Welcome to Kyoshi's Turbo Reviews!, where each week (or so) I quickly review a game that I have played and share some of the pros and cons of the game. These reviews will mostly be spoiler free and won't be too deep so they can be read quickly. At least, that's what I am aiming for.

Want just a quick summary? Head to the final verdict for that and my rating.

Enchanted Arms

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3(2007 release)

Genre: JRPG

Publisher/Developer: Ubisoft/From Software

Enchanted Arms is a neat little RPG that was released in 2006 for the Xbox 360 and later in 2007 for the PS3. It has a good graphical style for the time and classic JRPG gameplay elements with questionable storytelling. It takes place in a world powered and populated by golems that are controlled by humans. The story actually has good moments to it, mostly in some pretty cool cutscenese, but the characters themselves stick out as pretty generic anime stereotypes. The voice acting is passable and even better with the Japanese voice option, which I personally recommend. There is quite a lot of dialogue in the game but luckily it can be skipped through if you are a fast reader. Sadly the story just isn't very engaging over time, you might lose track of it eventually. It's the gameplay that makes the game worth it. Just as a side note, the characters and story overall aren't as bad as the dreaded FF13 trilogy.

The gameplay is pretty standard fair for the genre in ways. You move along a linear path through the world, you will find random chests with items, complete little puzzles, and random battles will occur as you move along. This will bring you into a battle mode where you face off against usually more than one opponent. The battle system works on a grid and you move your character around this grid to set up attacks or defend, sorta like FF Tactics but waaaaaaaay smaller and far more limited. So FFTactics isn't the best comparison. You then command your characters to attack or defend and so on. During attacks, you can hold down the Y button to fast forward the attack animations which is appreciated for a game like this that has so much fighting. Call it Turbo Fighting! *ahem* Each attack has an element to them, such as fire or water and others and this aspect, while neat on premise, falls a bit flat here. Instead of having opposite elements work against each other, like fire is weak to water, instead the same type of elements are what do this, so it is like water is weak to water and so on. Odd system eh? It is and it is a slightly disappointing aspect. (Imma beat your water with my water!)

Leveling up and earning new abilities and weapons is fairly standard. You earn experience points that level you up and 'BP' that can be allocated to different stats, boosting them and you earn money to buy new equipment or 'fuse' different cores that you find to create new ones. This is small but it works well for the game it is in. Also, there is a system where you find random golems sitting in different spots throughout the game. When defeated, they give you a core. Get enough materials and you can revive these golems to fight beside you. This adds a very tiny bit of a collectible mechanic to the game and it does add diversity, as it gives you more party members to choose from, each with their own elements and attacks. It's not a pokemon-like collectibility at all but it certainly was done better than FF13-2's monster catching system. The overall gameplay isn't the most unique system out there but it definitely functions well.

Final Verdict:

Thank you for reading my first ever Turbo Review! I apologize if it seemed awkwardly worded at times but I will get better. I wanted to condense my thoughts on the game and let you all know what it was like without making it TOO long.

So until the next review,

Turbo out!