May 16, 2007 - When Enchanted Arms was released on the Xbox 360 late last year, it filled a much needed void on the console; a straight-up Japanese RPG complete with the obligatory androgynous characters, clever battle system, over-the-top boss fights and epic quest. At that time, I completed the game and enjoyed myself immensely even given the fact that the game also featured incredibly annoying characters and voice-work, fetch quests and backtracking galore, as well as so-so graphics and a story that left me uninspired. What I liked then, and what I still think is Enchanted Arms' strongest selling point, is its clever battle system which is a perfect cross between a traditional RPG and a strategy RPG. The battle system rewards players for shrewdly planning their attack and makes each battle (even now after two play-throughs) seems fresh and fun.

Enchanted Arms begins a thousand years after an event called The Golem War where servants (golems) were created to do man's bidding even after their owner died. Much like the Cyclons, whoever thought this was a good idea was clearly not thinking it through. What resulted was war and destruction. Coupled with this was a bunch of uber-Golems, known as Devil Golems. When these were sealed away, the war ended, but all traces of magic known to man was lost except for the art of enchanting. Using this "enchanting" skill with technology, man slowly rebuilds the planet and new golems are created to help better life for everyone. When we enter the world of Enchanted Arms, we are placed in the shows of Atsuma, a boy attending Enchant University (how creative, I was so hoping this would be changed for the PS3 version). Atsuma has the I.Q. equivalence of a potato/tofu pairing, is lazy, naive and hardly eloquent (read: complete sentences hurt his little brain). He falls asleep in class, makes odd guttural noises when a regular person would say "yes" and "no" and is quite possibly one of the worst main characters I've ever seen in a videogame. But as luck would have it, he's got this "special" arm that nullifies enchants, so I guess we're stuck with him! It's only too bad (and insanely grating) that even half-way through the game, people are still telling him (and you the gamer) how to go up/down stairs, do this, that and the other thing and repeat everything of importance to him over and over and over again. We get it okay? Even Atsuma gets it, okay? And yes, just to make sure, he'll usually reply with the obvious next course of action: "Uh, okay, so I should go into the cave to see if Toya is in there!"

The characters in Enchanted Arms are the epitome of "hit or miss". In the "miss" category, you have Atsuma (naive, dunce and moronic), Toya (not to be mistaken with a block of dead lumber), and Makoto (quite possibly the most offensive character ever put in a game... fine, he's gay... we get it). But he's so over-the-top that he borders on offensive/distasteful in his characterization, and is a pure stereotype and insulting to boot. Yuki (gold-digging, pig-headed and cute meet in a showdown that is guaranteed to make you vomit), Kou (why can't evil characters strategically placed in "good guy places" use some form of subterfuge to hide the fact that they're evil? Is everyone at Enchant University (teachers, PTA, students, lunch-ladies, etc) blind or stupid? He was obviously a bad guy... he dressed like a bad guy, spoke like a bad guy, oh wow, big surprise, he's a bad guy) and the always cool Mysterious Man (no comment here, it's just too sad). Luckily, in the "hit" category we have Karin (she's got a past that we actually care about discovering and she treats Atsuma poorly – bonus!), Raigar (cool personified – plus he's got some great lines and his motivations are always well thought out) and the Queen of Ice herself (badness incarnate, plus she walks around in the quasi-buff which is always good).

To get all the complaints out of the way early, it should be noted that while the CG movies in Enchanted Arms are amazing (and it seems they were longer on the PS3 version too), the story of Enchanted Arms is not epic, nor fun, nor even mildly interesting. We don't care at all about the main character or his quest to save his friend (he's technically also saving the world, but he just doesn't know it). The dialog is usually quite shallow and only a few characters are able to deliver great lines constantly. The voice-work is terrible and will likely make you turn on the Japanese track just to escape the torture of hearing Atsuma deliver another nonsensical line proving once more that he's clueless. The graphics, while amazing during combat, are only "okay" during world exploration. It's also annoying that getting in and out of water or up and down ladders is not seamless and entails a slight loading time and a canned animation. The look of Enchanted Arms however, is quite striking and clever and the design of all the buildings, costumes and golems is very well done. Enchanted Arms plays in a third person view and unfortunately, seeing Atsuma run/walk always feels wrong. He doesn't animate particularly well and runs with an odd gait that will drive certain gamers insane with annoyance. The other thing that will displease many (but which isn't really an issue) is that battles happen randomly as you walk around the map. While there are no instances where they get overly frequent, it's sometimes unnerving to walk through an area when you are nearing death and not know how frequently you'll be forced to fight. The final nitpick is the simple fact that Enchanted Arms is very linear, has very few sidequests (though lots of Golems to collect – and even a nice 30 extra ones on the PS3) and does involve a great deal of backtracking through many maps which is never fun.