Reviews of Enchanted Arms - Xbox 360

Customer Ratings:

First off, let me say that I'm a huge role playing game fan. I have been for as long as I can remember. One of my main gripes with Microsoft's XBox was that there was a huge lack of good RPGs. It seems with the release of Oblivion, which was an action RPG, and the release of this game, which is a turn based RPG, they are off to a good start with the 360.

The battles in this game are fun and strategic. Your characters are placed on grid-like terrain, and it's your job to move them around and position them to be able to attack the enemy. The enemy is also on the same grid, opposite of you. The positions of which your characters are placed at the start of each battle are random, so it does require strategy on your part.

Another huge part of this game is golemn collecting. Think of it as a Pokemon-like collection experience. Many of these golemns have unique powers that will be of great help to you on your journey. Golemns that you can collect are different from normal enemies in that they actually show up visibly on your map, as opposed to the random battles you will enter into to fight normal monsters.

The story is the best part of the game. It starts out slow for the first few hours, and then after a certain event that happens to you in the game, it's full steam ahead.

The main character, Atsuma, is your average meatheaded student who doesn't quite pay attention in class. Throughout the game, his learning curve doesn't seem to improve too much. He's always the last character to figure out what is exactly happening around him. His arm is what ties this story together, as it is the source of a mysterious power. Throughout the game, more backstory about his arm will be revealed to you. At first you will be joined by two characters, Toya and Makoto. Toya is more like a mentor to Atsuma and takes him under his wing at the beginning of the game. Makoto is the game's over-the-top stereotypical gay guy. He's madly in love with Toya and claims himself to be the president of Toya's fan club. Makoto is the source of much of the game's great comic relief for the first few hours of gameplay.

Later in the game, you'll be joined by Karin, Raigar, and Yuki. Karin is a headstrong woman who is part of a group called the "resistance movement". Raigar is Karin's personal bodyguard, who reveals himself to be freakishly strong. When you first meet him, he doesn't talk much, but he'll open up as the game progresses. Yuki is a selfish little girl who's main goal in life is to become the most famous golemn hunter that ever lived. She's also the source of alot of the game's funny dialog as the game goes on, because she has something to say about everything.

Speaking of the dialog, it's suprisingly fresh and natural. It never tries too hard to be funny, and in return you'll find yourself laughing aloud many times throughout the game.

I would love to reveal more of the story to you, but since it's the greatest part of the game, you'll have to get it and see it for yourself. Overall, Enchanted Arms is an enjoyable experience that has a good few fun sidequests to enjoy along with it's main storyline, which should keep you busy for many hours. I'd personally suggest this game to anyone who likes turn based-style battles or anyone who enjoys a fulfilling RPG story.

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I really enjoyed this game. It brought me back to the style of play I first experienced with the Final Fantasy series. Something about the mini battles and the turn based fighting is a welcome change to all the real-time combat every other game in the world incorporates.

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As other reviewers have said, this is basically a complete Final Fantasy rip-off, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and its buggy in that the game tends to crash at odd times, which is a bad thing

Other bad things include the complete linearity of the early levels, where you can't turn left or right at all, you basically just follow a narrow path to each encounter, and also the very very slow save/load menu, which gets slower the more saves you have. I would reccomend just saving in maybe 2 slots because of that, and over writing one or the other whenever you save (which should be often)

Now on to the good: the game gets ALOT better if you stick with it. There's a little indicator that shows how far along you are, and I almost gave up on it in the 15-20% range because of the many problems, but for whatever reason i stuck with it and it got much much better 40% or so

The levels opened up and you could back track and explore sections you might have skipped earlier. You got more choice about what order to do things in too. And finally the story line kicked in, and by the 50% mark i was pretty much just playing it to see what the characters would say and do next in the cut scenes, which is a tribute to the story if not the game play

Another really over looked element is the humor in the voice acting. Its cheesy and silly but I really did laugh out loud in several places. So give it a chance and you might be surprised at how much better the middle is than the beginning

Honest reviews on Enchanted Arms - Xbox 360

I am 77% through the game and I was liking it up to this point. Finding different Golems through out the game reminds me kind of a Pokemon game except they don't evolve and they don't learn new abilities unfortunately. I guess i'll do some pros and cons of the game.

+ Fast paced battles. You sometimes have to be very strategic up against the stronger enemies. The good thing is it gives you the option to retry the same battle if you lose instead of having to load up from another save point.

+ You can save anywhere in the game. If you go into a battle against a lost golem and are using the wrong characters to defeat it you can load up the last save before you get to them and switch characters.

+ Lot's of different golems to use throughout the game.

Now for my negatives

VP is stupid. When you play the game you will at some point come across the Holy Beast Shrine. The further you explore the more like a maze it becomes. Making it harder to get to heal spot to increase your VP. The thing about VP is that each character starts out with a certain amount and once it hits 0 that character will enter all battles with only 1 HP and if the enemy get's a jump on you your dead. Doesn't even give you a chance to escape.

The game only allows you to carry 9 of each healing item. I don't like that. In the Holy Beast Shrine you can use all the heal items you can get. So I guess it was ok up to that point.

The game in all though is pretty fun. Like any other RPG though you will usually hit a frustrating point.

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First off, I really liked this game for the fact that i'm a big turn-based RPG fan. So warning to the buyer, Enchanted Arms is an RPG in the truest sense of the phrase. I will start by saying that if you aren't a turn-based RPG fan you should probably rent this game first to see if you like it, it's definitely worth a rental!!! This is a genre that the 360 was missing, though there are other RPG's for the 360, none are Turn based. So let's get started!!

Graphics, Great!! I'd say definitely better than Xbox or PS2, but not Amazing, but I would say "Great". The graphics shine the most in my opinion when in a battle, magic spells and skills shine vibrantly and beautifully!! There are also extra extended skills which are loosely similar to the FFVII limit breaks, which look amazing!! Are the graphics Next-Gen? I would say yes!! Do they compare to other graphically amazing 360 games like Fight Night 3 (just one example)? No it doesn't but at times the game does show 360 power.

Sound, Okay, nothing amazing here at all! Voice over are average, they are good but I have seen better. Background music is typical of your average RPG.

Controls, Great. For a turn-based RPG that is. I mean it is turn based so it controls never get complicated, Menu navigation is really easy and standard I was able to figure out how to upgrade skills, equip, and synthesize golems without ever looking at the manual.

Gameplay, okay this is where and why I decided to give this game a 4 instead of a overall 3. The gameplay is pretty fresh, because of the addition of Golem creating and using them in Battle, which I will touch on a little later. But first the battle system, which is a pretty good combo of Turn-base/strategy, cause your team is place on a grid where you can only move your players anywhere within the grid, of course movements are limited to spaces available and how far a specific character can move. So strategy comes in to play by trying to put yourself in range to attack, heal others, and defend. What really impressed me was the use of Golems, which I can only compare very loosely to Pokemon. Golems are used similar to how Pokemon are used, i.e. to help you fight, heal, protect, etc. This feature adds another level of gameplay to this game which raised this game from "mediocre" to "Very good". Simply because you can capture parts of golems you have fought or randomly find parts to create your own Golems to fight for you. Building different golems is pretty easy and quite addicting, thus far. I am only in the first 25% of the game right now and I am already addicted to creating golems from parts I have found, I only imagine this feature getting better with the ability to build stronger and more interesting golems. Without this feature this would have been a really mediocre RPG. So overall the gameplay holds this title together and great gameplay is what we all look for in a game right?

Story, the story so far seems to be average, like I said I am only 25% in to it so I am hoping this will improve as the game goes on but for right now there is nothing amazing here as far as the story goes.

So overall, if you are a turn based RPG fan and you own a 360 then you will definitely want to pick this game up. But this game is definitely not a ground breaker and definitely not a reason to run out and buy a 360 (there are other games that warrant that). But all in all I can't think of a reason to tell any XBOX 360 turn based RPG fans not buy this game, especially since it is the only one of its kind available for the 360. For others though I would only suggest waiting for a demo or a rental to see if you like what this game does.

I personally am a fan of lots of all Genres of games, with the exception of a lot of strict car driving games, so I thoroughly enjoy this game so far. I could definitely understand an argument for this game not being even close to one of the best RPG's ever, but for the first turn based RPG for the 360 I think it fairs pretty well.