Video Game / Enchanted Arms

An Eastern RPG developed by FromSoftware and released in 2006 for the Xbox 360 and ported to the PlayStation 3 in 2007. It tells the story of Atsuma, a student at Yokohama's Enchanter's University, where students learn the art of enchanting, and the history of the Golems and the Golem War.

One day, Atsuma and his friends Toya and Makoto skip their afternoon classes to attend the annual Yokohama City Festival, which celebrates the peace that was gained after the Golem War. During the festival, several of the Golems go berserk and cause a riot. Atsuma and his friends return to the university and enter the Sealed Ward, which has been unsealed, and find the Queen of Ice, a Devil Golem from the Golem War with regeneration powers.

During the battle, Atsuma's arm, which has the power to negate enchantments, transforms him into something that can negate the Queen's regeneration power. During the battle, Makoto is presumably killed, Toya is kidnapped, the Queen destroys Yokohama City, and Atsuma wakes up in a prison in London City.

Since it was one of the first next-gen RPGs, it received reviews that ranged between the 60 and 80% grades, making it a slightly above-average title. It features a pretty unique grid-based battle system, which allows for four party members, area attacks, elemental based attacks, and you can also create your own Golems to fight with you.

List of major characters:

• Idiot Hero Atsuma
• The Smart Guy Toya
• Camp Gay Makoto
• Rebellious Princess Karin
• The Stoic Raigar
• Bounty Hunter Yuki

Enchanted Arms contains examples of:

• The Ace: Toya is a Chick Magnet, beloved by all and incredibly knowledgeable in multiple fields despite his young age. He's also a slight Broken Ace as he fully believes in the reputation he's gotten and thinks that means he has to tackle every problem on his own.
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Atsuma fulfills this trope by having the right arm of the Devil.

• Babies Ever After: Sayaka and Raigar.
• Badass Adorable: One of the most powerful golems in the game looks like a small group of gumdrops.
• Big Eater: Atsuma apparently can literally eat 50 slices of pizza in the blink of an eye if Toya and Makoto's reactions are any indication.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English localization isn't a mess, but it is littered with a number of awkward-sounding lines. "My name is Queen of Ice" is just one example.
• Blue Is Calm: Toya wears blue, uses water magic, and is calm, composed, and intellectual. For bonus points, he contrasts against Atsuma, a passionate, red-clad fire-user.
• Book Ends: The game begins and ends at the annual Yokohama Festival
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Toya after being hijacked and used as a Magicore by the Queen of Ice.
• Broken Ace: Toya, the best Enchanter and most intelligent person in Yokohama, is taken and used as a Magicore for a Devil Golem. It takes Atsuma and The Power of Friendship to get him out of it, effectively breaking his "I can do anything by myself" Ineffectual Loner status.
• Cain and Abel: Raigar and Ooka.
• Camp Gay: Makoto is as stereotypically gay as you can get, dressing in a flamboyant getup, wearing makeup, and speaking with a very pronounced lisp.
• Campy Combat: Makoto is a flamboyant, openly gay man who considers himself beautiful. In battle he strikes flashy poses and fights with blades of bright light.
• Catchphrase: Toya has a habit of saying "If I recall correctly" when explaining something or just showing off how intelligent he is.
• Costume Porn: You can tell if someone is important if they have a painfully elaborate (and often times symmetrical) outfit.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Tying in with Failure Is the Only Option and Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs, the answers to the apple juice quiz in the first part of the game are "Apple Juice", "Juice made from Apples", and "Apples as Juice".
• Die Laughing: Professor Kou laughs after telling Atsuma about his actions before dying.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The Queen of Ice may have been defeated by Atsuma. But all there is left is Infinity.
• Distant Finale: The epilogue takes place during a Yokohama Festival far enough in the future that Yokohama has been rebuilt.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Atsuma gets very little respect from the other members of the party (mainly Karin).
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The six elements in the game are Fire and Water, Wind and Earth, and Light and Dark. No surprise there.
• Expy: The Queen of Ice is basically Edea from Final Fantasy VIII, if Edea were a Summon Magic Guardian Force instead of mind-controlled human being.
• Failure Is the Only Option: A number of quests in the early game force Atsuma to fail to collect the Macguffin, so Toya can show how great he is.
• Final Boss: Infinity becomes this by the game's end.
• Flunky Boss: The Queen of Ice.
• Glass Cannon: The joke weapons for the characters have their primary attack stats nearly as good as the ultimate weapons, stronger in Raigar's case, but also come with an enormous HP and EP nerf.
• Gratuitous English: In the Japanese version of the game, the final boss Infinity is named "ブレインオブヘッド" - literally, "Brain of Head".
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Atsuma takes the trope to new levels by having to be taught how to use ladders.
• Heroic BSoD: Atsuma goes through a brief one when he realizes that Kou used him for his experiments and that Atsuma killed several people with his arm.
• Hot-Blooded: Atsuma, to the extreme, especially if Golems are involved.
• HP to One: The bonus boss Omega has an attack that drops your HP down to 1. Thankfully it rarely follows up with a fatal attack, so you usually have a chance to recover.

• Idiot Hero: Atsuma. Chances are you've met bricks that could outwit him.
• Improbable Weapon User: Makoto's Saxophone. Later, he trades it in for... a bladed yo-yo.
• Kick Chick: Karin's fighting style primarily relies on kicks. Her "weapons" are really just boots.

• Lethal Chef: Karin, almost literally.
  • It's even so horrible to look at that it's covered with a mosaic censor!
  • It's the only thing Raigar is actually scared of. That says something.
• Little Miss Badass: Yuki is hardcore in lifestyle and probably never hits puberty.
• Mad Scientist: Professor Kou.
• Magitek: Golems in general are this. They're vaguely robotic but clearly magical.
• Marathon Boss: The Emperor of Earth, as well as Bonus Boss Omega and Infinity.
• Mons: Golems. Unfortunately, it's usually better to fill your party with all four humans, which makes the golems pretty but mostly useless.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: The Queen of Ice has a deep plunging neckline that goes down to her pelvis.
• Obviously Evil: It's supposed to be a surprise that Professor Kou is an evil Mad Scientist who doesn't care about the lives of the students at Enchant University. Unfortunately, he couldn't look any more stereotypically evil if he tried. Though it's Played With in that he's actually a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • It really says something when the man has a demon face stitched into the shoulder of his sleeve.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Camp Gay Makoto disguises himself as the manly Mysterious Protector "Mystery Man", Idiot Hero Atsuma is fooled completely. Even after he switches back to his old voice. Players? Not so much.
• Random Encounters: Oh so very many random encounters.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Atsuma and Toya fit this trope almost perfectly, even down to elemental type. Toya is calm and composed, while Atsuma is passionate and direct.
• Red Right Hand: Taken literally with Atsuma's enchanted arm, Cursed with Awesome which has the power to drain magic and freaks everyone out.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Some Golems names come from the Greek Mythology, like Cerebus, Poisedon and Orpheaus.
• Scars Are Forever: Kou has purple scars on his face.

• Shout-Out:
  • You even get to fight Michael Wilson, though his suit is now "Executor" instead of "Metal Wolf". You do get to hear him yell out "RICHARRRRRRDDDDDD!!!!!"
  • The game's Infinity +1 Sword for the main characters, the Moonlight weapons, are a reference to the Moonlight Sword seen in King's Field and its various spiritual successors.
  • "All of this is meaningless, like a Midsummer Night's Dream."
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Various golems in the Xbox version of the game are drawn from previous From Software titles, including Otogi and Metal Wolf Chaos.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Raigar and Sayaka: He invaded her village, which could put a serious strain on any relationship.
• Superboss: Omega has all stats maxed, including HP.
• Supreme Chef: Makoto apparently quite frequently prepares lavish lunches to Toya, which Atsuma considers far better than what their school cafeteria serves.
• True Companions: Though they start off as a bit of a Dysfunction Junction due to their various clashing personalities, the main party becomes this. It's used as a point of contrast with Ineffectual Loner Toya trying to do everything by himself.
• The Wandering You: While linear the maps are rather long. This serves to slowly drain your endurance with the frequent encounters unless you are strong enough or skilled enough to finish every battle in a single round.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Kou wanted to revive the technology from the Golem War and used Atsuma to study the information.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Atsuma delivers an extremely satisfying one to Yuki after meeting up in the frozen wasteland of what was once Yokohama.
  Atsuma: "I'm telling you to shut the hell up. Look at what happened to Yokohama, and you're still going on about hunting?! That's just so lame even if you are joking!"
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Queen of Ice does this to Kou after Atsuma defeats him.

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