Enchanted Arms Review - Xbox 360, Playstation 3

We present not one, but TWO firsts here at Cheshire Cat Studios. For the first time ever, we will be conducting a dual-review of a video game. In addition, this review will feature the two founders of Cheshire Cat Studios, LaughingMan and Zimes, doing a review together.

We proudly present an ass-ripping review of one of the absolute WORST RPGs ever made:

Zimes Review

So after being a lazy ass and a lurker on the site I was convinced by my lovely site-mates that I am better at writing scathing reviews than a supporting one they suggested that I try Enchanted Arms. Now, knowing the pain that I went through with The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery, I thought nothing could be worse. I guess I should have been quicker to pick up several clues that were left for me not only by the people on this site, but when my own mom laughs at a game name, I should have known to walk away and say: "No thanks, I have a penis." to the suggestion.

Experience

Starting off it seems like you are in the middle of a story where the main character is doing something stupid to screw the world over. Your friends try and stop you but you end up in the middle of a battle even though you have not had a tutorial on how to fight. The fighting is pretty simple so it wasn't that hard to get use to. What kind of got on my nerves was that there was this one character, a chick who sounded like a gay dude. Fortunately the fight was quick and I did not have to put up with it for long since the enemy wiped her ass with our faces and we were done. The story then went back a few weeks in time and explained what was going on.

F*CK! I AM IN SCHOOL! All I could think was: "Where is the awesome gunblade?" because that is what made Final Fantasy VIII worth playing. Turns out that your friends are there with you. They are the same characters that you got ass planted with so I am looking for the chick. No, there is no chick, just some openly gay douche bag that you have to put in your team since he is the healer. F*CK ME! ("NO! Not you, you douche bag, put your dick back in your pants before I rip off your head and shit down your throat.") Fortunately Enchanted Arms is buggy enough that if you go too fast with skipping the dialog, the talking stops all together.

In this class, they are being taught about Devil Golems and the Golem war that was over 1000 years ago. From the class you get: Devil Golems were man made and self aware. They used magic which is the full use of enchanting. The use of magic was lost to them. They are un-aware of how to defeat any Devil Golem. They don't know where any of the Devil Golems are located. Okay it's a lot of bullshit but its part of the storyline so I will go along with it.

When I get to the festival, I find out that my character just wants to fight. Turns out if you want to fight you have to fight with a golem on your team. So after doing a really easy mini game of finding tickets you get a free golem and you get to fight in the arena (where the f**k did this come from? this is supposed to be a tent!). After I beat the shit out of my opponent my next fight gets interrupted by Yuffie from Final Fantasy VII; all except she doesn't have the huge ninja star (she has guns instead) and they call her 'Yuki'.

*FACE,

SLAMS,

ON,

KEYBOARD*

I swear the people that came up with Enchanted Arms were sitting around the table and doing just this:

Yeah that would be a great idea, IF YOU"RE A F**KTARD!!! Fortunately Yuki doesn't join your party. Unfortunately, she probably will later on in the story. Now, I don't know if it's all the weird shit that Japan does, but I think the above was more likely to come out of someone's cock pleaser just to kiss someone's ass.

So Miss Yuffie, I mean Yuki, comes into play and tries to fight you in which she goes off about being a golem hunter and that she is going to kick your ass to prove it. You turn around and tell her off once and she goes off crying. She comes back 5 minuets later to which she says you owe her something which I don't give a rat's ass at the moment since my 8 year old next to me at the time ask me if there was any way to shut her up because she was being annoying. Ah kids. This is a JRPG. There is no way to shut the stupid up.

Sound

There is nothing spectacular at all. The sound is not outstanding with nothing too out of place except for the annoying voices. The music is NOT soundtrack worthy let alone game worthy. This is turning out be 50 pounds of crushed ass forced into a 5 gallon bucket.

Experience Continued

So now I have this Golem in my inventory and now I can have 4 people in my party. I was hoping to get rid of Gaylord McGee and farm some cash but game play got very linear and I ended up going back to school after an event. The golems only speak Japanese. Thank goodness my 8 year old daughter is smart that I can have her translate it. Most of the time the golems just say something along the lines of: "Ow that hurt!" or "Lets do that again!" , but every now and then they will say something totally retarded that my daughter will reply with: "Of course we aren't going to lose, we have four in our party and are 10 levels higher than the monster we are fighting!" I ask about what the golem said and she says: "The Golem said we can't lose." My guess is that Ubisoft didn't want to fork over the cash to have the Golems translated and with the shit my daughter is translating I am glad I don't have to listen to it in English.

Now just playing the few hours that I have done so far, I realize that they are treating the main character kind of like he is stupid. It's not until we go back to school that I realize that a rock is smarter than this kid. They are constantly pausing Enchanted Arms to tell me how to do shit. By the time I get to the dog, I am ready to throw the controller at the next cock-sucker that tries to tell me what to do, on OR off screen. I realize that I have to use my action button to do cool shit, just don't treat me like a dumbass since, yes, I GET IT. HIT THE F**KING A BUTTON TO DO SOMETHING!!! I GET IT!!!

Not even 5 hours into Enchanted Arms and that cum guzzling queen is GONE!!! Atsuma ended up waking up a devil golem (the same one from the beginning of the game) and ends up ass-planting the group. Devil golems are golems that have no master and use magic as well. They are very powerful creatures that usually end nations if not life on continents. Here is where they also explain a little about the difference between magic and enchanting. Enchanting is just a small part of magic and magic has been dead to this world for centuries since it's use usually ends up to end of the world type scenario. So because of big red dumb ass, Toya is taken away, Makoto is MIA, and the dumb bitch ends up blacking out. I hope Makoto is dead but knowing that this game is based off of so many bad things in JRPGs he is going to be back. It like waiting for a punch in the crotch. You know its going to happen and you know it will hurt. Unfortunately I have also lost the know-it-all bad-ass of the group.

Story

It turns out that there are two groups of characters. One group that is more like your walk through group and one group is your adventure group. If they would have given you great characters right up front then the characters you have for the adventure group you would quit right off the bat but, they give you crappy characters up front and crappy characters later.

By now the story is pretty see through. You already know that the Devil Golems are going to be revived; you already know that Doofus McDumbass knows nothing of himself while the world around him will tell him what to do. The story is so weak that you can tell what is going to happen, when it’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen. As far as why, not even Nostradamus will be able to tell you.

Really the developers took no time or included any talent in the making of the story of this game. There are no surprises. There are no twists. You feel no empathy towards the characters or their plight. Once again another JRPG fails.

Experience Continued Again

I lost my first group (Toya and Makoto) because Atsuma, the main character that has only one brain cell, awoke what they call a Devil Golem. Devil Golems are golems that have no master and use magic as well. They are very powerful creatures that usually destroy nations if not wipe out all life on entire continents. Here is where they also explain a little about the difference between magic and enchanting. Enchanting is just a small part of Magic and Magic has been dead to this world for centuries since it's use usually results in an end-of-the-world type scenario.

Gameplay

Along the way you learn about the combat system. It's like a mix of Final Fantasy Chronicles (or Crystals) and fixed grid. Not a hard system to get use to at all, but since they treat you like a retarded monkey, they make you go through a tutorial of the battle but have so far failed to tell you how to level up your character or use some of the points you collect in battle. Not like it helps you anyways. Leveling up your character depends on how much cash you have to buy skills or weapon upgrades. There are no skill trees, no interesting ways to learn more powerful combos, weapons, or spells. Just cold hard cash. What is even worse is that when you try and go to the casino that they have in game, they make you trade your cash for chips, but won't let you trade back you chips for cash. So with the roulette trick you easily make more than you need but can't use any of it to put back into cash so you end up farming levels and cash.

It is very boring playing the game. The Fixed grid isn't bad and it's a nice refresher from the action adventure play style that seem to be taking over all of the new RPG games, but they definitely need some sort of break from the repetition of the fights. Enchanted Arms does not take advantage of giving the player a break at any time, so bring a pillow.

Characters

By far it took them no time or effort to create these characters or try to come up with a twist in the story. These are all cardboard cut outs from different games made 10 times worse in Enchanted Arms. The only two acceptable characters in the entire game are Toya and Raigar and even then there is no surprise to what happens to them or what role they play in the game.

They really need to change the name of Enchanted Arms to: 3 Bitches and a Dude. Dumb Bitch (Atsuma), Mega Bitch (Karin), and Naive Bitch (Yuki).

Experience Continued AGAIN

So after losing the two original characters that treat you like a retard, you end up in jail in the neighboring city and pick up two new characters, Karin and Raigar, who also treat you like a retarded monkey. I love the faith that Ubisoft puts into their players. I get it, press A to do something that you need to have done. Quit with the quick lectures about it. It's pointless and I'd rather not play this game any longer than I need to. And then I end up at a casino.

I can tell that Karin is a princess, and Raigar is the captain of the guard just by the way they talk and act towards one another. Its okay Ubisoft, some people really are that dumb. Most people that play these types of games though are not. Now keep in mind, I have only played this for about 20 hours so I could be totally wrong, if so, cool, you have improved the final score of the review. If not, the score will suffer.

F***! How many times will I run into Yuki before she joins me or I kill her (please oh please oh please let me fight and kill her!!!) One of the times I run into her the main character actually grows some balls right there on the spot (you can see them growing!) and tells her to "shut the hell up right now!" Then, because you are treated like a retarded monkey, your balls shrivel up when your party says you were being too hard on her.

Ubisoft really doesn't let you have any fun. There is a point in Enchanted Arms where you have to charge up a really big gun to shoot shit that is in your way. I'm thinking "rat-a-tat-tat mother f**kers!" I'm going to unleash hell for a few seconds of fun and blow shit up! What happens next is a cut scene of you pushing a button to blow shit up. LAME!

The casino is an easy way for you to get free upgrades. Take a little of your TP, convert it to chips, save the game, bet on roulette, win - save, lose - load and repeat until you win. Win enough and put 1k on each of the last 18 of the roulette wheel and win tons! Buy the tradable items with your winnings and get some awesome upgrades, or lame ones. Either way, it's worth the time of not grinding out TPs for upgrades.

Graphics

Graphics are mediocre at best. The cut scenes are alright but they fail in comparison to any cut scene that you see from a Final Fantasy or Blizzard game. I would rate the games graphics just above that of Final Fantasy 8 I'm not asking for much when it comes to graphics for any game since it will be harder and harder to get better but, if it is a RGP: you can at least pump up the graphics on the cut scenes to be on par with Final Fantasy.

Experience Continued Yet Again

Holy f*** I can't go on. I have gotten to the point to where the progression says that I'm 46% done and I can't go on. The story is just so plain see-through and it leaves nothing to the imagination. Although turn based gameplay is normally good, the gameplay in Enchanted Arms is just so boring that I was falling asleep going into new areas. And the characters are just so horrible and they don't GO AWAY!!!

Those cock teases even leave your party to take care of personal shit and just when you think that you are finally rid of them (except Raigar, he is actually pretty cool) so you set out on your own (seriously, you are at the gate of the city, LEAVING ALONE) AND THOSE F**K TARDS COME BACK!!! F**K!

It got so that after every long trip I came back, hit the casino doing the make loads of cash trick, bought out everything I could, went out to fight some shit, and maybe losing a character or finding out something about the main character. Rinse, repeat. Shoot me now. . .

The main character is so f**king stupid that everyone and their mom knows more about what you can do EXCEPT YOU! Didn't I just have to go through some gay characters and a dumb-shit story line to find out that there were no Golem Wars for a few thousand years? Didn't I just hear that most people forgot about it? Didn't we just see theories on how magic was used? HOW COME EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT MAGIC OR THE GOLEM WARS THEN?!?!

Consider this in the DONT F**KING RENT pile and cock punch anyone that tells you otherwise.

Counter review to a Counter review (aka Penny Arcade can suck my dick)

Now, taken that I have played this game for about 25 hours, and he has played about 8 when he wrote his review, neither of us (while writing our reviews) had finished the game, so I will still point out a few things. Gabe is right about only one thing in his counter review to the gaming mags (who gave it a low score of 6.4 out of 10 HA!) it is a turn based RPG game, you should not dock it points because of it.

OK, I won't. I will however dock points for the graphics being less than outstanding, sound being absolutely crappy, dialog being a big pile of shit, characters being cardboard cut outs from other games (yes Gabe, if you can tell what a character is all about by playing them BEFORE the game finally tells you about the character, its a cardboard cutout, dumbass), No emotional connection between characters, poor story line, and just god-awful characters!

BUT PLAYING AS GOLEMS DOESN'T MAKE THE STORY ANY BETTER! So if I am against playing any of the main characters, I can always use the golems. Sure, I can go and play this game more than I want to, to go get a sub par healer so I don't have to play with Makoto as my healer. The thing is, it doesn't effect the story line what so ever.

So you know those real annoying parts of the game, you know, anytime they talk. ITS STILL F**KING THEM!!! I don't get to get rid of any of the dumb ass dialog because I change characters Im fighting with, in fact I get my ass handed to me quicker when I use the weaker characters Golem characters with the annoying non-translated voices.

So now I get the choice of playing as balls or playing as dick through a story line that is complete ass. It's like here: do you want shit on a stick, or a shitcicle? You shouldn't want either of them.

So what you are saying is to not play Enchanted Arms with the characters they made for the story of Enchanted Arms and use robots you CAN'T F**KING UNDERSTAND? It's bad enough that the golems are made by either Pedo bears cousin or the flunkey of the Gundam convention but the ones you can collect for your level aren't worth two shits rubbed together. So not only can you not defeat easy enemies, you have to take time to level up mediocre talent instead of your heavy hitters. Yeah, I'm going to pass on that.

The combat is boring. It puts me to sleep. It is not challenging. There is not enough of a break from the monotony of the combat. They could have put some mini games that were a part of the story to help out but, they didn't.

And Enchanted Arms DOESN”T HAVE BETTER GRAPHICS. In fact I get to go back a decade or so and revisit some of those crappy graphics instead. Sure there are spots where it looks good, but like the popular website thatguywiththeglasses.com, I have to wade through too much shit to find a gem worth watching.

Really! If you are going to dumb down the combat of Enchanted Arms I better damn well get some awesome graphics, or a sweet ass blow-your-mind-away soundtrack, or some decent characters to make up for it! Want examples? Here goes:

Do I need to continue embarrassing you, Gabe, for sticking up for this piece of shit? Or do you get the point?

So far there is nothing in this game that would make up for the lack of character development, crappy story line, standard graphics, and really shitty music. Are you OK playing with sub-par games, Gabe? Cause one f**king thing is for f**king certain: I for sure am sick of this type of shit being put out! For any RGP out there, you must be EXCELLENT in atleast one or more of the 4 following criteria to slate my wrath:

F***
.
.
.
.
.
OFF!

F***! If people put up with this type of shit and give it decent scores, we are going to end up with more of it! NO MORE!!! If it sucks you better let the developers know so we are NOT stuck with more shitty, less-than half-assed games. Having a passing score of 6.4 is stupid! When will the reviewing magazines get the cock out of the mouth and call it like it is? That's right, they won't or else they won't get paid on the side. That is not the sign of a true game reviewer in my mind but I guess that's just me.

I do this for the love of gaming and not to be paid mountains of cash to give a bad game a good score. Get the Ubisoft cock out of you mouth Gabe, it's embarrassing the few of us who had some respect for you.

Experience Completed

After taking about a month break from Enchanted Arms (my penis was filling a law suit against me) I tried to pick it back up. I ended up falling asleep going through a new area. There really is no challenge to this game. Once you have played the first 5 minuets of Enchanted Arms you have played the rest.

I really need to trust myself and give up hope on these types of games. I keep thinking to myself: "The whole game can't be this bad" and it just gets worse and worse. Going from characters that you can't stand, to getting more characters you can't stand. This game is not a refreshing change of pace, it is a punch to the cock so you can taste your balls.

LaughingMan Review

I won't bullshit any of you when I start my review with the following story:

I sat down to Enchanted Arms with an entirely open mind. I watched the opening video and like most Japanese RPGs the video is a flashy montage that doesn't make a fucking bit of sense.

Anyways, Enchanted Arms finally starts and my main character is sitting in class at ENCHANT UNIVERSITY.

A red flag goes up, but I keep watching.

The professor is talking about things called 'Devil Golems' and some dark-haired punk is trying to wake up my main character who can only mutter "I can't eat anymore..." Nothing wrong with that; I dream of performing cunnilingus, too.

The camera then shifts to a third character, a pretty hot looking chick with puffy lips, long blonde hair and a bit of an Adam's apple. She smirks at the professors claims of Devil Golems being real and mutters to herself:

"Impothible."

!!!

I then did something I've never done for any of my game reviews: I turned off Enchanted Arms and spent five minutes trying to scrounge together pens and paper for what I could only predict would be a shit-fest. But not before I jumped on MSN Messenger and sent Zimes a quick message:

Story

The main character in Enchanted Arms is a poor-man's Dante, named Atsuma, who apparently everyone else at Enchant University despises as much as I do; however they don't like him because of his magical right arm, rather than his annoying personality. Exactly why they are afraid of his magical right arm is a bit of a mystery, seeing that everyone else in the school can conjure magic, while for the first several hours of Enchanted Arms all I could use his fucking glowing stroker for was breaking wood crates to get items.

So it eventually turns out that if Atsuma gives an enemy a fisting, the enemy is nullified of the ability to ever use magic again. Ever. So, naturally, in a magical school in a magical world, someone who can keep you from ever using magic again is one hell of a threat.

However, there are two people who can not only face the danger of Atsuma's magic-nullifying arm, but also tolerate his idiocy. Toya, the dark-haired teacher's pet, is some sort of pseudo-intellectual who can win the hearts and minds of every girl on campus, but for reasons unknown never exploits his pussy-magnetic personality, and instead hangs out with Atsuma and Makoto.

Speaking of Makoto, here's where I walk the tight-rope to keep from falling into pure mindless gay-bashing territory:

If I was gay, I'd be offended by Makoto just like how Jessie Jackson is offended by Aunt Jemimah pancakes. Makoto is THE most stereotypical homosexual character I've ever seen in my life; he's even gayer than Sasha Baron Cohen and Tom Cruise combined. I don't see how they could include a character like Makoto in a video game, let alone a Japanese RPG. I mean, how could you take a JRPG and add a character with these excessive features:

What exactly DOES make Makoto look any more androgynous/homosexual than other JRPG male characters? I mean, he dresses like he's going to a Brazilian Carnival party, just like the cast of every JRPG ever since Final Fantasy X. His physical features are just as feminine as 90% of the male leads of other Japanese RPGs that I have played. What makes him so offensive?

HE FUCKING ACTS SO OVER-THE-TOP GAY THAT HE THROWS THE GAY-RIGHTS MOVEMENT BACK 50 YEARS!

Makoto is openly attracted to Toya. As in FANATIC. As in to the point of sexual-assault as depicted in the game's ending. (Fuck the *spoiler* tag, you won't ever play this game anyways...) Everything that Makoto says to Toya is either some sort of double-entendre for gay sex, or is a flat-out proposition. If I told a girl that I have a 'pink pickle' she could eat for lunch, I would get my ass thrown in jail (where in all likelihood I'd spend 5-10 years eating black zucchinis).

Shit, this motherfucker (fatherfucker?) is so over the top and unabashedly flamboyant that he would make Japanese comedian Hard Gay homophobic.

So anyways, you and your two friends go down to the big carnival/festival thing and, like Zimes said up top, you are hard-up to fight in a Golem arena (aka Pokemon Battle). So after going around to a few vendors and fair-goers, you get the five tickets you need to partake in the fight. So, like every other RPG that has some sort of three-fight arena setup (again, like Pokemon), the first two challenges are pushovers unless you are a complete and utter dipshit or are strategically retarded. For your third and final challenge, you fight a Golem training bounty hunter named Yuki. More on that bitch later.

This is Yuki. You can wish and pray, but the bullets around her neck will never explode like in Saw 3.

So after an earthquake interrupts your fight with Yuki you end up following a stray dog into a section of Enchant University that was previously blocked off from access. It turns out that it's the holding cell for The Queen of Ice, an Ice Golem that Atsuma's drawn to. Toya and Makoto are telling Atsuma (aka Big Red McDumbass) to snap back to reality, but it's like trying to talk sense to a retarded beagle rubbing its nuts on a pair of Downy-soft khakis. So they find the Queen of Ice and Atsuma lets her loose. Atsuma gets owned, and Toya and Makoto get in a few good hits, but the Queen of Ice regenerates and toys with the two until Atsuma gets pissed and goes Super Saiyan. It turns out that his cursed glowing hand can keep a Golem from regenerating, but before Atsuma can finish off the Queen of Ice, he runs out of spinach and gets his ass whooped. The Queen of Ice abducts Toya to make him her slave (The Queen of Ice seems to want a piece of Toya's ass), and she drops 10-tons of ice on top of Makoto's head (Toya doesn't want Makoto's piece in his ass).

As she takes off, The Queen of Ice turns the city and Enchant University into the ultimate Winter Wonderland by freezing everything and every person, leaving Atsuma to have some sort of violent hallucinations about a beast roaming the desert and seeing a girl in white and a tall guard in green capturing it.

After his convenient blackout and memory loss, Atsuma wakes up in jail. To make matters worse, his cell mate is the girl in white from his dream, Karin. More on that bitch later. They break out with the help of Raigar, the tall green soldier from Atsuma's dream. It took me all of 20 seconds to realize that the ever-demanding Karin is some suck-up royal brat and Raigar is her guardian. After they escape the prison they run into Yuki, the pint-sized bounty hunting bitch who you fought in the arena earlier, and she joins the team. So the quest is to stop the Queen of Ice from resurrecting the Fire Emperor and other elemental Golems, and further into their journey they are aided by a Mysterious Man who seems to have some invested interest in destroying the Queen of Ice. More on that he-bitch later.

So, the story of Enchanted Arms is kind of unique... besides the stuff about high school kids saving the world (Final Fantasy VIII)... and the plot beginning in a festival setting (Chrono Trigger)... and discovering that the girl the main character has the hots for is royalty (Final Fantasy IX)... and that she has a huge warrior as her guardian (Final Fantasy IX)... and that the main character his completely left in the dark about what exactly is going on in the world (80% of all Japanese RPGs)... And that the villain you are out to destroy is not the true villain of the game (100% of all Japanese RPGs).

But in truth, the story is not at all BAD. The plot points are sort of average, but it is still fairly unique with the history of the Golems and the main characters directly releasing an ancient evil was a nice change of pace. Some things that I actually enjoyed a lot from the story was that it seemed that quite a few of the characters were self-aware of how stupid and/or annoying the others were, and in a Japanese RPG it's nice to finally give a few of the characters a voice for your own inner thoughts. Atsuma disses Makoto for cross-dressing and for having a major crush on Toya; everyone calls Atsuma stupid and annoying; and characters at times tell Yuki to shut up. Enchanted Arm's character dialogue goes over-the-top a lot, but at least every now and again it corrects itself enough that you can keep playing, and that is something really special for a Japanese RPG.

Further into Enchanted Arms things finally start to pick up the pace, though I was rarely ever held in suspense or really riveted to keep playing out of anything except boredom. A lot of the plot is transparently obvious (because a lot of what happens in most Japanese RPGs has become cliche), and any of the twists and turns that Enchanted Arms tries to throw at you won't make your head spin or make your heart skip a beat. All in all, the story of Enchanted Arms is just... average.

Characters

I'm not happy...

HOW FUCKING ANNOYING CAN THE FUCKING CHARACTERS POSSIBLY GET???

Initially you have Big Red McDumbass WHO IS SO STUPID THAT HE HAS TO BE TOLD HOW TO CLIMB A LADDER, you have Homo Erectus the biggest gayboy stereotype of all time, and Toya, Homo Erectus's in-the-closet love interest that gets fed "the pinkest of pickles" (THEY ACTUALLY USE THAT EXACT PHRASE!)

And then after, you meet up with Yuki, who looks like a drunken midget who just came back from a Texas football game and is sporting her big foam hat and her Indian Casino gift shop 'BLING'. Shit, if I concentrate really hard, her necklace of golden bullets can begin to look like the "Shotgun-Shell Collar" from the movie 'SAW 3'. If I concentrate even harder, I can go to my happy place where I can see the bullets explode over and over again...

Then after Big Red McDumbass blows up the city and Toya goes MIA and Makoto is presumably dead, you got to meet Karin (AKA "THUNDERCUNT"): "Get us out of here!" "Do something!" "Don't do THAT!" "Why aren't you doing anything!?' Shit is Enchanted Arms a fucking marriage simulator? If I were Atsuma I'd take my glowing right hand and spank Karin's ass until the only thing she ever said was "Yes Master."

The only character I REMOTELY like is the Jolly Green Giant because A) I just met up with him, and B) HE DOESN'T FUCKING TALK. He has the personality of a tree stump, but it's way better in comparison to the other Final Fantasy VIII rejects you are forced to listen to for 30 hours.

It's got to be the characters... Those horribly stupid, annoying characters that piss me off to no end. While the story itself isn't terrible, the cast of characters is atrocious. If these characters were based on real people, I would put them on a hit-list where the outcome would be a violent end at the end of a lead pipe. Yeah, Enchanted Arms, you're officially on my "pipe-list".

Now, someone (like Gabe of Penny-Arcade) could argue that you don't have to play through the game as the annoying characters, but there's not even a shred of truth to that. For instance, in the first few 'training' hours of the game, you are STUCK with Makoto in your party because he's the most powerful healer. Sure, you can synth together a healing Golem, but they won't be nearly as powerful as Makoto. You're STUCK. Secondly, whether you play with only Golems in your party or not, you still have Atsuma, Yuki, Makoto and Karin in the game's long sections of dialogue and cut scenes. You know, THE PART OF THE FUCKING GAME WHERE THEY ARE THE MOST ANNOYING?!

Gameplay

The concept of Enchanted Arm's gameplay is, in a nutshell, something like this: Outside of combat, you go around towns and talk to citizens and do some rinky-dink quests, just like most RPGs. No complaints. One gimmick that was thrown in the mix was the use of Atsuma's grappling hook. It grapples, it hooks, it gets you where you want to go (as long as there's a magical bullseye floating in some remote location where it has no business being). That's it in a nutshell.

I'm actually thankful for Enchanted Arm's combat system for the sole fact that it's not an "Action RPG" like Final Fantasy XIII where you only really ever control one member of your party and the computer 'plays with itself' based on a series of gambits or pre-programmable actions. The combat is classical turn-based so it has an element of strategy, but then it takes it up another notch by placing the characters on a combat grid, much like a chessboard. A characters attack in patterns on that grid; for instance one of Atsuma's fireballs may fly four-squares in a vertical line, while one of Raigars sword attacks may attack three squares horizontally (a front row attack). You can also position 'tank' characters in front of weaker characters so that vertical attacks will strike the heavily armored character first, and the weaker character will take less damage. Yet another element of the combat is the typical water/fire, earth/wind, light/dark elemental strengths and weaknesses of characters and enemies alike.

So, on paper, the basic combat CONCEPT is pretty good; however, combat is horribly redundant. I'm not saying that most RPGs aren't redundant, but there is NORMALLY something that keeps the combat relatively fresh and exciting, but Enchanted Arms is boring me to tears. Why is it that even older RPGs like the Lunar series can keep my attention for hours upon hours and keep me interested, but Enchanted Arms feels like I'm rolling a rock up a hill? Is it because I have almost ZERO emotional connection with these characters?

I think it has to do with a complete lack of diversity in your battles. For instance, in Final Fantasy 4, 6, and 9, a lot of the characters played differently than one another: some were brawlers, others could summon, and some were strictly magic-based attackers. Going back to the 16-bit era, in Chrono Trigger you could mix and match magical attacks with different characters to do cool attacks. In many of the 'great' RPGs, there is some level of diversity that I'm not feeling with Enchanted Arms.

There's a lot more of the technical crap going on, but it's too much to type and not worth the effort so I'll just quote it directly from Wikipedia. Why is it not worth the effort of typing? Because it's like the cherry on a cake: Only one person 'gets it' and everyone else can manage without it.

In summary, you level up, you BUY your skills, and that's pretty much it. Unlike the more successful RPG series that try to do something slightly different and improve with each version, Enchanted Arms is starting from scratch... like 8-bit era scratch. You can attack, use magic, or use an item. That's it. Sure, Enchanted Arms doesn't have a series worth of experience to refine itself, but it is basically starting at ZERO.

Characters do have special attacks, which does add some flair to the combat. In addition, you have the ability to charge your special attack gauge before you enter a battle. How do you do that exactly?

DISCO FEVAH AT THE BLUE OYSTER!!

That's right, you're in the Rainbow Room dancing like John Travolta with a rubber fist up his ass. And you think that's bad? Well imagine having to watch that AND shake your fucking Six-Axis controller like you're trying to beat off in less than a minute to get the little fucker to power-up his rainbow dance.

Fuck video game immersion.

Now Enchanted Arms gets into Pokemon territory. Along your journey you collect money, items and miscellaneous materials used in forging new weapons and armor. However, you also forge these materials into your own magical Golems, who will fight along side you in battle. Golems can level up, increase stats, and learn new special attacks just like the other members of your party. You are also encouraged to 'collect them all' by spending countless hours fighting enemies and gathering materials all in an effort to complete what is essentially your Pokedex. However, just as there is little true incentive to collect every Pokemon, there is even less incentive to collect every form of Golem because half of the creatures you create look absolutely retarded and fight like a four-year-old with a plastic pirate sword.

On the flipside, there are some extremely powerful Golems that you will earn and they will make quick-work of your enemies. However, to earn the GOOD Golems you normally obtain them by fighting them directly rather than creating them with items, and they will often offer the biggest challenge in the entire game, but they make the additional effort worth it.

I left a city being water rationed and I'm heading out into the wilderness. I would be further in the game, but I bought a six pack of beer and I spent a few hours playing virtual Roulette in one of Enchanted Arms' town casinos. When playing virtual Roulette in an RPG is more enjoyable than playing the RPG itself, you know it's bad.

Graphics

SHIT

The primary reason why the graphics in Enchanted Arms were horrible was because I was lucky enough to snag the Playstation 3 version, and while people bitch and moan over completely unnoticeable differences between the two consoles, the Playstation 3's version of Enchanted Arms got its ass handed to it. Of course, that's like saying that the turd in your right hand is better looking than the turd in your left.

The Playstation 3 version of Enchanted Arms is horribly bad. The textures are grainy and bland, the shading of objects is weak, and almost every object is as jagged as a saw blade. In all honesty, the graphics themselves look like they were ripped off of a PS2 RPG because they are surprisingly below par against a game like Final Fantasy X when viewed on an High-Definition TV.

Some of the sights and locations WOULD have been pretty good looking if the programming was up to par, but what do you really expect from a game that was ported from the Xbox 360 to the Playstation 3 during the beginning of the PS3's life span. From what I did see there are some interesting locations, with "Japanese RPG Architecture" (you know, buildings that look like a cross between the city of Dubai and The Jetsons).

My version of Enchanted Arms is gimped to the point of being so below par for either Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 for its time.

Sound

Japanese RPGs have a long tradition of excelling in music. There are battle-hyms that are bold and grand, and can intensify even the most redundant of RPG gameplay systems. There are heroic themes that are as triumphant as they are sorrowful and beautiful, and there are villain themes whose bold instrumentation and the use of a Latin choir sends chills down your spine. There are songs that you find yourself humming in your car, and you don't realize you're doing it until the other people in the car give you weird looks and hand you one of their beers.

Enchanted Arms has none of that. There was nothing at all memorable about the game's soundtrack... Wait, no, I lie, there is the horribly redundant battle theme that I do have stuck in my head thanks to nearly 25 hours of hearing the same shit forever looping in my surround sound speakers. But even the battle theme is forgettable, except for the fact that while I was being bored out of my mind playing this fucking game I WROTE MY OWN LYRICS TO THAT BATTLE THEME. IT GOES SOMETHING A LITTLE LIKE THIS:

"I'm plaaaaa-aying Enchanted Arms, fuuuuck.
I raaaaaan out of Sam Adams, fuuuck.
Can't drive to the store.
Can't get anymore.
Can't play without more.
I'm plaaaa-aying Enchanted Arms. This battle is taking for-fucking-ever,
Hurry up, I gotta peeeeee."
[Repeat until enemies are dead, your characters are dead,
or until you kick the stool out from under your feet]

And then there's the voice-acting, which is not terrible, unless you are NOT an anime nut that has spent the last five years in your parents basement with your anime toys (oops, sorry, I meant "Adult Action Figures") slopping your baby-gravy on their scantly clad, plastic underage tits while watching retarded shit like Demonbane.

Goddamn, listening to English dubs is a pain unto itself but when you have voice actors who 'thlur' their words in a prissy and effeminate manner like with the character Makoto, or if you have such a high, screechy voice that sounds like Marge Simpson on helium while gargling broken glass and styrofoam like Yuki. Everyone else is moderately tolerable, though nearly all of them overact in their vocalizations more than in Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, which was pushing my boundaries.

OVERALL

I TRIED to be fair... I TRIED to have an open mind while playing this game.. I gave it an honest go, and I have reached my verdict:

This game is HORRIBLE. And I'm not talking about horrible as in the gameplay being broken, or the overall story being bad, but it is BLAND, BORING, and ANNOYING AS HELL. The entire experience is less than mediocre because the minute you are introduced to BOTH groups of characters, you lose every ounce of ambition to continue on with what is only an okay story. The graphics on the Playstation 3 version (MY VERSION) is absolutely unacceptably bad, the battle music is annoyingly repetitive, and most of the character's screechy voices (while dynamic) just make my ears hurt. The characters themselves are way, way, WAAAY over the top, and I'm not just talking about Makoto, but also Karin and especially the annoying little shit, Yuki.

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Enchanted Arms Review (Xbox 360, Playstation 3)

Enchanted Arms is a horrible Japanese RPG that can suck our 'pinkest of pickles'.

Zimes Review

Experience

*FACE,

SLAMS,

ON,

KEYBOARD*

Sound

Experience Continued

Story

Experience Continued Again

Gameplay

Characters

Experience Continued AGAIN

Graphics

Experience Continued Yet Again

Counter review to a Counter review (aka Penny Arcade can suck my dick)

F*** . . . . . OFF!

Experience Completed

2.0

1.0

0.5

1.0

0.0

1.0

LaughingMan Review

Story

Characters

Gameplay

DISCO FEVAH AT THE BLUE OYSTER!!

Graphics

SHIT

Sound

OVERALL

2.0

3.0

4.0

3.0

0.0

2.5

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Enchanted Arms Review
(Xbox 360, Playstation 3)

F***
.
.
.
.
.
OFF!