Thousand Arms

"Lots Of Arms, But Half A Brain"

I'm a fan of things that stray from the ordinary, and so I had high hopes for Thousand Arms, which was touted as a 'dating RPG.' I'm not much for chasing polygonal tail, but the prospect of embarrassing myself in front of snooty warrior women seemed pretty entertaining, and a nice change of pace from the usual 'anime-looking people save the world from evil' bunk you get in most role-playing games. So imagine my dismay when I got into the game, and it turned out to be... about a bunch of anime-looking people saving the world from evil. Sigh. There's some dating silliness afoot, but it's merely a hint of icing on an otherwise typical cake. Thousand Arms had a lot of potential, but the comical presentation can't make up for the generic gameplay.

The main star of the game is Meis, a smart-alecky warrior boy whose father was a legendary Spirit Blacksmith and ladies man. Of course, everyone in these games must start from the bottom to rouse our sympathy, so Meis' family name falls apart, and he's left out in the cold with only a rickety sword to his name. Like his father, Meis' only ambition seems to be scoring with the ladies, but of course, he'll mature as the game goes on. Well, sort of. Meis will eventually become a decent Spirit Blacksmith himself, and learn how to forge and upgrade weapons to add magic powers and make them do more damage.

Meis can't add powers on his own, though, and thus we come to the dating portion of the game. As Meis improves his 'relations' with the game's various girls, he can forge weapons with them and add their related powers to the weapon. As Meis wins over the girls, his intimacy level with them will increase, and more potent powers will be unlocked. Meis can improve his intimacy rating by dating a girl and saying the right things, giving her an appropriate gift, or doing well in her mini-game. Sadly, none of these activities are particularly engaging. And since the game is basically riding on them as its main selling point, problems arise.

Take the dating bit, for instance. The girl will ask a question, and you'll pick one of two responses. The translation isn't all that awful, but it could've been a lot sharper, and both responses often fail to make much sense. And when they do make sense, the 'right' answer is usually painfully obvious. Had the writers gone over the top here and allowed Meis to be a total pig, the dating might've been funny. But Meis never says anything more offensive than "I really want to hold you!", and the girl makes the most drastic faces at the smallest response, so it's like watching two hyperactive 12 year-olds on a pretend date. And that, my friend, is NOT quality entertainment. For an example of this kind of system done right, look at Knights of the Old Republic, where the 'evil' responses were often laugh-out-loud funny in their mindless cruelty. Of course, that game didn't need to be translated from Japanese-to-English. As for giving presents... well, it's about as exciting as it sounds. And the dating mini-games are okay, but they're basically retreads of generic 'classic' games like Memory, Whack-A-Mole, and other low-budget staples. Still, as a way to take a break from the rest of the game, they serve their purpose, I guess.

As noted earlier, Thousand Arms is a typical console-RPG at heart. You walk around and fight random monsters, talk to people in town and buy things, go to inns to refuel, watch boring cinema scenes... the usual. Were it not for the game's constant attempts at humor (some successful, some not), it'd be indistinguisable from the other 894 Final Fantasy clones out there. While Thousand Arms' offbeat attitude IS a welcome break from the overblown dramaticism of the Final Fantasy series, it doesn't have the depth or production values of Square's flagship franchise, and it eventually starts to feel like your wacky uncle at a party: kind of funny at first, but tiring after an hour or two.

The combat is pretty mediocre as well. One character from each side steps out front, and the others stay in the back, offering support with spells, items, and other random effects. While this is a nice change from the norm, the fact that only one character is really fighting at a time makes the combats longer than they need to be. It doesn't help that all of the game's spells and special attacks - particularly summoning - seem cut-and-pasted from other successful RPG titles. In fairness, I did enjoy the enemy design in Thousand Arms. The bad guys are drawn and animated well, and they often have amusingly silly names.

While playing this game, I couldn't help but think of Superhero League of Hoboken, a terrific and riotously funny RPG/adventure for the PC. That game was funny and satirical from beginning-to-end, which made it a blast. Thousand Arms, on the other hand, tries to be two games at once: a serious RPG with a generic light-vs.-dark storyline, and a comedic dating game starring a horny doofus. This Jekyll-and-Hyde combination just comes off as awkward and ill-fitting.

Graphically, Thousand Arms has two faces: one pretty, and one plain. Most of the game is pretty bland, but the animated close-ups of the main characters look quite good, and the combat sequences also come off well visually. As far as PlayStation 1 games go, it's passable stuff.

The sound package is a little stronger. The voice-acting isn't nearly as awful as I had expected, so thumbs up to Atlus for that. The music isn't much to crow about, but it's okay. The sound effects, however, are quite good, especially Meis' sword-slashing noises.

While Thousand Arms is basically a mess, I'm going to give it a barely-passing grade. Even if the merging of fantasy RPG and dating doesn't work, at least they tried to do something vaguely different. (If only they had jettisoned the generic RPG trappings completely... they might've been on to something.) And any game that tries to make you chuckle gets some sympathy points from me. I can't really recommend the game to anyone but a die-hard RPG addict, but it's probably more fun than playing Final Fantasy IX again for the third time.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/05