Most people would be happy with any RPG that has only this mode but as a bonus Enchanted Arms includes an online mode that allows gamers to go on Xbox Live and battle people from around the world with their team of characters. The online mode is simple enough and only involves choosing a lobby. You then have the option of choosing to fight with pre-made characters or you can load your team from the story mode and battling it out with your finest fighters. All in all Enchanted Arms has everything needed to make up a fine RPG (a great story mode), throw in the bonus online mode and the amount of time that you could put into this game is endless.
The gameplay is pretty similar to what you would expect from this genre of game. It is turn based fighting so those people out there that love action and speed (Jerry Bruckheimer anyone?) may find Enchanted Arms to be a bit slow and boring. On the other hand if skill and a long thought process are your forte you will simply fall in love with the style of this game. It is very linear so the open ended style of gameplay that is available in such games as Oblivion isn’t here, this game has a beginning and an end and there is one path that gets you from point A to point B. Battles however are random so think Final Fantasy; you simply run around in an area that is battle prone and the enemy attacks you. Sometimes they will have the advantage and move first but more often than not you get to make the first blow. Once you are inside a battle the view changes to a chessboard type look and you select a character, choose where to move, and then choose from an array of attacks, defenses, or items (healing potions, return potions, etc.). Each character has different skill sets and abilities ranging from fire to water to earth properties. On top of this you have HP (health), EP (magic) and EX (special moves) bars that determine how long your character lives and what attacks are available to them.
As with all RPG’s you can increase all of these bars as well as buy potions, learn new moves, and edit your party whenever you want (only 4 fighters at a time can be in your party). Besides the 4 main human characters, a large part of Enchanted Arms involves “golems”. Golems are machines that you collect, capture, or build and that will fight alongside you with all of the same abilities that your human fighters have (except the ability to learn new moves). There is a lot of strategy involved when it comes to choosing who will be in your party, because of the property system some characters or golems are better to handle certain enemies, for example when going up against a fire boss it is best to use all water golems in your party. I lost count at around 100 different types of enemies so don’t worry; there are plenty of all different looks and colors. There are also a number of boss battles that are really amazing and provide a huge slant in difficulty. Enchanted Arms offers a few new gameplay elements to the role-playing genre but all in all this game is your classic RPG with all the bells and whistles.
I said something earlier about the dialogue in this game. I personally don’t find anything that disturbing about it so for me leaving the audio in English was just fine. If you are one of those people that likes the Japanese cartoons before they are dubbed to English, Ubisoft has included the feature to switch the dialogue to Japanese with English subtitles. The music in Enchanted Arms is just fantastic; it really sets the mood of the environment you are exploring (or fighting in) and reminds gamers of what it is like to be in a fantasy world. The Japanese feel of the soundtrack really made me appreciate the game for what it was over there and sets a standard for music in these types of games. The rest of the audio category in Enchanted Arms is very basic and un-eventful. From sound effects to ambient noises to music to dialogue they do their job just fine and add to the games atmosphere.
