Thousand Arms

So...a bit controversial here, but Thousand Arms sucks. I don't think that opinion is a boiling hot take, but I've only experienced about ten hours of it. In that time, I've struggled to enjoy most of it.

Maybe it's because I'm ace, but our MC is annoyingly horny. The main draw of the game is that it's a dating sim. Meis can date the girls that join his party and a few extra here and there. Doing so increases Meis' ability to forge stronger weapons/learn new spells. The dates are boring, long, repetitive, and I feel like the girls are just sex objects. I know the game came out in the 90s, but I feel gross. Doubly so because I'm an adult man in my thirties.

Worst still, the dating mechanics don't end up being rewarding. They're supposed to lead to more powerful weapons, but I didn't notice any of my stats increasing. How do you gain stats in TA? And the spells aren't worthwhile because the battle system sucks.

You can bring in three people, but only one can do anything. The back row acts as one and can only do a small amount of spells. Luckily, cure is one of them. And battles are long and tedious because the devs wanted to overcorrect the NA release because the Japan version was called too easy. So get ready to spam heal and potions... I struggled to find a balance between having HP or MP. And even without the sword sponge mobs, it's painfully slow. The game has an opposite ATB gauge. You select your action at the start of your turn and then wait for the bar to empty, pressing X upon completion. The mob will always be slightly faster than you. This just means there's a lot of nothing happening in battle, mainly because you're just controlling one character. It would be fine if you're only against one mob, but there are plenty of full (three) enemy parties. I felt trapped in every battle.

I don't know anything about the story, but there seemed to be promise. You're a blacksmith who communes with spirits, and you need the power of friendship to beat up a robot. There were some interesting twists early on, and I spoiled a few in the far future, but there's no way it can even out the rest.

I listened to the OST on YouTube and found it pretty alright. It seemed it would have been the best part of Thousand Arms.

Graphics were also fine enough, but I already saw plenty of spell animation reuse and mob palette swaps.

After only ten hours, you can't make a true declaration of worth. My guesstimate is Thousand Arms would get a 20 out of 50. Sorry if it's your favorite (a guy I watch on YouTube said he liked it), but I'm moving on already.