Jason is always enchanting. He's also always armed.
Publisher: Ubisoft
Sun, 17 December 2006
by: Jason
Well "Enchantment Breaking Arms" would be a title closer to the mark, but we'll get to that shortly. It seems Ubisoft have taken a brief break from their ever growing catalogue of Tom Clancy games and knocked up an RPG. Is it any good? Well read on.
*[Sammy's note: To be fair, even though I know Jason was just kidding, I feel oblidged to suck up to Ubisoft a bit & point out that the Tom Clancy games are far from all the company does (though, admittedly, they sure do release a heap of those!). Rayman is an outstanding franchise that I'm a big fan of, the same goes for Far Cry & Prince of Persia. King Kong was one of the best movie adaptation games ever made & there are many other great ones from them that I could mention. Plus, don't forget that Ubisoft have the Aussie distribution rights to some titles (for example, Kingdom Hearts II & Final Fantast XII) made by a little company known for making a popular RPG or two: Square Enix. Sorry again Jason - I just get a bit defensive about good old Ubi because they are legitmately one of my favourite publishers. And nobody paid me to say that!]*
 | | Daniel-san: "Can you do that?" Mr. Miyagi: "Don't know. Never been attacked by crate." |
Let's begin with what is a possibly interesting point and one that might be relevant to this review: I am not a rabid RPG nut. However, I do have a couple of Final Fantasy games under my belt and one day I will sit down and finish The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.
Anyway, I'll now get back to a point I wanted to make, which concerns the differences between Japanese and "western" RPGs. Most Japanese RPGs all follow a similar structure - you control a party of weirdly dressed refugees from a TAFE hairdressing class and set about to save the world. In your average western RPG you're still saving the world from the evils of whatever but most of the time you're a one man (or woman) army and the fate of all sits squarely on your solitary shoulders.
In case you haven't looked at the box, Enchanted Arms falls solidly into the Japanese style of Role Playing Games. That brings us to the hero of the piece, Atsuma, who is the stereotypical misfit student with attitude. But there is one thing that makes Atsuma different from the legions of smartasses with pointy hair, which is his right arm - it has the power to nullify enchantments; somewhat of a handicap, when you consider Atsuma is a student of Enchant University. What would a smartass be without his straight edge, gods gift to anything he touches best mate? Well, in Enchanted Arms that role belongs to Toya, the uber-student.
Then we have something I haven't personally encountered before. As this is a pre-release, review copy of the game, it came with no background info. But after playing it for a while, there was something I was starting to wonder about, and a visit to the Enchanted Arms website cleared up my suspicions for me: The third member of your party (at the start of the game anyway) Makoto is openly, and even flamboyantly, gay. As well as that, he is in love with Toya and serves basically as your group healer. While this may seem like your usual bunch of misfits, don't get too attached, shit will hit the fan before long.
Graphically the game looks good, but there is nothing exactly ground breaking on offer. As with most RPGs the cutscenes are a standout, but those in Enchanted Arms just don't have the emotion or scale of something like Final Fantasy. The voice acting is also worthy of note, as I'm almost positive they've got one of the "queer eye for the straight guy" guys to voice Makoto.
Enchanted Arms' gameplay shamelessly rips off (or pays homage to) the Final Fantasy series - you control Atsuma onscreen wandering about engaging in mindless, and often flat-out boring, conversations with anyone and anything in sight, trying to advance the plot and find out just what the hell is going on.
Then we have everybody's favorite part of the RPG; the random battle. Yes, these make an appearance and it's commendable to see Ubisoft have tried something different from the usual menu driven snore-fest. Battle takes place on grids looking not unlike a game of battleship, although it plays more like a version of chess with you moving characters and selecting attacks based on the area of ground they will hit.
 | | This hat is from the Randy "Macho Man" Savage collection |
You're probably wondering "so this is a Japanese RPG so where are the massive great spectacular summoning of all powerful nasty beasties?" Well look no further! In this game we have golems, machines powered by ancient magic, which can be found and added to your party throughout the game.
Once again we come to the ultimate question- is it any good? Well it isn't a title that all others will be measured by for years to come nor is it a refugee from the bargain bin what it really comes down to is how hungry are you for another RPG (particular on the 360 which, so far, doesn't exactly have an abundance of them to chose from). If random battles and spiky hair floats yer boat, then you could do much worse than Enchanted Arms.
by: Jason
More articles by Jason
Until more Japanese RPGs get released for Xbox 360 Enchanted Arms basically wins by default. But at least it is a pretty good place to start. Solid RPG gaming - and not a Chocobo in sight! | |
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