Enchanted Arms

Atsuma isn’t the brightest student in the University, he doesn’t pay attention during lessons, falls asleep at his desk and generally enjoys skipping lectures on a weekly basis, however there is something about this guy that keeps him there, his friends know it, his enemies know it, in fact everyone seems to know that this boy is special.

You start the game asleep in a lecture with your friend trying desperately to wake you up before the teacher catches you, unlucky for you he does not succeed and you are then abruptly woken up and volunteered to fight against a golem as part of your lesson. The first fight is worked into the game quite well as you have the option of being taught how to fight at the same time as having a conversation with your friend, in fact as you come across new things during the game which you have never encountered before these cut scene tutorials continue, however they do not distract from the game whatsoever.

As soon as you have completed your fight you then head off the canteen, feed your dog and follow that by deciding it is time to cut a few classes and visit the festivities, since the school monitors and lecturers know that it is festival time in the city, you will have to fight your way through them to get out the door. Once you have taken care of business and arrive at the festival you are then required to find some tickets which will allow you to acquire a golem which you will require if you are to fight in the arena and win some money, all of a sudden you are then caught in the middle of what seems to be an earthquake and so the story begins……..

The main purpose of the game is to follow the storyline, meeting new characters and collecting items on your way, there is a slight Pokémon feeling to this game as you will find that when you wander around the land fighting golem’s that you will be able to acquire some of them by defeating them and collecting their core material. Golems come in different shapes and sizes with abilities of their own, to activate them once you have acquired their core material you will also need to buy or collect the various gems that you find when on your travels, to find out how many gems you need to activate your golem you will need to visit one of the shops which are found scattered around the land and come in the guise of a large purple diamond, once in the shop you can see how many types of each gem you need to activate your golem, you can also make the golems in the shop from scratch if you have enough money (Tablet is the official name of the currency). When you have the correct materials you just enter the shop and synthesize (build) your golem, it is then quite easy to add them to your party using the assigned menu button and by selecting edit party.

The shop comes in useful as you can store golems if you have built more than eight (you can only take eight with you at a time) and also buy and sell items, learn new fighting skills and build weapons.

As mentioned earlier any golem you have built can easily be added to your party, the same can also be said for any allies that join you along the way, as you can only have four in your party at any one time you will need to select who you would like that to be, any characters left over such as golems would then basically be in reserve should you wish to swap to them later, when you encounter a fight this will include only the party selected at the time.

The combat system itself is great, when combat takes place you and the enemy are divided into two separate grids, you then choose the position of your character on the grid which is limited to the blue squares, you then choose your attack which will light up with red squares in the places that will take damage as long as there is an enemy present in any of these squares, if your attack cannot light up a square that the enemy is in you may just have to use a different ability, if you have stored enough EX (Extra Skill) you can use one of the special attacks, if your character does not have these, you could always cast a defensive spell, use equipment to heal or you may just have to wait until a square is available for you to get within range of the enemy, once you have repeated the step for each character in the party the action will then take place.

The fights themselves take the form of cut scenes which show your and the enemies attacks taking place, these are very cinematic and a joy to watch, although if you are getting impatient you can fast forward them, the only slight problem which the combat systems is that it can sometimes feel staged, for example, I was fighting against a large golem with 800 hit points and was down to my last character when I found that if I healed, moved and then attacked in that order, the golem would only cause me damage as soon as I healed, this would therefore give me the opportunity to get plenty of damage in and eventually kill the monster.

As you win more fights you will gain new skills and equipment as well as skill points, this will result in your character becoming a higher level, you can then also use skill points to improve your characters stats.

Enchanted Arms has also included some mini games in the form of a casino, in the casino you have a slot game, bingo, roulette and a game called Golem Battle. In Golem battle you basically use your golems against others, this utilises Xbox Live quite well and there are many options to play online, the three main types are, Battle without load (fight the battle with random golems), Load and battle (fight using saved data) and ranking (displays match results in rank format) you then have to select the usual suspects which are player match or ranked match and as usual in Xbox Live enabled games you can either join the match or create a custom one.

Graphically this game is beautiful, the sounds and scenery offer everything you would expect from a next gen RPG and it is absolutely huge with over 50 hours of game play, however this game is quite different from the usual, but in a good way and while it may have sneaked in the backdoor when all the major new releases took the red carpet, once everyone realises how good this game is the VIP (or should that be VIG) status will follow.