As sad as american nerds are about comic book babes, star wars, star trek and overall fictional geekdom... the Japanese have gone far beyond what we have yet to even imagine ^_^;
I won't go into the realm of their utter perversion, but a genre that has always been big in Japan has been the dating simulator! Sadly enough a massive amount of these games feature cute Anime girls as opposed to real, flesh and blood women... and okay, so I admit I am sad and pathetic enough that I would indeed buy some of these if they were translated and sold on US SHores. But only to uh.... show how uh... weird the Japanese are... riiiiiiight. That's the ticket. ^_^
ANYWAY! With the massive success the Dating Genre had shown, it was only a matter of time until someone thought of combining it with an RPG. And so they (RED) did! From the Weirdos that brought us the decent RPG series WILD ARMS, comes Thousand Arms! Even though the two series share the word ARMS in their title they are totally unrelated games.
In TA (Hmmm.... T & A say a lot about the game coincidentally...), you assume the role of Meis (sounds like "mice") Triumph, son of the Noble Lord Triumph and experienced Spirit Blacksmith. Also the family most well noted for being generations of nothing but lecherous and whimsical horndogs. Meis is not much different from his father in that regard. After your land is gone, Seized by the evil, mechanical "Dark Acolytes", Meis wanders into a town where he befriends the sweet and naive sister of a great Spirit Blacksmith, Jabil, who eventually takes Meis under his wing and trains him to not only better his sword, but better himself. Unfortunately once Jabil's prior apprentice shows up to prove his "dark smithing" is better, everything goes to poop in a blender. Now Meis and Jabil's sister wander the land to stop the Blackmsith of the Dork... Oops, I meant dark! ^_^ And to defeat the Dark Acolytes and their king. Along your adventure you befriend several almost stereotypical RPG characters save for the crazy Fashion designer, date not only the girls in your party but characters you meet along the way, smithy your way to victory and awesome power and finally to get you some!
Why it sucks!: First off, the dates are way to short and mostly they're not even dates! Like much of the Japanese games, you must answer questions and give responses to some of the most ridiculous crap I have ever had to sit through since doing surveys for grocery stores. The responses you get vary as do your choice of answers, and much of the time you choices are so slim and risky that you will end up being slapped or dumped without question. And their unpredictale responses scare me just as much as those from REAL women >_< It just ain't right!!! The fight engine is so simple it probably could have run off the super nintendo or Sega Genesis/megadrive. Basically, you have a timer that goes down slower or faster than your enemies depending on your level/strength and you then press a button (X) which will make whichever character you have up front (I used Muza through the whole game) attack or perform whatever action you've instructed them to do. THen there's the people in the back, who can uses spells or items, but cannot attack. The neat thing about the people in the back is that they randomly cheer you on and yell at the enemy causing things to go in your favor. But the system seems too much in your favor despite the cheap enemies and huge random encounter rate, finishing the game takes tons of patience because the encounter rates only get worse. Then there's the camera angles... Xenogears probably had one of the absolute worst problems with camera angles, this is slightly worse since everything is chibified when meis is wandering through towns and dungeons (well... the people are SD anyway). So constantly you'll be blocked by buildings or other misc. objects and getting lost isn't too hard for me to do and I do it quite often thank you. Especially in THIS game! Mostly thanks to my terrible sense of direction, coupled by the awful camera work.
Why it rules: THis is easily the funniest game I have! The date scenarios crack me up! Some of the things Meis says are so absurd that you can't help but laugh! For example, Girl says "I like to sleep with stuffed animals at night". Your two choices are 1."Can I sleep with you too?" or 2."I make secret gases at night". This, while not entirely accurate, is one of the various traps you'll encounter where either answer will take away points, ruin your date or just plain get you slapped. Even though it hurts your score, It's hilarious to watch these dates go from bad to worse! Then there's the weird things you encounter in the game, a big part is somewhere in the middle where you encounter the robot cutie, Ratchet, who's messing with all the ghosts or "Damashi". Immediately Meis lays into her and when she starts flirting back he gets beat down by Jabil's sister (still can't remember her name!! >_<). Then things get even weirder when the goofy Nelsha finds her costume box and her freaky powers demonstrate themselves right into a cat fight with Ratchet! ROWR! And that the two of them ask you to decide things in the fight makes it all the more hilarious, but no matter what, in the end Meis gets slapped. :)
There's also a mini-game associated with each girl, each of which adds to the replay value of the game :) Add to that the charm of the photo booth which demonstrates at what level the girl in question is smitten with you. At the lowest, the girl will appear totally pissed off and the highest you'll see her blushing like mad. All the little extras, plus all the goofy stuff villagers say definately add to the enjoyment you get from the game. Being that the fighting system is so terribly simplistic makes for great ease that even an RPG failure can conquer, provided of course this failure has the patience to endure the huge amount of encounters.
Overall: Wow. This game defies a lot of what you'd expect to find in an RPG. And surprisingly the two genres of dating and RPG mesh fairly well! The only problem is that they didn't work hard enough on either part enough to make it a great game! It's by no means a bad game, but there's not enough dating involved and there's not enough decent RPG adventure on hand to lure in most gamers. Its comedy factor masks much of the games flaws, but it can only cover for so much. In the end, its the little things that make this game worth having. The jokes, the one liners, the mini-games, the dating, the crazy villagers, etc. make the game. The ending and latter battles don't seem worth it once you actually finish the game. This game offers a lot of laughs and fun, but you have to have the patience to endure tons of crap before you actually get what you're looking for. Being that its sales didn't break any records it has become one of those hard to find games that only hardcore RPG freaks and Anime nuts should even bother looking for.