Enchanted Arms is a great accomplishment for the 360
In the present, you play the main character named Atsuma, who is studying at the Enchant University in the city called Yokohama, who has an unknown power in his arm, that later on you discover will be the key point in the story.
The slow beginning of the game may be a put off for people, walking around the university and buying lunch, but after a while the story starts to pick up and gets more exciting.
In the game there are 4 key main characters that you are with you for most of the game, that you can have in your party, but what makes Enchanted Arms so unique is that there are also around another 100 characters you can use, in the game you are able to capture certain Golems either by seeing them in the world when you are not in a battle. Or you can purchase them at the shop. Once you capture one, you will need a certain amount of Speed, Mind and Power gems to create them. Golems go up in level, but cannot gain any new skills than the ones they have. The same system goes for creating new weapons for the 4 main characters.
Role Playing Games are famous other than their long engaging stories is their turn based combat system, Battles generally occur in Enchanted Arms by "random encounters" this is where every couple of steps you take walking around the world, all of a sudden a sound and a animation
appears on the screen which indicates to the player that a battle is about to start, these battles occur a bit too often.
Once a battle starts, your characters are on a 4x3 grid. In general RPG's your characters are stuck in the same position, but in Enchanted Arms, your characters get to move around the grid
which gives you more strategy. If you want a battle over and done with as quickly as possible just select the auto function and all your characters auto attack with the best move they can do in their position. Along with this feature, is the Fast forward button, which can be used when ever anyone is attacking and generally reduces the watching time by half. Each of the main characters gains new abilities throughout the game. All abilities use EP(Ether Points) which can be replenished by using a items or waiting a turn during a battle. All the abilities have a range made up by squares on the grid. Main Characters also build up gauge called EX, once it is high enough to use a skill, players can use it to use a powerful skill similar to Final Fantasy's Limit Breaks. Once a battle is over all characters HP(Health Points) and EP is filled but all characters lose some Vitality Points depending on how many rounds it took to defeat the enemy, where once all of a characters VP is depleted they will start each battle with 1hp and 1ep until it is restored.
Some of the Disappointments in the game are that the game has the potential to put out fantastic graphics, but this is let down by "still" graphics. If you travel past a tree or anything it does not move at all. Being next generation this is a bit of let down. Another thing is that when you are in a town or major city, generally in RPG's you can go into lots of buildings to shop. But in Enchanted Arms all your shopping can only be done by a floating diamond that you see floating around each area. And if you attempt to go into a house, there is a brief conversation which basically ends up, in the tenants telling Atsuma to get out.
The Voice acting is not that great, you will find some characters insanely annoying. But thankfully the game includes a fantastic option to swap your English voices for Japanese that sounds much better.
Enchanted Arms is a fantastic game but has some let downs that are easy to get over and can leave you with a game that lasts over 40 hours and gives you a very satisfying story.