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September 11, 2006 | 12:56 AM PST
Japanese RPGs experienced a noticeable decline in popularity over the course of the last generation, as the growing popularity of the first person shooters and emergent gameplay models in the West, and the shrinking Japanese console market in the East left little room for the linear storylines and slower, turn-based battles that had been so popular during the 32bit generation. Xbox owners didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter, as the console was flooded with first-person shooters and sandbox titles but was left high and dry as far as quality Japanese RPGs – no doubt a result of the console’s sub-par performance in the Japanese market. Considering that the Xbox 360 is actually doing worse than its predecessor in the region, the prognosis for traditional RPG-loving Xbox 360 owning community is not a good one. Thankfully, Ubisoft ensured that Xbox 360 owners would have at least one chance at enjoying the genre by bringing From Software’s Enchanted Arms over-seas. Enjoyable but flawed, Enchanted Arms can be considered a gift to fans of the genre. Those who already love Japanese RPGs will enjoy, if not adore the game, but it won’t bring any new fans into the fold.
Story
1000 years ago, mankind had mastered the art of magic and focused their talents towards the creation of slave labor, powerful beasts called golems that performed whatever tasks the humans instructed them, including fighting their wars. In one such war, the Golems decided they had had enough of human rule and began to indiscriminately destroy every piece of human civilization they came into contact with. It took the combined efforts of all men to destroy most of the golems, and seal those they couldn’t destroy – the most powerful Devil golems – beneath the earth. Now, such magic is unheard of, and only a significantly weaker magic called enchantment is openly used and taught. However, nefarious forces are at work to uncover the secrets of the ancient, powerful magic once used by mankind, and bring the threat of the Devil golems back to the surface.
Players assume the role of Atsuma, a dim-witted young man with no memory of his past, and a special gift that cause him grief at the outset of the adventure, but is eventually identified as the key to saving the universe. Over the course of the game Atsuma will recruit additional characters to take on the growing threat, as well as help said characters resolve their own personal conflicts as they are uncovered over the course of journey. The dialogue is general decent if unexceptional, but none of the characters ever develop to the point where the player is likely to feel a connection. A certain character is such a one-dimensional stereotype that he has to have been intended purely as comic relief (some might find it offensive, but really, if you aren’t offended by something in videogames today, you probably aren’t playing that many games). The storyline is presented through extended bouts of dialogue between major characters and pre-rendered cinematics. Speaking of the cinematics, they are integrated very well; whereas the transition from real-time graphics to CG is typically jarring, its incredibly smooth in Enchanted Arms. Overall, save a few welcome plot twists interspersed throughout the game, the storyline behind Enchanted Arms is fairly predictable fare for anyone that has played even a handful of games in the genre. That said it’s still enjoyable at certain points and inoffensive in general, plus the interactions between the major characters are often humorous.
Gameplay
Progressing through Enchanted Arms is a fairly straight-forward trek from point A to point B, as players are always limited from exploring those regions of the world map they haven’t yet accessed through major story events. The term ‘exploring’ is somewhat generous in this instance, as any area off the beaten trail is typically in the form of an extremely obvious side path leading to a treasure. The player can also explore and interact with areas in standard ways, such as climbing ladders, swimming, and activating switches, all accomplished through pressing the A button. In case pressing the A button seems confusing, no worries, a prompt will appear anytime its possible to interact with the environment, and the game provides an extensive tutorial regarding how to push the A button. Players can also choose to partake in side-quests assigned by NPC characters, but there will be many instances in which the quest in question requires the player to enter an area they don’t have access to yet, forcing them to return to the continue along the main quest. Considering players typically engage in side-quests as a means of side-stepping the repetition and tedium of a level-up grind prior to a boss or difficult area by gaining experience while working toward an optional short-term goal, its somewhat puzzling that the developers would adopt a system that made doing so impossible. Make no mistake, even by Japanese RPG standards, Enchanted Arms is extremely linear.
The battle system is easily the strongest aspect of Enchanted Arms; thankfully so considering the amount of time players will be spending in the midst of it. As is typical of the genre, battles are random, unavoidable and annoyingly frequent. Actually, Enchanted Arms has one of the highest encounter rates of any RPG in recent memory, and players will often find themselves unable to take more than a few steps after one battle before finding themselves back in the midst of combat. Perhaps consciously designed as a means of countering the high battle rate, the nature of the combat system makes survival under such circumstances rather simple. After every battle, the entire party’s health and magic are fully restored, ensuring they are ready for that battle five steps ahead of them. That said, members of the player’s party will lose ‘vitality points’ for each time their HP and EP are refilled. Think of vitality points as a bank account that the game draws from to fill the HP and EP of the party members, in order to ensure that the game can continue to recharge characters after battle, players will have recharge their vitality points at various replenishing points interspersed throughout any given area. No more vitality points means any HP and EP lost during the course of a battle stays gone. That said, in our experience, it is very difficult to run out of vitality points, and in cases when it happens, all the player has to do is swap out party members for those with a full tank of VP.
The battlefield is composed of two separate 4x3 grids, one for the opposition, and the other for the four player characters. A character turn is a composed of two phases, one to move the character to a specific position on the grid, and the other to cue up the command for the character to eventually perform. Once all the players have moved to their respective positions, the player can launch the four commands in whichever order they please. If players happen to perform certain commands in the correct order, then the attacks will actually combine to create a larger, more powerful combo attack, provided the areas of effect overlap on top of an enemy.
Story
1000 years ago, mankind had mastered the art of magic and focused their talents towards the creation of slave labor, powerful beasts called golems that performed whatever tasks the humans instructed them, including fighting their wars. In one such war, the Golems decided they had had enough of human rule and began to indiscriminately destroy every piece of human civilization they came into contact with. It took the combined efforts of all men to destroy most of the golems, and seal those they couldn’t destroy – the most powerful Devil golems – beneath the earth. Now, such magic is unheard of, and only a significantly weaker magic called enchantment is openly used and taught. However, nefarious forces are at work to uncover the secrets of the ancient, powerful magic once used by mankind, and bring the threat of the Devil golems back to the surface.
Players assume the role of Atsuma, a dim-witted young man with no memory of his past, and a special gift that cause him grief at the outset of the adventure, but is eventually identified as the key to saving the universe. Over the course of the game Atsuma will recruit additional characters to take on the growing threat, as well as help said characters resolve their own personal conflicts as they are uncovered over the course of journey. The dialogue is general decent if unexceptional, but none of the characters ever develop to the point where the player is likely to feel a connection. A certain character is such a one-dimensional stereotype that he has to have been intended purely as comic relief (some might find it offensive, but really, if you aren’t offended by something in videogames today, you probably aren’t playing that many games). The storyline is presented through extended bouts of dialogue between major characters and pre-rendered cinematics. Speaking of the cinematics, they are integrated very well; whereas the transition from real-time graphics to CG is typically jarring, its incredibly smooth in Enchanted Arms. Overall, save a few welcome plot twists interspersed throughout the game, the storyline behind Enchanted Arms is fairly predictable fare for anyone that has played even a handful of games in the genre. That said it’s still enjoyable at certain points and inoffensive in general, plus the interactions between the major characters are often humorous.
Gameplay
Progressing through Enchanted Arms is a fairly straight-forward trek from point A to point B, as players are always limited from exploring those regions of the world map they haven’t yet accessed through major story events. The term ‘exploring’ is somewhat generous in this instance, as any area off the beaten trail is typically in the form of an extremely obvious side path leading to a treasure. The player can also explore and interact with areas in standard ways, such as climbing ladders, swimming, and activating switches, all accomplished through pressing the A button. In case pressing the A button seems confusing, no worries, a prompt will appear anytime its possible to interact with the environment, and the game provides an extensive tutorial regarding how to push the A button. Players can also choose to partake in side-quests assigned by NPC characters, but there will be many instances in which the quest in question requires the player to enter an area they don’t have access to yet, forcing them to return to the continue along the main quest. Considering players typically engage in side-quests as a means of side-stepping the repetition and tedium of a level-up grind prior to a boss or difficult area by gaining experience while working toward an optional short-term goal, its somewhat puzzling that the developers would adopt a system that made doing so impossible. Make no mistake, even by Japanese RPG standards, Enchanted Arms is extremely linear.
The battle system is easily the strongest aspect of Enchanted Arms; thankfully so considering the amount of time players will be spending in the midst of it. As is typical of the genre, battles are random, unavoidable and annoyingly frequent. Actually, Enchanted Arms has one of the highest encounter rates of any RPG in recent memory, and players will often find themselves unable to take more than a few steps after one battle before finding themselves back in the midst of combat. Perhaps consciously designed as a means of countering the high battle rate, the nature of the combat system makes survival under such circumstances rather simple. After every battle, the entire party’s health and magic are fully restored, ensuring they are ready for that battle five steps ahead of them. That said, members of the player’s party will lose ‘vitality points’ for each time their HP and EP are refilled. Think of vitality points as a bank account that the game draws from to fill the HP and EP of the party members, in order to ensure that the game can continue to recharge characters after battle, players will have recharge their vitality points at various replenishing points interspersed throughout any given area. No more vitality points means any HP and EP lost during the course of a battle stays gone. That said, in our experience, it is very difficult to run out of vitality points, and in cases when it happens, all the player has to do is swap out party members for those with a full tank of VP.
The battlefield is composed of two separate 4x3 grids, one for the opposition, and the other for the four player characters. A character turn is a composed of two phases, one to move the character to a specific position on the grid, and the other to cue up the command for the character to eventually perform. Once all the players have moved to their respective positions, the player can launch the four commands in whichever order they please. If players happen to perform certain commands in the correct order, then the attacks will actually combine to create a larger, more powerful combo attack, provided the areas of effect overlap on top of an enemy.
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November 20, 2009
