Daria
09-12-2006, 02:01 AM
So I picked up Enchated Arms Friday night, the first Japanese RPG to be released for the 360. Despite all the mediocre reviews I've read about the game, I have to say I'm having a lot of fun thus far.
You take on the role of the predictably irresponsible, rash, and hot-headed hero-with-a-mysteriously-magical-arm Atsuma. You attend a sort of technical collage for Enchanters with your two best buds, the annoyingly popular Toya, and his bitch Makato. The game begins on the Festival of the Golem Wars, thousands of years ago the entire world waged war against each other using mechanical soldiers in ther stead. Apparently everyone went too far, enlisting the aid of the godlike Devil King Golems and nearly wiped out all traces of Humanity, I'm unsure why everyone celebrating this near mass-genocide but I digress.
Atsuma begs his friends to skip classes and check out the festivities, they relent, the city's golems go hay-wire attacking civilians, you run back to save your dog, enter a dark forbidden place you shouldn't go, drag everyone into a nasty battle with the Ice Queen Devil Golem herself, passout, lose your friends, and awaken on a quest to save the world and avenge your school buddies.... and THAT should bring us upto date.
The battle systems a little strange but fun. You fight your enemies, mostly random battles, on a 8x4 grid, there's a dividing barrier across the middle preventing you from crossing over into enemy territory and vice versa. Every action you perfrom requires "Energy Points" or EP, and you have a number of various short and long range attacks at your disposal. All characters also belong to an element. Opposing elements are both strong and weak to one another, so that adds another little bit of strategy to your battles.
You can only choose four characters to join your party, and four more can hang around in your inventory. Everyone else you recruit must stay behind in storage. Now the way this works is, everyone in your party battles and gains "Skill Points" or SP, these can be traded in for skills or used to boost your attributes. Everyone in your inventory gains EXP and levels up automatically. And eveyone in your storage is screwed. So the more you use a character they stronger they become, this also means if you rely too heavily on one team everyone else is going to suck. Mix up your parties frequantly. You can't train everyone but make sure you have back-ups incase someone dies.
The battles start off really easy, the first couple hours through will feel like cake. Every once in a while you'll fight a battle where you manage to scrap by instead of dominate, because being strategic the tide can easily turn against you. But for the most part it's retardedly easy. It does not stay that way. Couple dungeons in and the monsters get ruthless, packing some really nasty abilities. Your survival depends on your willingless to rearrange your troops. So do not get attached your characters, you will have to swap them out constantly.
That said, the whole game is based around the whole monster collecting fad. Except in this game they're called- yup. Golems. Being an Enchanter you can enlist the aid of over 100 mechanical soldiers in your battle to save the planet. You can even play online matches against a friend but I haven't tried it.
There's little else to really say, game's gorgeous. The voice acting has gotten a bad rep but I thought it was quite good save Yuki. I hate both the bitch and her voice. Oh. Right the shops. Now this is really weird, by fighting monsters you also gain TP (Transaction Points? Surely not toliet paper.) and gems. Gems are used to construct Golems, Skills, and Weapons. TP is used to purchase healing items, gems, Golem cores (a vital element in constructing any Golem), Weapon cores (same principle), and Skill cores (you get the idea). So first you'll make your purchase, then it's all "assembly required" from there.
I also want to point out how fucking annoying it is that every abbreviation in the game ends in P, and they're not even conventional abbreviations. Hit points are "Vitality Points" and as I mentioned earlier Magic is EP. There's also something else called FP that's used for combos but I don't really understand how that works just yet. And finally there's PP, which is used to perform your large-scale badass special moves. It also apears to be gained only over time and/or dealing damage to enemies. But odder still, there doesn't appear to be any way of monitering how much PP you currently have. Just how much is actually required to perform the move. Talk about confuzzlement.
You take on the role of the predictably irresponsible, rash, and hot-headed hero-with-a-mysteriously-magical-arm Atsuma. You attend a sort of technical collage for Enchanters with your two best buds, the annoyingly popular Toya, and his bitch Makato. The game begins on the Festival of the Golem Wars, thousands of years ago the entire world waged war against each other using mechanical soldiers in ther stead. Apparently everyone went too far, enlisting the aid of the godlike Devil King Golems and nearly wiped out all traces of Humanity, I'm unsure why everyone celebrating this near mass-genocide but I digress.
Atsuma begs his friends to skip classes and check out the festivities, they relent, the city's golems go hay-wire attacking civilians, you run back to save your dog, enter a dark forbidden place you shouldn't go, drag everyone into a nasty battle with the Ice Queen Devil Golem herself, passout, lose your friends, and awaken on a quest to save the world and avenge your school buddies.... and THAT should bring us upto date.
The battle systems a little strange but fun. You fight your enemies, mostly random battles, on a 8x4 grid, there's a dividing barrier across the middle preventing you from crossing over into enemy territory and vice versa. Every action you perfrom requires "Energy Points" or EP, and you have a number of various short and long range attacks at your disposal. All characters also belong to an element. Opposing elements are both strong and weak to one another, so that adds another little bit of strategy to your battles.
You can only choose four characters to join your party, and four more can hang around in your inventory. Everyone else you recruit must stay behind in storage. Now the way this works is, everyone in your party battles and gains "Skill Points" or SP, these can be traded in for skills or used to boost your attributes. Everyone in your inventory gains EXP and levels up automatically. And eveyone in your storage is screwed. So the more you use a character they stronger they become, this also means if you rely too heavily on one team everyone else is going to suck. Mix up your parties frequantly. You can't train everyone but make sure you have back-ups incase someone dies.
The battles start off really easy, the first couple hours through will feel like cake. Every once in a while you'll fight a battle where you manage to scrap by instead of dominate, because being strategic the tide can easily turn against you. But for the most part it's retardedly easy. It does not stay that way. Couple dungeons in and the monsters get ruthless, packing some really nasty abilities. Your survival depends on your willingless to rearrange your troops. So do not get attached your characters, you will have to swap them out constantly.
That said, the whole game is based around the whole monster collecting fad. Except in this game they're called- yup. Golems. Being an Enchanter you can enlist the aid of over 100 mechanical soldiers in your battle to save the planet. You can even play online matches against a friend but I haven't tried it.
There's little else to really say, game's gorgeous. The voice acting has gotten a bad rep but I thought it was quite good save Yuki. I hate both the bitch and her voice. Oh. Right the shops. Now this is really weird, by fighting monsters you also gain TP (Transaction Points? Surely not toliet paper.) and gems. Gems are used to construct Golems, Skills, and Weapons. TP is used to purchase healing items, gems, Golem cores (a vital element in constructing any Golem), Weapon cores (same principle), and Skill cores (you get the idea). So first you'll make your purchase, then it's all "assembly required" from there.
I also want to point out how fucking annoying it is that every abbreviation in the game ends in P, and they're not even conventional abbreviations. Hit points are "Vitality Points" and as I mentioned earlier Magic is EP. There's also something else called FP that's used for combos but I don't really understand how that works just yet. And finally there's PP, which is used to perform your large-scale badass special moves. It also apears to be gained only over time and/or dealing damage to enemies. But odder still, there doesn't appear to be any way of monitering how much PP you currently have. Just how much is actually required to perform the move. Talk about confuzzlement.