by: Simon Watson

January 13, 2008

Now, with battles taking place left right and centre throughout your quest, you may have guessed that good character development is imperative to success. Each character has a range of points, including the standard Hit Points, Ether Points, Power Points and Skill Points (concerned with personal attributes, Skill and Magic use and character development) and the more game specific points known as Friend Points and Vitality Points. You’ll probably be familiar with the former points, but the latter need a little explanation: Friend Points are points that denote how well a character works with others, and a high FP score will increase the growth of your Special Attack bar. FP are built up by battling, so characters that are seldom used will have low FP scores and may be more of a hindrance than a help in a fight. Vitality Points are perhaps one of the most important attributes to keep your eyes on whilst playing Enchanted Arms, as VP tell you how much longer you’ll be able to keep using your characters. VP start at a number set for the character, and they decrease as damage is taken in battle. If a character is knocked out, then their VP score will be reduced further following the encounter. As long as a character’s VP level is above 1, then their HPand EP will be restored following the fight for the next time. However, if the VP score does reach 1, the character will enter the next battle with minimal HP and no EP. Use of good strategy in combat can help you avoid this fate, or you could opt to rotate your party members as you travel, which will not only help you survive for longer but will also allow many characters to earn Skill Points.

Aside from your standard levelling up after receiving the requisite amount of experience points in battle, taking part in a fight will also earn each character Skill Points. Accumulation of SP is required if you wish to personally increase individual statistics of your party, such as the amount of HP or EP, their power in a direct or ranged attack, or even their support and agility skills. The bonuses granted by spending SP are in addition to the standard level increases and allow you to develop your characters in the way you please. Your party is built up of human characters that you meet as your travel and Golems (a Pokemon style collectible army) that you can synthesize in a shop, as long as you own the Golem core (usually earned by beating a specific Golem) and the requisite parts required for the Golem. Certain characters or Golems may benefit from having a specific attribute built up with SP. For example you may want to create a ‘tank’ to take the brunt of attacks, so you would build up that character’s HP. You may find that another character’s skills excel in close combat, so in that case you would increase their ‘direct’ attributes with SP. Aside from increasing stats, SP are also used in learning new skills that can then be added to a character’s repertoire of attacks. Unfortunately, characters that do not take part in the action will receive only standard ‘level up’ rewards but no SP, meaning that an unused character will be privy only to base attributes and attacks. Luckily, the shops also sell SP items that increase the SP of a character without entering them into battle. Although this is an expensive method of character development, it is especially useful with new Golems who have no battle experience whatsoever.

Many RPGs these days involve some sort of mini game to be had, and by following convention, From Software have included this feature into Enchanted Arms. On top of your questing and fighting, the towns of the world also give you the option to kick back and relax in the game’s many casinos. Here you can take part in underground Golem battles, waste your money in the slot machines, or take a bet on the roulette. All are a pleasant diversion, and progress in the casinos can be uploaded to Xbox Live so that all of the world can frown upon your gambling ways.

Visually, you may be expecting a little more than you’ll get with Enchanted Arms. Being the first ‘next-gen RPG’ chances are that you will be awaiting magnificent HD graphics blowing all previous RPGs out of the water. What you’ll actually get is a perfectly passable display that includes atmospheric backdrops, colourful surroundings, and all manner of 360 specific lighting and texture effects. However, despite the hard work that has obviously gone into making Enchanted Arms look like a next generation game, the slightly generic and bland nature of some of the graphics and character design mean that you can’t help but rate the graphical aspects of Enchanted Arms below that of Final Fantasy XII or even a game as old as Tales of Symphonia. There just seems to be a distinct lack of character overall that reduces the originality of the game world. The same goes for the audio present throughout the game. Many of the music tracks play so quietly in the background that it is easy to miss them completely (particularly if your sound output is next to the deafening fans of the Xbox 360), and the success theme that plays at the end of each battle is almost identical to the very recognizable theme that the Final Fantasy series has been using for years. There is nothing terrible on offer, but it seems as though little effort was made in putting the audio aspects of Enchanted Arms above that of other RPGs.