Thousand Arms:
The Quest to Stop Dianova

STORY

As stories goes, this one is definetly the funniest of them all. It's not a serious one like FF8 but a very good light hearted warm story with many moments of good laughs. Clearly a comedy rpg. The downside is that the ending although was very compete didn't really answer the questions as to who would end up with who as a couple. After all this is a dating sim rpg.

The story begins in a small town name Kant. After some peaceful time, the Dianova Empire decided to conquer the world. Their conquest soon reach the doorstep of Kant. Like all war fleeing refugees, our hero Meis soon found himself in a new town called Boyzby. Here is where he meets his mentor, Jyabil, and his future girlfriend, Sodina. Together with Sodina, Meis goes on a quest to stop the Dianova Empire.

The quest itself is very straight forward. One shouldn't have any problem with the mazes/dungeon at all. The thing about the quest is that at the beginning and near the end of disk 1, you start to think that this really is a long quest but by the time you reach disk 2 you pretty much get the idea that the quest is starting to end too soon.

Score: 8/10

SOUND/MUSIC/VOICE OVER

Clearly the one thing that stands out in all of this, is the incredible voice dubbing. 12hrs of voice overs in Lunar maybe too much but 12hrs in Thousand Arms is way too little. The excellent voice overs help really gives you a feel that this is an anime cartoon and not an rpg game. Excellent battle cries during special attacks and summon spells that you really can't get tired of. As soundtrack goes, both the beginning and ending songs are in Japanese so you may like it or like me just downright ignore it cause you don't know what the hell the song is about. The midis are not that memorable but good enough to keep you going in this game.

Score: 8/10

GRAPHICS

The game uses both anime and background 3-D polygon graphics. The FMV during the game mixes anime with CG with good results. The one thing that stands out is the beautiful colors in the game. On the downside the characters drawing in the battle system is pretty weak. Overrall the graphics could have been done better.

Score: 7/10

GAMEPLAY

The bulk of the gameplay is of course the dating part. Inorder for you to get special attacks and magic you have to date girls to raise their intimacy level to access them. Each girls level of intimacy has a spell or special attack attach to them. On the downside to all this is that you can't skip intimacy level cause you would end up missing a spell. Going from level 5 to level 7 would make you miss a level 6 spell. Another thing to the gameplay is that a character strength depends on what level their weapon is at. Forging your weapon helps make your weapon level higher. If your hero level is 35 but your hero weapon is level 5 than your attack power is level 5 only. How high you can make your hero weapon level depends on the hero level.

Dating: since I've never played a dating sim game before, I can't really compare how a dating sim supposed to be. All I can say is that the dating part tend to fall flat for me. The dating part is more of a 20 skill testing questions where you have to answer them right to raise the girls intimacy level up. If you did good then the girl will kiss you at the end of the date which will raise their intimacy level up. The downside to all this is that the girls tend to ask the same questions over and over again and it kinda get boring by the time you're on your 25th dates with whatever girl your with.

Battle system: you can get up to 7 party members. You can use only 3 party members in battles like with all current rpgs. The problem with this is that even though it is turn base, it's a one on one fight with the character that is at the front line and the monsters. The 2 other characters are behind the front fighter and they can only use support magic and items. Attack magic use becomes pretty useless cause the front character will either be using his/her sword as a main attack or use his/her special attacks/summoner. Not only that but with one on one battles, things can get pretty long for random battles because sometimes you would have to fight 3 monsters in a row, one on one. It would have been easier or a lot quicker if the gamemakers would let all the battle members fight instead of just one. Another downside is that all you really need is one really good frontline fighter and a couple of magic healers as back up. The other 4 party member becomes useless in battles and are nothing more than game decorations. Clearly the weakest part in this game.

Score: 4/10

REPLAY

The replay value clearly is on spending some major time with getting all the prizes in the Damashi forest village and of course dating the extra girls that's not part of your party. After that there's not much that will make you want to try this again especially with the crappy battle system.

Score: 5/10

Overrall, I enjoyed this game more than I thought. But I wouldn't call it a classic or a bad rpg game too. Much better than an average rpg but not enough to make it a 9. Would've been a 9 if it weren't for the battle system.

The womanizer of the game: Meis the hero.

Funniest character: Muza (hero best friend)

Best frontline fighter: Muza

Best looking girl to go on a date with: Wyna. Nothing beats a good looking blonde in a bikini.LOL!!!! I know I shouldn't have said that.

Number of times getting slap: at least 20.

Funniest moment: when Muza found out that the boss he is fighting is a beautiful blonde in a bikini.

Final Score: 7/10