Enchanted Arms is the first traditional Japanese developed RPG on the Xbox 360, though it is not exactly traditional in design. The game takes place in this semi-modern world full of people called Enchanters. These people have pets of sorts called golems, which have pretty much replaced the working man on the more lame jobs in the world like vendor selling and maids. Of course it would not be a Japanese developed game if these robots did not fight each other and some were evil, which through a short back story the antagonists of the game are revealed. Long ago in the game's history there were a group of golems called Devil Golems who did what all evil things do and tried to destroy the human world, so they had to be sealed away.
Of course evil never rests and rises again but for once it comes in an odd form, a young boys arm. Atsuma is the main character of the game, a kid who was supposedly born with this arm which makes him an outcast among a lot of people. Of course it does not help his case any that he is the dumbest kid in school and very open about it, or that his best friend is the smartest and most popular male in school named Toya. Oh, and to round out the trio of friends is a cross-dressing openly gay man named Makoto who attempts to make out with Toya the first few hours of the game.
The story follows Atsuma as he attempts to learn more about his arm and stop one of the Devil Golems he kind of accidentally woke up from long years of sleep thanks to his arm talking to him. Overall it is pretty standard save the world stuff but the characters are really what hold it together. Over the course of the game instead of being withered down with boring filler at every new place you go the game instead goes the route of character development; sadly though, this leaves the main plot in the dust most of the time. All of the main cast develop and mature while the plot itself is forgotten half of the time, the game never gave off the feeling of imminent danger the 40 hours it took for me to complete it.
With great characters it is a shame that Enchanted Arms production levels fall flat on their face. While the voice acting has its highlights, the cross-dressing gay Makoto as an example, overall it is terrible and is one of the few games I forced myself to switch over to the Japanese track also included in the game so if it was bad I would not know the difference. To add to the this the majority of the cutscenes in the game are nothing more than models of characters from the waist up appearing on one half of the screen to strike a pose and trade dialogue with another character. The occasional scene with dramatic camera angles and action only made me hunger for more of those since they were actually well made.
The visuals are not exactly on par with other “next-gen” games either. Aside from the nice resolution the game looks more like a late Playstation 2 game. Environments are stretched out and boring with repetitive textures and objects with no variety in any given area. Everything also has this plastic sheen about it that makes nothing look very realistic.
On the gameplay side of things Enchanted Arms actually mixes a few styles of combat together for a pleasant surprise. The combat itself is your simple menu heavy turn based combat, but each character has a place on a small 3x6 grid so positioning is a big thing. Don't go into the game expecting a lot of moving around on a big open battlefield though, like many Strategy-RPGs. Enchanted Arms is all about positioning your fighters in ways so you can maximize their damage output with a combo meter that fills up every few rounds.
As mentioned before golems are supposed to play a huge part in the game. You can build over 100 of them and even take them online to fight if you want, but with a lack of customization its actually more fun to use the human characters. The only thing you can do with golems is increase their stats through “SP” gained from fighting battles, as opposed to humans who can equip new weapons, learn new skills, all on top of also being able to choose their stat growth. The only reason ever to use a golem would be because you like one as the negatives outweigh the positives concerning their limitations.
Outside of battles are not exactly fun though, the game uses the worn out random battle system and the encounter rate is too high for its own good. As long as you fight every battle you encounter the game becomes easy, and with the option to fast forward battles or even let the AI select your attacks for you, you can be ultra lazy while playing through the game. The landscapes are also very linear and there are next to no puzzles to solve aside from gathering ether to charge machines so they will move out of your way or open a door. Its a disappointment really because many of the areas that look like wide open fields are really just long walkways with invisible walls. It makes the dungeon crawling part of the game a complete bore you just want to get over with.
However, none of that is a game breaker for any potential buyer. Enchanted Arms may be weak in many areas but it is still a solid RPG on a machine that does not have many. Sure the production values are not great and the story is lame in parts, but Enchanted Arms is still a solid game for anyone that enjoys RPGs.