Enchanted Arms

 PlayStation 3
User Score
6.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 39 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 39
  3. Negative: 9 out of 39
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  1. Jack
    Apr 5, 2008
    4
    The game is really not bad per se, but it wears thin after a few hours of play. The random encounters happen about every 1-2 minutes and gets extremely tedious at the best of times. Overall the graphics are not impressive and the sound is very poor, especially the fight track which seems to be a 16-bar music piece which gets repeated over and over. This plays with every random battle, so The game is really not bad per se, but it wears thin after a few hours of play. The random encounters happen about every 1-2 minutes and gets extremely tedious at the best of times. Overall the graphics are not impressive and the sound is very poor, especially the fight track which seems to be a 16-bar music piece which gets repeated over and over. This plays with every random battle, so you are stuck listening to it every 2 minutes or so... VERY VERY annoying. Oh yeah and the dancing is really really lame!… Expand
  2. DonM.
    Jan 10, 2008
    3
    This is a Turn Based game, not the type of RPG you would normally expect. Although the game comes with a good story-line and entertaining characters, the fighting is really uneventful due to the turn base system. This type of fighting is unrealistic and taking the time to setup each battle is boring while switching to automatic battle seems pointless.
  3. MoneyD
    Dec 17, 2008
    3
    The only thing worthwhile in the game is seeing the cutscenes. THAT"S IT! Everthing else will bore you... I only played this at night when I was ready to fall asleep.
  4. NUFC
    Dec 16, 2012
    3
    I hate this game. possibly the worst I own. The combat is boring the characters annoying and the story terrible do not buy this game unless you are a serious fan of grid based battles.
  5. tomvs123
    Jun 14, 2018
    4
    Finally, after 10+ years, I beat this one. I originally played it shortly after release on Xbox360, got incredibly irritated with one of the near-end dungeons, and then ignored it until last month, when I found the PS3 version in a dumpster.

    Good and unique stories are the reasons I play JRPGs. Nier is at the top of my list, so I'm always on the lookout for anything that's even close to    Finally, after 10+ years, I beat this one. I originally played it shortly after release on Xbox360, got incredibly irritated with one of the near-end dungeons, and then ignored it until last month, when I found the PS3 version in a dumpster.

    Good and unique stories are the reasons I play JRPGs. Nier is at the top of my list, so I'm always on the lookout for anything that's even close to matching it. Enchanted Arms is unfortunately not at all close.

    The story in this one is below average. It's not exactly bad or full of plot holes, but it's very simple and the antagonist's motivations are borderline unbelievable. It's also unfortunately got a bit of power-of-friendship in it's ending. Your main goal in the story is to kill a devil golem that killed everyone in your town. You spend the game going to various places to get stuff and information that will help you defeat the devil golem. It's really as simple as that.

    I played the game with Japanese voices and everyone did a good job, until the power-of-friendhip ending, which seemed out-of-place and out-of-character, so the voice actors didn't know how to handle it. Up until that point, the story was at least trying to be mature, even though the protagonist is an air-head.

    The most enjoyable parts of the game for me are the silly dialogue. These are spread throughout, but normally comes up when someone asks the protagonist a question. You can then pick from a list of mostly-stupid answers, each of which has its own silly dialogue. The acting was done well enough in these parts to get some good laughs out of me.

    I love strategy and turn-based combat and am sad that most JRPGs have switched to action-based combat. Unfortunately, the combat in this game isn't very strategic. I'd actually argue that it's so limiting, that it feels less strategic than the first JRPGs (Dragon Quest 1, Final Fantasy 1). It's limiting because you play on a checker-board grid, but you can't move onto the enemy's side of the grid, so there's no blocking or surrounding of enemies possible. You also can't move your characters around easily: they can move a small number of spaces per turn and it takes you two turns to swap two characters' positions since you can't move a character onto a occupied space (even if occupied by a dead character). And then there's golems that take up 4 spaces, which are mostly useless since it's difficult to make free space for them to move.

    Attacks and characters have element alignments, but they just oppose each other directly. For example, your fire character will do double damage against a water enemy. The same water enemy will do double damage against your fire character. So there's no strategy in this besides making sure your characters attack first. And finally, all of your abilities use points (that regenerate between battles), so if you use too many abilities, you'll normally end up waiting out a turn to regenerate a small amount of those points, so you might have enough to do something next turn. Overall, I'd say the combat system is unique, but not at all fun or strategic. Fortunately there's an auto-battle option, which I used for most of the game.

    As for exploration, the world is very shallow and linear. There's a few dungeons you'll need to go through, and you'll almost always need to explore them entirely to get ether (keys) to open doors. The reason i originally got irritated with the game is that I didn't fully explore one of the dungeons, missed a hallway and was wandering around for hours trying to find where to go next. That along with random battles every 10 seconds made backtracking through the dungeon a nightmare.

    Oh, and there's the golems that you can use as party members. I found them to be almost useless. After I filled out my party with the four main characters, I had no use for them. They all seemed to be weaker and have less abilities than your main characters. And if you use them in your party, they'll earn skill points instead in place of one of the main characters, which isn't a great idea.

    So yeah, I got a bit of enjoyment out of the dialogue, and the story and gameplay didn't irritate me enough to make me want to quit (this time around), so it's not the worst I've played, but wasn't really worth the 37 hours I spent playing it.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

70
#70 Best PS3 Game of 2007
54
#54 Most Discussed PS3 Game of 2007
31
#31 Most Shared PS3 Game of 2007

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
64

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 23
  3. Negative: 3 out of 23
  1. GameBrink
    24
    For the first 75% of the title, EM is pretty close to being the easiest rpg ever made. This is probably because the title was created as an entry-level Japanese rpg for western Xbox fans. Only during the final 25% of the game does the game actually require strategy. [JPN Import]
    Read full review
  2. games(TM)
    60
    Combines lovely visuals and irritating characters to create an uninspiring romp. The strong story is limited by genre fail-safes while the combat is suitably tactical. [Apr 2007, p.131]
  3. IGN
    65
    There's nothing here that stands out. You've done it all before.
    Read full review
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