"This is the most average RPG I have ever played..."

Thousand Arms is the 4th playstation RPG that I have bought this year, and it is my least favorite for many reasons that I will outline below.

Gameplay: 6/10.
This, above all, is a mixed bag. This game follows most of the traditional RPG's styles, but really doesn't do much to go above that. The Dating aspect of the game is a nice addition to the game, but after a few dates with any one girl, some of the things they say can get annoying. A lot of the questions are simply reworded and reused for different girls to reflect their personality. The questions themselves however are really childish, and it is more like dating a antsy 9 year old, then a mature adult. There are 9 women you get to date in your quest to save the world, but only 4 of them really join your party, the rest you have to visit their towns to date. The main purpose for dating the girls is to level up your sword and give it additional spells and attacks. There are also options to give your girls presents and play a mini-game with them, but these really don't serve any purpose except to raise your intimacy level.

The fighting system can be a real pain, especially if you don't like spending hours upon hours of battling endless monsters as you navigate your way through dungeons. This aspect really made this game an unenjoyable experience for me. I could have sworn that every time I took three or four steps another random battle occurred. This can be really frustrating in a dungeon if you are lost and are trying to backtrack. The system itself is in my opinion poorly done. Yes, when you add new spells to your weapons they may look cool, but most spells really don't do anything special, except for heal and antidote, the rest don't inflict as much damage as your traditional attack, and take longer to cast. The only worthwhile attacks you receive in the game are Meis's summons, and the party's special attacks, but these can only be used once or twice before you have to rest at an inn. The battle system is basically set up for one on one, which is why it takes so long to complete fights. An average fight in a dungeon can last anywhere from 1-3 minutes, and keep in mind this happens every 3 to 5 steps. The one on one system might have worked well if there were multiple conflicts happening at the same time, but because there is only one attacker in your party, the rest have to give support by using items, or heal spells, they can't attack directly.

Some other aspects about the gameplay that annoyed me were the constant footsteps taken by Meis, they become so annoying and were totally unnecessary. I found most of the dungeons to be monotonous, because of the battles, and the layout. I somehow think that to save themselves the time in programming more complex dungeons, the game designers decided to up the rate of encounters to make a twenty minute dungeon into one that takes one hour to complete. The towns each have their own themes and decorations, but they all seemed the same, and the dialect of the people was so indifferent, unlike Xenogears, in which the you felt bad for the people's plight. The characters in the game come of so cheesy that it is more like talking to a bunch of 5 year olds about what happened, because of this, I left many of the towns unexplored, and didn't talk to many of the ordinary characters I talked to. While many of the reviewers said that this game would take 35 to 50 hours to complete, it only took me 20 hours, and one of the biggest pluses to RPG's are their length, not this one. I really felt that I had to drag myself through this game, waiting for something to get better, for myself to finally really like it, but that feeling never really came.

Story: 5/10.
Let me perfectly honest with you, I really don't believe Thousand Arms is a true RPG, yes it has hit points and magic points and deals with the subject of a young adventurer out to overthrow the evil villain, but the story and the plot are both very lacking. The story is very typical, as the hero has to go out and make friends so he can overcome the evil ravaging the land. In fact, this story seemed so plain and standardized, that it never really took on it's own meaning, it's own personality, this is a very big problem in the game.

Now, if you like games that are light-hearted at their core and you are like well let's go and skip to see what happens next, you may find yourself liking this game. However, after playing such epic quests as FFVII, FFVIII, and Xenogears, I found this youthful approach to the plot very annoying and offensive. Where are the big plot twists, where is the tragic death of one of your friends, this game leaves me to believe that everything will happen right in the world, nothing can stop the hero. If we are thrown into a dungeon, oh of course, one of the members of the party knows the way out, but oh, you have to go through a 2 hour dungeon. The Plot in this game is almost like it is thrown together in the last minute, and it was just to hold together the dating and fighing aspects of the game, a major minus for me.

Graphics: 7/10
This, like most of the game is a mixed bag. It is neat to see the wonderful anime sequences and I really enjoyed that part of the game. However, they would only occur about one every 30 minutes to an hour, and I had to live with the abismal graphics engine. The fighting engine is also kind of neat looking, while using the anime sprites in full form to battle, and there are some good animations as well.

The engine of this game for town, dungeon, and world travel is very disappointing, at best. The world map is hard to navigate, and not very detailed, plus the use of the deformed meis sprite makes it sometimes hard to see where you are. The Town and dungeon engine is also a minus because of their simplicity. One thing that I couldn't find out is why the game took so long to load the diffent town sections and dungeons, which take about 5-7 seconds. While FFVIII's graphics were a thousand times better, and took less time to load. You can use your L1 and R1 buttons to turn the camera, but the graphics in the game look very unpolished and don't work well together. The Sprites of the game look like they came off an early generation of Super NES RPG, and don't fit well in with the backround. The backrounds look very unfinished and not-polished at all. While the system resembles Xenogears alot, the graphics were not anywhere as sophisticated looking, and there wasn't as much freedom of the camera to tell events in TA. All in all the graphics of this game leave something to be desired, and unless you are an amime addict, you probably wouldn't like them.

Sound: 5/10
This category takes a dive for three things. The first is that the town music and those of the dungeon are not very fitting to the story and are too absurd to really enjoy. Some of the tunes were alright, but mostly I found myself wishing the music would turn off. Another part of the music that bugged me was the battle music, which is the same for the entire game, and it isn't even decent!! So bear in mind that you will probably be listening to that tune for 8 hours as you battle your way through the many dungeons of Meis's world.

Another minus in this category is the voice acting. A few voices were decent, like Wyna, Sodina, and Muza. However, many of the other voices are very chipper and childlike and aren't polished very well. Meis's voice became particularuly disturbing towards the end. Most the of the sound effects of the game were fairly well done, but once again, the footsteps of meis really pissed me off as I heard them constantly throughout the game.

Control: 6/10
Control in this game is somewhat loose. When you go up to a town on the world map, you might have to press the buttons repeatedly on different spots before you enter. The camera control also adds to the problem of control by messing up your view during the game. Other than these initial complaints, there is not alot to talk about in this category, you move meis around and do your best to navigate the world through the confusing level design and bad camera angles.

Difficulty: 5/10
The Difficulty of this game can be described as very easy. As long as you heal yourself after every 5 fights, and know how to use your special attacks against bosses, the game should be very easy. The mazes themselves are excessively easy because of their length being so short.

Replayability: 4/10
The only reason to replay this game is to date the women. Most of the plot is laughable, and once you've played it through the first time, you are probably sick of it. It certainly is not fun to sit through the hours of battling, and the hidden treasures of the game are pretty much worthless because it is so easy anyway.

Overall Score: 6/10
I am not a gamer that is against RPG's at all. I really enjoyed those of the caliber of Xenogears, FFVII, FFVIII, and Star Ocean the second story. I was really excited when I heard that there was a game that took four years to develop and I couldn't wait. Even before buying the game I actually read about 20 reviews about the game. A few were negative saying the game was average, but most of them praised the games with scores between 8 and 9.5. I was really dissapointed by these reviews, and I will never make the mistake of buying a game like this again. Now, granted, Thousand Arms does come with a free prism game card, four memory card stickers, and an offer for a CD that contains the soundtrack, but you have to mail the card in, and it takes 6 to 8 weeks for arrival, by that time you will have well beaten the game and moved on, that was a bad choice Atlus. Another lure of this game was its use of sexual meanings in the game play. I don't remember going to a review without seeing a shot of the maids talking about "master, you mustn't touch me there", or another of the beautiful anime women, but this too comes up short after you realize it was just thrown in there at the end, and is only used to explain the dating aspect of the game.

All in all this RPG was very middle of the line, and it only deserves a 6 as an overall score. Only buy it if you have exhausted all other RPG's and hunger for more, but beware it isn't what you are made to think you are getting. If you haven't tried Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7 or 8, then don't waste one more second looking up reviews for Thousand Arms go out and get one of these fabulous games they won't dissapoint.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/15/00, Updated 01/15/00