Enchanted Arms Hands-on

via ign

Months ago, From Software and Ubisoft delivered the Xbox 360's first traditional turn-based RPG. With random battles, plot driven exploration and loads of cinema driven special battles, the arrival of Enchanted Arms was a good addition for the genre on Microsoft's system, which only had Final Fantasy and the epic Oblivion for fans to experience. Now, months later, Enchanted Arms is making its way to the PS3, marking the first turn-based RPG on Sony's Cell-driven system. However, much more than a basic port of the game, the PS3 version has received a number of subtle gameplay enhancements to take advantage of the Sixaxis controller.

The story of Enchanted Arms is set after the events of the Golem War, a devastating conflict that shattered civilization and pitted humanity against their doll-like creations known as golems. Initially, the golems were designed to help humans accomplish their goals and tasks, but after the arrival of super-powerful automatons known as Devil Golems, the creatures turned against their masters and almost devastated the world. Humans were only able to defeat the dolls with the help of powerful magic, imprisoning the Devil Golems and slowly restoring control over the remaining beasts. Unfortunately, most of the magical powers humans possessed became lost to time, leaving the survivors to rebuild their lives and their towns. The lone art remaining to humans is the ability to become enchanters, using specialized abilities which they go to established academies to learn.

Meet Atsuma, the dimwitted hero of Enchanted Arms.Players take on the role of Atsuma, a less than stellar pupil at the Yokohama City Enchanters academy. Actually, he's more of a campus wide joke, known more for sleeping in class than using his brain for anything. But the reason why he hasn't been kicked out of the academy is because of his right arm, which somehow has the power to nullify the effects of any enchantment. One day, when he and his friends are skipping class to attend a festival in the city, a massive earthquake levels sections of the city. However, even worse, the golems scattered around the city snapped and started attacking any human in sight. After fighting their way through various golems to the ruins of the academy, they discover the resurrected form of a Devil Golem, which promptly kicks off all kinds of problems.

Like most RPGs, battle plays a significant role within the game. Enchanted Arms uses a turn-based system that sets the player's party and their opponents up on 4x3 grids that defines their movement and attacking range. During every turn, a character can move and choose to either standby and regain their strength or select an item or skill. Many of these abilities have specialized attributes, which can imbue various elemental effects on the target, which helps build up a combo and EX meter. The combo meter lets multiple party members increase their damage on a single target, while the EX meter allows a character to attack every single enemy on screen. Unleashing your strongest attacks takes a large amount of power from your characters, but helps defeat your opponents faster. There are two separate incentives to using these abilities. The first is because your party members regenerate their energy in each battle, so you can go all out and not worry about being unprepared for the next fight. The other reason is because the faster you defeat enemies the more you maintain your Vitality points, which helps govern the health of everyone in the field at the start of a battle.

Welcome to the grid...You'll be fighting quite a bit on this field.While a majority of the game features appears to be rather similar to that of the 360, it's unclear if the online features, such as allowing you to post your high scores in casino games or participating in golem battles against other players on the PlayStation Network, will be included in the game. However, a number of gameplay features have been augmented to take advantage of the motion sensitivity of the Sixaxis controller. For instance, whenever players trigger the EX meter during battle, players have the ability to add additional power by shaking the controller before time runs out, adding a faster, frenetic pacing to the battle sequence. Similarly, you can recover expended EX meter energy by performing the Enchant Dance, shaking the controller back and forth as Atsuma dances in a spatial vacuum. Other uses that we've noticed were shaking the controller to extend Atsuma's Enchant Wire, allowing him to cover vast distances, as well as certain mini-games, like a pizza eating contest.