<3 <3 <3

While I don't own a 360 myself, I did make a note of the fact that Enchanted Arms was announced for localization. As it stands thanks to the price, I'm far more likely to get an Xbox 360 compared to a PS3, so when I walked by the booth for the game, I had to give it a try.

There is no denying how drop dead gorgeous this game is. The fact that the 360 supports HDTV is, of course, an extra boost to the graphics but the game still looks very good either way. This includes both the story sequences, which I sadly only saw one of, as well as the in-game graphics, both wandering around and in battle. The small section of story I saw was fully translated but had the Japanese voice actors; this, however, will apparently be completely redubbed into English before the game hits the shelves and it seems likely the Japanese voiceovers will not be available at retail.

In Enchanted Arms, there were "golems" which were created by humans in times long past. Eventually these golems got out of control and began attacking the humans, but then magic came along which encapsuled them away from humans. Recently, an unknown force has released many golems both good and bad and they are wreaking havoc upon the world again. In a typical "save the world" storyline, the main character has an enchanted arm which allows him to cast magic, and thus he must save the world from the evil golems; he will have both allies and good golems at his side to do so. It was not entirely clear how he would be acquiring different golems.

Gimme the onion.

We then jumped into a battle with a boss; it had the main character, a second human, and two golems. The battle screen has a grid for enemy units and a grid for ally units, which in this case was a 4 x 4 grid; whether this changes from fight to fight, I couldn't tell. Allies could both move around as well as queue up actions; once everyone had their actions and movement settled, then the battle's turn began. The healing abilities seemed to be designed well, and they healed the entire column that the healer was focusing on. The main character had some powerful attacks. Special takes took up EP (experience points), which alarmed me slightly. It wasn't entirely clear whether EP and EXP were going to be separate in the game. As an added features, with one press of a button the turn can be automatically decided by the computer. This worked surprisingly well, as each character took sensical actions: the healer actually healed those that needed it, and those who could attack used the correct elemental attacks that would deal the most damage if they could.

Lastly, the boss was taken down after two combo attacks were used against it. First was a 3-member combo in the second to last turn, and the second was a 4-member combo to finish off the evil golem enemy. It wasn't made entirely clear why these specific attacks set off a combo. Overall, I came out of the playtime with Enchanted Arms with a very positive look at the game. With no RPGs yet out on the 360, to have a good one as the first title out may set a surprising precedence.