buy, although it has its flaws, the plot is good, but the end kinda leaves you wanting more.Read full review
I had three days off from class and work, and I wanted a game to ignite my gaming passion and keep me occupied for those three days. I had seen Enchanted Arms several times; it had caught my attention with the cover and being an RPG title, so I finally picked it up to give it a go. It's your typical RPG style game, start slow, engage you with a story, grind, grind, grind til the finish. The combat system is pretty simple, placing you on a 3 x 3 grid facing your opponents grid of the same size with random enemy encounters. You have varied attacks hitting varying locations on the grid to smite your enemies and protect yourself. The combat itself is pretty easy to pick up, and once you learn the strengths and weaknesses of certain attacks you'll be wiping the floor with your enemies in no time. One of the things you do have to keep an eye on are Vitality Points, which will decrease after each battle depending on the number of turns taken and damage taken. It is imperative to keep battles short as lots of turns and lots of damage subtract from this total and reduce the number of battles your characters can participate in. When the total reaches zero, your character will enter battle with 1 health and 1 EP (magic). One of the fun features I enjoyed was the creation of golems. You can create a huge variety of golems to aid in your quests, from healers to damage dealers to downright weird creations. The Crazy Pizza golem certainly made my day with it's weirdness and style. Unfortunately, the golems all don't speak English so when they comment in battle and upon their creation you have no idea what they say. Fortunately, they don't play a part in cinematics. All in all, it was a good game that did what I wanted to do: it occupied my time and gave me a good challenge in trying to acquire all the golems. I enjoyed the game very much and would recommend it to all you die-hard RPG fans. Oh, and don't let Makoto turn you off this fun game.Read full review
Enchanted Arms looks like it has great potential as a JRPG. That is not the case in this game. The voice acting is so terrible that I actually had to switch to Japanese just to get some emotion in the story. The characters are poorly put together stereotypes, and the story is so cliche that it is hard to even get immersed in the game. The game is really easy and does not require thinking skills at all--just like the main character, an idiotic character who is all brawn and no brains. I will say this though, the combat is something new to the JRPG setting. It is a standard turn base, no surprise there, but it brings an interesting element to the table. It places your group on a 4x3 board but there is little thought that goes into character placement on the battlefield. I enjoyed that part of the game; although, it ended up becoming rather repetitive in the long run. I would recommend this game to those who want something familiar but with a slight variation.Read full review
Enchanted Arms was a fun game, if your expecting Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star pass this one up. If you're looking for a fun RPG for the 360 check it out. The story is very linear which is kinda lame, but it does tell pretty decent story by the time you finish. The graphics look great on a HDTV, which is a nice sell point. The games fighting system is not your standard chose a monster pick an attack, you have to be in range on a grid and you have to pick the right attack pattern. This adds a little more thought into the fighting system. It doesn't make the game great, but it does add an element of strategy over most RPGS. It's an easy 1000 gamer points also, you just have to play the game to get the achievements, no fancy secrets to unlock or tricks. If you finish you get the full 1000 points.Read full review
I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this game is average at best. Compared to other top hits for the Xbox 360 (such as Gears of War, Halo 3 or Resident Evil 5), this game seems mediocre. But, if you're looking for an old-fashion turn-based RPG (harder and harder to find, these days), then this is a good one. The first spin off a classic RPG is that the battles are formatted a little differently. Characters are placed on each side of the field (your side vs. enemy side). Each field is a small grid, aprox. 3x10. Each character takes up a certain amount of space. Attacks also attack in their own pattern. Some attacks attack everyone in one line, some attack the front 2 rows, some attack one column. Another weird feature is the characters that battle with you: about 4 or 5 main characters are capable of battle. The rest are "golems" which are creatures (yugioh fans will be tempted to call them "monsters"), that are either battled and captured in dugeons or bought from shops. Both characters & golems level up to increase health, damage, defense - typical RPG stuff. Only main characters learn new abilities, though. The graphics are decent and the music appropreate (though "good" may be a little optimistic). There are times when the voice-acting really sets the scene, and other times when you just wish there was a "skip" button (which there is not). Another thing on that, there are times when the conversation is dull and boring and frankly, doesn't add anything to the storyline. There's plenty of gametime (the entire game took me about 50 hours). -However, a decent amount of it is spent training and trying to win money at the casino (the only way to get some of the more powerful golems). The games difficulty is mixed. The beggining is easy. Later in gets pretty hard. Then easier. The final boss (SPOILER: it has like, 6 stages) is difficult and time-consuming (took me 1 hour & 32 minutes). If you can get the game for $30 or less, it's worth at least playing around with. Much more, and I'd just save it for Final Fantasy when it comes out.Read full review
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