ShareThisBy JUSTIN HOEGER
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Massive, free-form epics like "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" and online games such as "World of WarCraft" encompass role-playing in the true sense of the term _ players start with a blank slate of a character and travel through the game's world in whatever way they see fit.
Most Japanese-made RPGs take a narrower route _ a typical game has a well-developed cast of characters, a relatively linear progression and an engaging, complicated story line.
"Enchanted Arms" is the first such RPG for the Xbox 360; "Xenosaga Episode III" comes as the PlayStation 2 gets ready to bow out and Sony's new console enters the market later this year.
"Enchanted Arms" adds some intriguing tweaks to the formula. The basic plot elements have been covered many times, but "Enchanted Arms" presents them well and illustrates them beautifully.
The hero of the day is Atsuma, a hotheaded student with an unusual right arm that zaps any enchantment he comes in contact with. He starts the game with a couple of enchanter friends, but it's not long before cataclysm strikes in the form of the Queen of Ice, one of several devil golems from a long-past war who escapes her prison beneath Atsuma's city of Yokohama.
The most interesting thing going on here is the battle system. When Atsuma and the friends he meets on his journey find a band of beasties to bust up, the game switches into battle mode, where the good guys and bad guys take turns hitting each other until one side loses. This is pretty standard stuff, but each side has a 3-by-4 grid to move around on. Every action a character can take targets a certain pattern of squares, making positioning and attack order a key part of battle strategy.
"Enchanted Arms" has a bunch of logical and welcome tweaks to RPG norms, as well. Battles can be fought automatically for convenience and sped up to save time. Characters heal completely after each battle, but each member has a store of vitality points that depletes after each fight. If a fighter runs out, he'll enter the next battle severely weakened. Atsuma can create his own golem helpers after defeating certain enemies, which helps ensure there are always fresh fighters to rotate into the active party.
This is a fabulous-looking game, with fascinating fantasy architecture mixed with strange, foreign technology. Landscapes are gorgeous, characters and enemies are interesting and distinctive, and dazzling effects abound.
Dazzling graphics are also plentiful in "Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra," the final chapter in a series that was originally planned to encompass six installments. It's one of the best-looking games on the aging PS2.
The Xenosaga story line is far too complex and twisty to detail here. The plot revolves around a battle android named KOS-MOS, a race of monsters called the Gnosis, a powerful artifact called the Zohar and a phone book's worth of major and minor characters and conflicting organizations. There's an in-game encyclopedia to help newcomers catch up or refresh fans' memories.
The battle system has been simplified and streamlined for the better. Each fighter in a battle, friend or foe, has a place in the attack order _ the boost gauge allows a character to cut in line or to sacrifice that ability for a powerful attack.
Basic attacks have been reduced to one from the multi-button combos of the earlier games, and two other actions _ magic-like Ether and stronger-than-normal Tech moves _ draw from the same pool of ether points.
From time to time, the game's heroes will battle from within powerful robotic battle suits. The flow of a fight is slightly different in this mode. There's no boost, but the suits have several weapons and can charge up for powerful attacks.
The older games were watched more than they were played, and were full of long, long stretches of dialogue and passive exposition scenes that players could only sit and watch. "Episode III" is still a dense and talky game, but not nearly as much as the first two in the series.
