Enchanted Arms

Developer: FromSoftware

Release Date: August 29, 2006

Time Played: About Two Hours

Dubiosity: 3 out of 5

Problematicosity: Significant???

Would I play more? Yes?

It’s kind of serendipitous that the first two games for Season 2 of the Wheel of Dubious RPGs: “This time I have console stuff I paid too much money for” are both beloved(?) From Software classics(?) To be frank, if I had the capacity and willpower to make a randomizer wheel entirely out of dubious and non-dubious FromSoft games from the 90s to the mid-00s I’d do so, because their games can never be accused of being boring. Playing through Lost Kingdoms last year was a good example of that. That game has one cool, weird concept with its real-time card battle stuff, and it tries to ride that out for like 7-8 hours. It doesn’t quite succeed, but it’s neat that it tries.

Enchanted Arms definitely feels more like a fully-realized video game than Lost Kingdoms, albeit one that still has plenty of signature FromSoft quirk. This is one of the first games to come out of Microsoft’s short-lived attempt to court the Japanese market by throwing money at JRPG developers for exclusivity, and uh… It sure does look like a Playstation 2 game that had its assets hastily retouched and upscaled for 720p. That wasn’t an uncommon thing for games during the transition to HD, but it’s a look I find both ugly and endearing. So what is Enchanted Arms? It’s kinda, uh, Pokemon? But with a combat grid that sorta reminds me of Mega Man Battle Network? There are attacks and positioning and moving around and you can combo things? It seems cool! I sure didn’t need to engage in any nuance or monster building during my time with it, but I can see how Enchanted Arms could be a good time. Eventually.

So, hey, moreso than a lot of other kinds of games for this feature, I feel like the introductory hours of a JRPG like this are perhaps not entirely indicative of the full thing. That’s something that might be addressed later down the line, and I’m not opposed to doing follow-up streams of games that catch my interest, such as this one. As Shounen God Hand Imbecile Atsuma and his two friends(?) I managed to skip school, get into a fighting tournament, and then accidentally awaken an ancient evil or something, all within the span of a little more than two hours. There are pizza robots, there is hilariously bad English voice acting, the soundtrack is characteristically eclectic, and there is just the worst/best outfit design. It’s equal parts intriguing and baffling, and I absolutely would not mind seeing more.

Now, to discuss the weird, rainbow-colored elephant in the room, it’s fair to say that Enchanted Arms’ sense of quirk extends into “Problematic” territory. The game itself is fucking weird in a way I can get behind, but the exception is Makoto, one of the three immediate main characters, who such an over-the-top flamboyant gay stereotype that it almost goes into unintentional parody territory. Like, you know how Sylvando in Dragon Quest XI is awesome? Well, what if Sylvando was terrible? And pervasive? It’s a lot, and occasionally a reminder that 2006 was *a long time ago.* It sounds like he doesn’t get any better, either, which is definitely one of those things that puts a damper on my enthusiasm to play more.

Still, if nothing else, Enchanted Arms definitely seems… memorable in a way that might need some future investigation. I haven’t played enough to tell you if it’s good or bad, but it’s absolutely functional and at least mildly dubious in a way that catches my interest. I’m not sure if I want to invest the time to see if this promise bears fruit, especially since it apparently doesn’t start getting “great” until a dozen hours in, but I will never count a revisit out.

King’s Field: The Ancient City

Developer: FromSoftware

Release Date: March 25, 2002

Time Played: About 90 minutes

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Darksoulsiosity: Notable

Would I play more? Unironically yes.

So hey, King’s Field, huh? I finally played one of those on stream, specifically the last one. It’s kind of impossible to avoid this, so I’ll get it out of the way: King’s Field (and a lot of other early FromSoft RPGs, like Shadow Tower) offer a pretty clear window into how games like the Souls series came to be. The lineage is evident. I’m gonna try and avoid just saying IT LIKE DARK SOUL, however, because I feel like that kinda downplays what King’s Field is actually doing, which is more than just being a proto-Souls game. What is it doing? Confusing and infuriating me, mostly.

Now, for what King’s Field 4 is, at least from my 90 minute punishment session, is that it’s essentially a first person RPG whereupon you strafe around monsters and hit them whenever your stamina bar is at max. It’s weird, atmospheric, and inscrutable, but it’s also a clunk-ass video game even by the standards of the early 2000s. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s a first-person game that hasn’t quite moved on to dual stick control, and instead uses L1 and R1 for strafing. Alongside your character having roughly the turn speed of a forklift, you aren’t exactly moving at a rapid clip, even when sprinting. It’s a… deliberate game, to put it lightly.

It’s a game that I find equal parts intriguing and irritating, but I think it’s something I could get into if I was in the right frame of mind. And maybe staring at a walkthrough or a map. I know that sense of discovery is often something that Souls adherents swear by, but I find this game crosses my personal level of tolerance pretty hard. I dunno if there are game-critical hidden walls the same way there apparently are in the first two Kings Field games, but if I *were* to stream myself playing this, you can rest assured that my only way of doing so is by ruining the magic as much as possible.

And that’s it for this week! In case you haven’t heard, I’m on a podcast now with ZombiePie and JeffRud called OFF THE DEEP END, whereupon we cover a bunch of weird RPGs in-depth. We’re currently playing through Xenosaga Episode 1, and just recorded our second episode on it. That game… it’s a lot. Like, A LOT. Consider giving it a listen, we’re gonna be covering a lot of fun stuff in the future as part of an off-week program for the main Deep Listens podcast. Who knows, I might even stream some of them!