It's no secret that Microsoft have been trying to woo Japanese gamers since the days of the original Xbox; it makes sense, it's a huge and influential market. But given that Microsoft tends to produce first-person shooters or sports titles, it's also no secret that they haven't exactly been successful. So with the advent of the Xbox 360, the MS-boffins decided to try a new approach: Eastern developers making games for an Eastern audience. Not only do Japanese gamers get some of the type of titles they're interested in, but maybe, just maybe, they'll do well in America, Europe and Australia as well. Enter FROM Software, the folks behind the brilliant Otogi and less-brilliant Chromehounds, and their Japanese-style RPG, Enchanted Arms.

The chances are you've encountered one of these JRPGs in the past, be it classics like Final Fantasy or more recent titles like Disgaea, but the one place you won't have run into them is on the Xbox. They are, to speak generally, characterised by extreme linearity, frequent boss-battles and even more frequent random encounters, as well as a healthy dose of weird...and Enchanted Arms might as well be the poster-boy/girl/transsexual magician for these characteristics.

Like many good JRPGs, the story of Enchanted Arms will be instantly familiar: an indolent youth whose adversity for the travails of schoolwork is matched only by his desire to daydream and, of course, his mysterious inherent powers over which he has no control. Luckily for our youthful hero Atsuma, he has two close friends: Toya, the boy-wonder from an ancient and noble family, and Makoto, who, well, is a transvestite male who is deeply in love with Toya. If you read our preview of Enchanted Arms a few months ago you'll already be familiar with Makoto's camper-than-camp speech and mannerisms, and with his proclivity for producing ‘love-lunches' for Toya. Whether or not this ‘sandwich' is exactly what you think it is, the game thankfully doesn't go into specifics about. Suffice to say that this trio is about as far as you can get from the traditional Western influenced, high-fantasy style of RPGs many of us are used to.

The trio are students at Enchant University, studying, funnily enough, enchanting, which is kind of the ugly, stupid second cousin of real magic. It's useful enough of course, but it's far from Real Ultimate Power, and naturally there are some rapscallions who want to rediscover the arcane powers lost during the Golem War. As you'd probably expect from this kind of setup, things go pear-shaped pretty early on for our quirky triumvirate, the end result being the devastation of Yokohama city, and Atsuma ending up on his own. Yes gentle readers, without getting spoilerific I can safely say that you won't have Makoto in your party for very long, which for some will indeed be a blessing. It's a mixed-blessing though, because some of your other companions are barely less annoying than the cross-dressing saxophone player. If you haven't worked it out by now, Enchanted Arms really isn't a game for everyone.

Part of the problem is that the first 3-5 hours (depending on your pace) of gameplay are really just an extended tutorial. Not that there's that much to the game though, there's just a helluva lot of hand-holding going on. You'll be given two rundowns on how to use a ladder (hint: you press A and then push up or down to ascend/descend!) and you'll have the option to repeat these instructions, and even if you say "no thanks, I'm really not that stupid!”, Atsuma will reiterate the process again just in case. Given that virtually every Goddamn action uses the A button, this will get to be very, very annoying.

However by the time you're done with your first trip to London city, the game will ease off a bit and open itself up to your exploration, and it's from this point on that your 30-40 hour adventure will really kick off. Of course, players used to the likes of Oblivion will be stunned that a 30-40 hour adventure can be an almost entirely linear affair, but it's true: there is very little room for exploration, and no real side-missions to be had either. To be fair there is plenty to do as you trundle along your pre-determined course; play roulette, bingo or slots at the casino, engage in limited exploration to find treasure chests, and of course find and collect golems, which is a key part of the game.

Much like the classic money-spinner Pokémon, the world of Enchanted Arms is populated by over a hundred (man-made) monsters called Golems. These creatures were created to serve as assistants, bodyguards or soldiers by mankind, but when the villainous Queen of Ice gets free, they all go crazy and turn on their human masters. Golems in random-battles can only be defeated, but if you can actually see a golem creature somewhere on the screen, approaching it will trigger an encounter with a fixed-golem battle, and beating this much tougher variety of golems will allow you to acquire their core material. Once you've done this, you'll be able to synthesise that core into an actual golem who can join your party and fight on your side.

Golem-gathering is a great gameplay mechanic that can provide players with a staggering variety of battle strategies and abilities, though as you would expect some golems are much more useful than others. Perhaps the coolest aspect is that every golem you encounter in a random battle is located somewhere in the game-world for you to battle, capture and synthesise, so if you encounter a particularly tricky enemy, you'll know that if you look hard enough you can find him. This is also true of the majority of mini-boss and even normal boss creatures you encounter, and there are a couple of golems in particular that are incredibly powerful and a great asset to your party.

Of course all this talk of golems and battles is fairly theoretic without delving into the meat of Enchanted Arms: combat. All your battles take place on two 4x3 grids, one for your party, and one for the enemy. At the start of battle everyone is placed randomly within their grid – you can field 4 controllable characters, the enemy up to 6 – and from there you enter the strategy phase. Placement is crucial because every character has a very different attack-range which in turn varies on the attack you choose to use. Atsuma relies heavily on straight-line attacks that can easily cover the depth of the enemy grid, while Raigar's attacks are strongest as an arc that can hit three enemies in a row directly in front of him. Every player character and golem has a different set of attacks which provides heaps of flexibility to find the combination that suits you best. And while there's lots of area-of-effect attacks, the most powerful abilities are those that target a lone square on the grid, so getting into the right position to use these is another challenge in and of itself.

If it all sounds a little overwhelming, you'll be happy to know that with the exception of some boss battles and tough end-game encounters, Atsuma & co. will almost always get to attack first. As if this didn't provide enough of a competitive edge, FROM Software have seen fit to include an auto-battle option AND a fast-forward button, so you can let the incredibly competent A.I. take charge and speed through the results as well. This may seem like a bit of a cop-out, but trust me, with the sheer amount of random encounters you'll have to slog through, these features will be an absolute Godsend. That is until later in the game when you gain the Encounter Evade skill, which is essentially like turning Enchanted Arms off and running through empty levels, but it's something you will want to do...during the course of the game, I clocked up over 600 random encounters, and sometimes you'll barely take one step before the next encounter triggers.

It's a shame the encounters are so frequent, because the turn-based combat is surprisingly good fun once you get the hang of it. Like most games of its genre, it's heavily reliant on stats, as well as rock-paper-scissors style elemental resistances and weaknesses. Basically, every character has Health Points (HP) that determine how much damage you can withstand, Ether Points (HP) which are used up whenever you activate a skill, as well as Skill Points (SP) which allow you to purchase news skills or boost your other parameters, and Vitality Points (VP) which are consumed when you take damage or a new turn begins. At the end of every battle your HP and SP replenish to full, you'll gain SP (and experience points, XP!), and depending on how many times you were hit or how long the battle went for, your VP will drop. When VP hits 0, you'll drop to 1 health and ether, essentially rendering you useless for battle. If this seems like more acronyms than the financial section of the newspaper, don't look now because there's even more to worry about once you get deeper into the game!

Once you plan your moves and start the battle proper, Enchanted Arms plays out the battle with a series of flashy animations that never really vary, but like any good JRPG, look great and have massive numbers flying left, right and centre to illustrate just how much damage you're doing. If your team has a high amount of Friend Points (FP, there's another one!), you'll be able to unleash linked combination attacks the deal out some truly staggering amounts of damage to your hapless foes. It all looks very impressive and if it wasn't for the frequency of the battles, it would be the clear highlight of the game.

It's not nice to kick something when its down, and at the risk of labouring too long on a point, the random battles really will kill Enchanted Arms for a lot of players. Not only are they frequent, but you'll be forced to endure them by a game that pads out its length by making you back-track through locations dozens of times for no good reason. Regardless of your theological leanings, you will pray that at the end of the boss battle the game will teleport you back to a major city, because otherwise you've got a long walk back ahead of you. Expect to throw down your controller on many occasions and quit the game when the encounters simply get too frequent, the interruption to the story now too unbearable for words. The A.I. is really quite good though, and if they don't defeat your enemies in the first turn, they'll rarely let combat drag on beyond a second round.

Believe it or not, you will be annoyed that the story is getting interrupted. Shakespeare it ain't, but the narrative in Enchanted Arms is surprisingly enjoyable and engaging, and the dialogue, while clichéd and saccharin-sweet in places, runs the gamut from tender to genuinely humorous. Of course the actual speech leaves a lot to be desired with some truly horrid voice acting, but if you treat the whole thing as a giant soap-opera it can be quite fun, especially when Toya is shouting "QUEEN OF ICE!” awkwardly because there's no shortening or alternative title for this frosty foe. If you aren't one to see the funny side of things, you can always just listen to the game in its native Japanese with subtitles, but that's far less amusing! Less amusing and twice as confusing is the fact that some golems speak in English, while others haven't been translated from their native Japanese. It's a little disconcerting to be sure, and I really want to know what Marlin Glave and some of the other golems are babbling about!

Visually, Enchanted Arms is kind of like a supermodel; it's tough to call it pretty, but handsome doesn't sound quite right. It's attractive enough to look at, but lacks substance and feels a little empty. The characters and golem creatures are clearly the artistic focus of the game, but the locations do look good, they're just devoid of, well, anything really. Forests have no wildlife flitting around, deserts lack shifting sands, and cities feel quite depressing with only a handful of citizens. The battles and combat animations are lively and exciting, but outside of that Enchanted Arms really just lacks soul. This is more the case for the later locations, because Yokohama and the Enchant University are really quite vibrant and detailed, but it seems like the closer you get to your final showdown with Queen of Ice, the more desolate and devoid of colour and life the locations get. Maybe it's just a metaphor for the suffering she inflicts upon the world, but as a gamer, it certainly doesn't grab your attention.

Enchanted Arms is not a particularly difficult game; from its extended tutorials to the ruthlessly efficient player A.I. during auto-battles, there isn't very much that will bog you down aside from the boss-battles. These are often epic in nature and against some truly mammoth golems, and these will require quite a bit of strategy on your part. Rarely will you feel the need to back-track simply to fight enemies and level up, although to be honest this is because you'll already have fought so many Goddamn random battles that you're already a pretty high level. The game keeps track of a lot of statistics for you, and breaks down your Completion Rate to let you know what percentage of golems you've found, how many skills and support skills you've found, etc.

Aside from trying to hunt down errant golems, there are few distractions aside from two side-quests; one fairly minor, the other incredibly involved. The first involves collecting God Orbs which in turn can become Godly weapons, the 2nd most powerful in the game, that also give your four primary characters a new skill too. The other involves the Holy Beast Shrine, which is a two-part epic that essentially throws you into a thirteen-level mega-dungeon against the toughest golems in the game. This is a great place to level up and gain some awesome golem cores, but will take at least 3-4 hours with Encounter Evade, and probably closer to 10 if you endure the random battles.

Overall, there's not a lot to do aside from the main quest and no reason to replay the game, but FROM Software have included an Xbox Live multiplayer component that essentially takes the combat phase of the game and allows two players to duke it out online. It's really not worth the effort if you haven't beaten the Holy Beast Shrine because everyone will be using uber-golems like Omega and the god-golems, and when everyone is bringing out high-level, heavy hitters, it really highlights how simplistic the battle-engine is. Still, it's worth a look at it can be good fun, and more importantly, you might discover a few new golems or clever uses for the ones you already have!