Enchant Arm - the review

Enchant Arm is the 4th game I played since the start of my semester break and it took me roughly a week (or about 40 hours in total) to finish the game with full 1000G. Well, maybe I should say "virtual 1000G" because I'm playing the bugged Asian version hence no matter what I did I'd miss 3 achievements/300G as stated in this post. Sure it frustrate me because it won't let me to get the full complete on the game, but there's really nothing I can do to get that 300G. An okay game overall, but not great in my book.

Enchanted Arms (known as [eM] -eNCHANT arM- in Japan) is a science fiction/fantasy-based role-playing game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Although the game was intended to be an Xbox 360 launch title for the Japanese market, its release date was pushed back to January 12, 2006 by the developer, From Software. Ubisoft published the game in August 2006 in North America, and in September 2006 in Europe. The game retitled as Enchant Arm for its Japanese PlayStation 3 release.

Since its release, it has been confirmed that the game uses only a single DVD, in contrast to earlier multi-disc reports. It also comes with an art book and mini-calendar in Japan. The supplementary content included with the initial American product shipment was a 48-page prequel manga.

Links:
Enchant Arm @ Wikipedia
Enchant Arm official website


Gameplay: 7/10

In short, Enchant Arm features simple, fast-paced turn-based combat system. Battle took place in 3x4 grid squares where players are allowed to move within their limited move square, before taking action (attack enemies, use items or simply standby to recover EP). Each action require EP (aka mana/mp) and each skills used in battle have a certain set of damage dealt. This damage is fix and cannot be reduced in any way (except by -x% DMG skills) but can be increased by improving the character's stats. Turn-based rpg hasn't been my preference as of late, but at least I find Enchant Arm's gameplay not as boring as many other turn-based rpg. And the fact that we can speed up the battle by pressing Y made things even easier, this made almost every battle ends within 20 seconds. The drawbacks to the combat, as far as I concern is the ridiculously high random encounter rate. It's nice if you want to level your characters and get some SPs to upgrade your stats, but it's getting annoying when you want to explore dungeons without too much interruption. Good thing there are skills that allow you to avoid random encounter entirely, obtained through the casino at 100,000 coins.

Another aspect of the combat system is the inclusion of extra entities known as Golem to help you whenever you are short in party members. Basically it's like an extra soldiers to help you in battle, each with their own set of limited skills and abilities. I find golem to be useful only in early game when your party isn't complete yet, but later on they serve little purpose as your human characters outpowered the golems by miles. This however changed late game when you have access to stronger golem, although there are still choice whether you want to ditch one or two human and switch them to golem. I personally use all humans in my party until the end of the game, until I got Infinity (Omega in US version), swapping him with Karin and beat the crap out of the Queen of Ice for the lulz.

Story: 7.5/10

Well, not much can I say about the story. The story take place in a world where golem (or what we call magic-powered robot, sorta) exist to help human with their lives. One day, a Devil Golem named Queen of Ice was awakened due to the main character, Atsuma's mysterious power possessed by his right arm, and thanks to that, the Devil Golem went rampant and froze the entire city. Atsuma survives and later meet Karin and Raiga, and from then on they travel together to solve the mystery behind Atsuma's hand, and to stop the Devil Golem from awakening other sealed Devil Golems in other city...

Although the main character Atsuma can be irritating with his nonsensical stubbornness, the remainder of the story is rather enjoyable, and some of the scenes are quite humorous. You still see the kind of jrpg textbook plot of "spiky hair hero with identity crisis, met some kind of princess and went on journey to save the world", but at least it's not as cliche as Magna Carta 2 as far as i can say. The value of friendship is emphasised much in Enchant Arm, to the point that sometimes they looked like they're homo to each other lol. Well, save for Makoto since he's transvestite.

ps: Atsuma's dense nature is unbelievable. For someone not to realize other's love for him even after she confess to her is..I'm at a loss of word = =


Graphic: 6.5/10

The graphic was okay, but not that spectacular if we look at what xbox 360 is capable of. The special effects used in battle is also average at best. The characters design is one of the worst I've seen, so bad that I thought even some of the female golem looks better than the humans (yes, I'm looking at you Yuki). Well, except Sayaka maybe, she's not that badly designed (except for her *coughchestcough*), plus she's voiced by Sakaya Ohara♥.


Other Features: 7/10
The game does not offer that much sidequests, but there are one big secret dungeon (Holy Beast Shrine) for players to explore, although it is more like a compulsory dungeon because the final boss is almost impossible to beat without getting some decent HP/levels from the dungeons. There's also casino for you to get some nice items, and collecting golems from all over the world. Unfortunately, NONE of these quests count for the achievements for Enchant Arm. Yes, you can easily get a full 1000G simply by playing through the story until the end, which is a pity because it doesn't really require much effort. Though as I stated before, those playing Asia version will stuck at 700G because of the bug. There's New Game+ too, but only playable through Xbox live.


TL;DR - Enchant Arms has a fairly simple gameplay where there are high encounter rate which is balanced by the quick-paced turn-based combat system. Friendship value is emphasised on the story, although overall the plot is typical of what you'd find in today's jrpg textbook. Graphic was decent, but the character design was terrible. Some nice sidequests, but none were achievement-related. Overall the game is fairly short, which can be completed well within 40 hours.


Overall rating: 7/10. Worth playing? Maybe, but maybe not. Depend on your taste I guess. For me, it's only worth playing for the free 1000G :3