Thousand Arms is a RPG that most of us are familiar with; you play as the main character, Meis Triumph, and experience epic adventures. The story starts with Mei's hometown of Kant being attacked by the dark acolytes. Barely escaping to the capital city, Boyzby, he meets Sodina and her brother, Jyabil. He then becomes the apprentice of Jyabil and trains to become a master spirit blacksmith. But the dark acolytes attack the city soon after Meis' arrival, and the adventure begins.

Many elements in Thousand Arms immediately stand out from the other RPGs, and many of the elements are geared towards anime fans. The characters in the game are cute, SD sprites, which are presented on top of a beautifully modeled and textured 3D world. Whenever special events happen in the game, the camera pans to the ground level of the world. Where you see high quality, anime cel style artwork for the characters interacting with each other. For anime fans, this is a great treat. Often, I found myself wanting to continue playing the game in order to reach the next special event to see the artwork.

Each character also has English voice dubbed over their conversations during special events. Normally, dubbing means bad news to anime fans; the quality of voice acting in Thousand Arms, however, is easily better than the quality in most games or animes. Sometimes, the quality is on par with Metal Gear Solid, which is usually considered to have the best English voice acting in games originating from Japan.

Another special element in Thousand Arms, which would intrigue some people but possibly turn the others away, is dating with the female characters in the game. The game has an interesting twist and creative way of dealing with characters leveling up. After each battle, the characters would gain EXP and MP like most of the RPGs. Gaining enough EXP would level up the characters; however, having high stats for the characters is not sufficient to face some fierce enemies in the game without upgrading the weapons and learning new magic. This is where MP comes to play. In the game, female characters are the sources of elemental spirits. Meis, as a spirit blacksmith, can upgrade weapons with the help of a female character, which uses up MP. The strength and the magic of the weapon forged are depended on the bond between Meis and the female character. Higher intimacy level between the two means stronger weapon will be made and better magic can be cast. Therefore, dating the girls in the game is as important as battling enemies. Since Red Company, the developer of the famous Saturn dating/strategy game Sakura Taisen, developed Thousand Arms; there are a lot of nice touches in this respect of the game.

There are a few options you have to increase the intimacy level of a female character. The first is to go out on a date with her. During the date, she would ask a series of random questions and you would have to answer one of the two answer choices prompt to you. She would react to your answer differently based on her personality. The duration and the outcome of the date depend on your performance to keep her happy. The whole dating aspect of the game may sound geeky to most of the American players, but I think it is pretty interesting to see the variety of questions the female characters ask and their reactions, not to mention that dating is also one of the special events where you get to see the nice, close-up artwork. There are a lot of repetitions, especially at the lower intimacy level. However, as the intimacy level gets higher, it becomes more difficult to please them enough to raise levels and they would ask more "personal" questions, which could be more difficult to answer. Another interesting note is that a female character may react differently to the same question depending on her intimacy level.

Besides dating, you can also choose to give presents to the girls. Different girls likes different types of presents; therefore, choosing presents wisely is very important because they are fairly costly in the game, and wrong presents could hurt their feelings. Sometimes, dating the girls also can help to determine the type of gift each likes. Lastly, each girl also has her own mini game you can play. Some of them are very enjoyable. Doing all these activities also require MP, thus, MP in the game can be used up pretty quickly as you gain more members for your party.

The battle system in Thousand Arms is unique in that it is a mixture of the active battle system in Final Fantasy series and one on one battle in strategic RPG games. Although you could have up to three members in your party during battles, you can only assign one character to the front while the other two characters stay in the back. Whenever the character in the front loses, one of the characters in the back would fill the spot until either side loses all the members. The character in the front, as you would have guessed, does most of the offensive and defensive moves. The characters in the back are limited to a few actions. They can only cast certain types of magic, and they can use items, which makes magical attack items very useful in the game. If you don't give them specific actions to perform, randomly, they would either cheer your character or taunt the enemy. The outcome from cheering or taunting depends on the character.

Another twist in the battle system is that you are allowed to cancel the assigned action at any time. This adds a little strategy to the battles. For instance, if your front character was told to perform a magical attack but the enemy is casting a powerful spell and he or she is faster than your front character, you could cancel your attack immediately and defend. Although, this helps to make battles a little bit more interesting, overall, battles in Thousand Arms is easily the lowest point of the game. Battles are usually slow and frequent; some patience is required to venture through the game.