If you've said that the Xbox 360 is sorely lacking in Japanese RPGs developed by Japanese companies, I'd like to nominate you for "Understatement of the Year". To address this black hole of a gaming staple, Ubisoft will be publishing From Software's Enchanted Arms (known in Japan as [eM] –eNCHANT arM- … did someone leave the CAPS LOCK key on or what?) in the U.S. and Europe. The release of Enchanted Arms will mark it as the first Japanese RPG on the Xbox 360 in the United States.

The storyline follows Atsuma, a young man who can control creatures that mankind created an age ago, to fight their wars for them. These war machines, or Golems, disappeared one thousand years ago—the game's main plot involves Atsuma reviving and then needing to ultimately defeat the "Devil Golem". During the game, Atsuma summons and controls other Golems to aid him during his quest. With over one hundred Golems to gather and utilize, ya gotta catch 'em all! Atsuma, along with a cast of other adventuresome souls, must track down the Devil Golem before he destroys humanity, as well as discovering other plot twists involving Atsuma, the Golems, and Atsuma's companions.

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While fighting your way through the storyline, you will notice that the game has around 50 hours of gameplay, depending on how sidetracked you get. Exploration is similar to other titles in the same genre—you drive the main character around an environment while your supporting characters are available for conversation, etcetera. The supporting characters number 75 in total and many will have to be "unlocked" through completing quests during the storyline. Others will have to be found during the course of gameplay and added to your ensemble as you see fit. During the demo, the party I saw was composed of Atsuma, a guy with shades with a wicked looking sword, a robot girl who had a bazooka, and a wacked out alchemist.

Speaking of your companions, Enchanted Arms employs the near-standard "turn-based, party of four characters" battle system perfected by Japanese RPGs. The battle is played out on a grid of squares, somewhat similar to the mechanic in Lucasarts' Gladius. The battles are random encounters that will keep a player on his or her toes. One welcome feature will be the ability to "auto battle" enemies. In essence, the game will remember what tactics you like to use during play, and will use those same strategies against future opponents. This allows the player to get through battles quickly, especially if you skip through the animations of the special attacks and combos.

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In terms of special attacks and character combos, Enchanted Arms is definitely in the vein of the classic, epic combo and special attack animations made famous by Square's Final Fantasy VII. With the Xbox 360's powerful suite of graphics capabilities, the results are splendid, over the top, and gorgeous. Even traveling through environments, there's bump and specular mapping on buildings, floors; the water has reflectivity—in short every graphical bell and whistle one expects to find in next generation games.

As a fan of the Final Fantasy series, I'll be keeping an eye out for this one to see how it stacks up to the venerable franchise. If it even comes close to that quality we've come to expect of Final Fantasy, then I'll be happy, as would any Japanese RPG fan worth his or her salt.

-SuperMonkey