SmokedHostage said:
TOOOOOOYYYYYAAA |
Call me crazy but I actually thought Enchanted Arms was great and it's a shame that From Software probably won't ever give us a game like that again considering all the hate it got. I played with the Japanese VOs, which were well done, but the English VOs are worth a good laugh. Enchanted Arms was the only hd jrpg I played that I enjoyed from start to finish (I enjoyed Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey for awhile but then I got tired of them and had to force myself to beat them). The Auto Battle + Fast Forward probably had a lot to do with that because you could just pretty much ignore fighting most of the random battles like that while your experience and skill points went up. Honestly I think the endless amount of battles in jrpgs are probably the #1 reason why my interest in the genre waned. Jrpgs to me feel like a colossal waste of time and make me feel guilty when I see all the time sinked in on the game clock because of all the excessive filler they put in these games (mainly very boring battles make up the majority of that filler). When I had the AI take care of all the pointless random battles and I was left with the fun stuff (boss battles and what not), my experience was quite enjoyable.
If only more jrpgs allowed you to bypass all the boring stuff quicker and get to the fun stuff, I think I wouldn't be so jaded with this genre. Enchanted Arms isn't the first to include Auto Battle + Fast Forward but it's the only one this gen that included both these features. I really liked the battle system in Enchanted Arms (similar to a srpg system) and it added a layer of strategy to battles but it was definitely slow-paced with tons of random battles and if I didn't have the AI help out with the dirty work (boring regular encounters), I probably would have hated this game. The golem collecting was also fun and avoiding all those boring randoms made micromanagement more fun. The fact that Enchanted Arms also respected my time by including save anywhere (a feature that has been standard in wrpgs for ages but is still absent in the age of HDDs for the vast majority of jrpgs) also put me in a good mood.
So IMO, if you are looking for a current-gen turn-based jrpg that isn't on the handhelds, Enchanted Arms might be what you are looking for if you are willing to give it a chance and ignore all the hate it gets. It's dirt cheap these days anyway. I truly feel it is underrated though it all depends on personal preference. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey (in that order) are the next best thing in my opinion. Eternal Sonata is turn-based but it's quasi real-time as well. Not like a ATB quasi real-time. But in a battle system = the product of SRPG + Tales lovemaking kind of way. I'm not a fan of the Tales-like combat so I didn't like ES much.
As for Valykria Chronicles, I haven't played it but doesn't that also have a quasi real-time system? Besides it's a srpg. It's apples and oranges compared to traditional turn-based jrpgs.
It's good to see that there is still interest in turn-based jrpgs. It seems like real-time or quasi real-time is all the rage these days. I normally don't prefer real-time jrpgs unless you are going to count ones with the quasi real-time ATB. I strongly disagree that turn-based rpgs are less fun.
