Thousand Arms (Made by Red Company)
Ah Thousand Arms, what an interesting game. I give this game 4 out of 5 Matlocks for the anime bits alone.
Thanks Atlus for bringing this one to America. Other games I've played through Atlus include Ogre Battle, Persona, and Kartia. I'll probably talk about Kartia another time because it's also an awesome game [story-wise and artistically].
I don't even remember how I even heard about Thousand Arms, but I just got it around May 2002 so I'm not sure how "behind" I am, but it's still a modertaly great game with a not so good ending. It's so sad that so many games have really bad endings now-a-days. I remember back in my day.. uh, nevermind, don't want to be "that guy". So anyway, this game is fun, monotonous and very, very heterosexual! I say that because a main part of the game is going on dates with about nine or so beautiful [respectivally] women. Do you have to go on these dates to win the game? Absolutely! Is it worth it? Yes! This coming from a gay guy, I was really hilariously happy going on these dates with these girls. Why? Because the creators made the dates really funny at times. You can piss these girls off and they respond with a lot of funny comments. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First the story.
You play as this kid named Meis (which I will always try to pronounce Meece in my mind) but the characters say his name like Mice. You are the fourth generation spirit blacksmith of the Triumph family and your father is a complete and total womanizer, but he has to be! The funny thing about being a spirit blacksmith is that you can't make good weapons unless you have the love of a beautiful woman next to you while you're creating your swords and stuff. This is not at all disappointing to you, the main character, because you're all about the women. So your mission is to become a great spirit blacksmith, but wait! Your town is being attacked by these horrible people [mostly they're machines] called the Dark Acolytes. So you go to the next town of Boyzby and work as an apprentice named Jyabil who disses your skills because you don't understand about the spirits that are embued in your creations that require the girls to do so.
After a while you come across the old apprentice of Jyabil whose name is Schmidt and he's pretty angry that you're better at blacksmithing than him. Jyabil's sister, Sodina, is also the first girl who you find and who accompanies you wherever you go after a couple of things you need to do. Long story short, you find out that the Dark Acolytes are a bad group of people trying to steal the Sacred Alter Flames of Light that are scattered around the world so that their dark master can rule (or destroy) the world. So what does that make you? The hero who saves the day, of course!
I got to give it up to the game. It's really nice if you're into anime-style stuff. All the close up scenes are like that, and there is literally 12 hours of just spoken dialog! So right then and there you know there's going to be 12 hours of your life sucked into this game because you have to listen to these people talk, and it's so worth it because a lot of times they're funny.
Here's a run down of the characters you find and who join you along the way. First there's Meis, then Sodina, then Muza your childhood friend who is also all about the girls but has a complete fear of them (can we say rip off of DragonBall?) and will turn blue and mostly freeze when any are around. He's like over six feet tall and has a huge sword. Next is Wyna, the daughter of a pirate. She's very tough and can kick a lot of people's asses, and wears an eye patch just for fashion sake. Soushi (I think pronounced So-she) is a guy, but REALLY looks like a girl, with a komono and everything. He's a samurai-type person and is also all about the women (gee, who 'isn't' in this game?! Oh that's right, the gay guy who you run into a couple of times!). Last two girls are Kyleen and Nelsha. The rest of the girls you can't exactly get, but if you find them they can help you make weapons in the town in which they're located. They're called "Town Girls". ;] The gay guy, mentioned above, is named Bandiger and is basically a pain. He's sort of feminine and has the lisp thing going on, and his clothes are just, well, out there. It's almost like he's wearing a thong or a speedo and chaps and a coat that's open. He also carries an umbrella (ala the penguin).
So, as Meis, your main job is to get all these Flames of Light and do battle with the evil dark master (not the 'other' dark master who is really Schmidt with a name change) and save everyone. Oh yeah, can't forget going on those dates! The importance of going on dates is to raise the girls intimacy levels for you, while your own leveling up is to get more charisma and HP. The weapon strength is based purely on these girls and their love for you. When you're strengthening your weapons with any girl you want, they give you more strength and possibly spells and weapon moves (which you WILL need!).
The only complaints I have with this game is that there are far too many enemy encounters and way too few enemies. That's not to say they don't give you enough enemies to fight, but just not a good diversity of kinds. I kind of got bored after fighting the same kinds of monsters for hours on end with no change. The other main complaint is the way the battle system is set up. It's a one on one battle, forever! You can have up to three people fighting with you, but only one of them is fighting at any given time, the other two are in the back row either cheering you on or possibly healing you. They don't get to fight at all, unless you move your front row person out of the battle (completely) and then the next one comes in line. I think if I could use all three of my people at the same time, the battles wouldn't have been so bad because I would have kicked everyones ass in one round.
So the summary is that it's an awesome if you like anime and lots of funny dialog like "Would you pass gas infront of me?" on dates, but you'll have to endure with the crappy battle system and really short and matter-of-factly ending. I'm glad I played it, but I'm not so sure the replay value is high. I would give more of the story-line like I did with Tales of Destiny II but this story is a bit more choppy and full of too many people to accurately depict it with taste and poise. =] - chris
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