Absolutely beautiful with marvelous story telling, if just your ears could indulge in the same treat.
Enchanted Arms is one of those games. I recently acquired the game in a bargain bin during a sale, remembering my friend's words that he was addicted to the PS3 version. So, shrugging a pick up the game and go "what the heck."
Several hours onwards and i feel that I've cheated the establishment for procuring the game for so cheap. Admittedly the level design of a few places turns to the bland and boring from time to time, but at these moments my attention is turned to the character models and how much work has been put into them.
The battle system is what I'd like to term, 'just right.' In a world where the norm of JRPG is combatants standing in a line and flailing at the air. (Or some variation thereof.) Enchanted Arms mixes it up with just the right amount of strategy, particle effects and the ever needed option to fast forward. With the added option to let the AI choose how to beat the enemy there IS the option of you not really playing the game and there are times when you'll want to do that. The perfect cure for JRPG random encounter syndrome, sitting back and fast forwarding through a automatic battle.
The dialog seems natural and actually funny, there's no time while I've been playing it that I've stared at the T.V. screen and had the niggling feeling that the game is staring back and muttering something about why i'm not laughing at its witty, but pathetic joke. The only downside to this is the choice of a few voice actors, during the course of my game play i found it easier to either ignore these characters by muting, skipping over their dialog or even trying to give them a more annoying voice.
The additional option of wandering out of the way to find more golems is one of the more enjoyable side quests I've ever committed myself to doing. I've found myself wandering off the normal path in search of these collectibles more than once.
On the subject of the golems. Not once have i looked over one of the superbly detailed characters and not said 'i wonder where i can get one of them?!' Not content with settling on a standard 'it has two legs, two arms' basic skeleton to be skinned over in six different colours the game design team has churned out hundreds of one of a kind models. During the starting episode of the game i found myself fighting crystalline clowns, baroque armoured dogs and a flat dough like golem with a head made of pizza.
The story is one of the more captivating of the last few years, making me on a few occasions move the thought of putting down the controller because i just had to see what was going to happen next.
In the end, i say go out and fish for this game. The game is well worth the play even with the voicing.