Originally posted on TheSpeedGamers
Wut U Talkin Bout is a quick look at overlooked titles in gaming history or a overlooked entry in a franchise.
With Japanese Role Playing Games, it isn’t unlikely for the cutscenes, dialog, or voice acting to be embarrassingly bad. If you live with someone, you may be familiar with glancing over your shoulder to make sure no one else is looking during particularly embarrassing scenes. It can be very uncomfortable when people give you strange looks as you play. Usually, simply muting your TV or pausing the game will solve the problem when it comes to these titles. But occasionally, you come across a title so embarrassing that the only way you can play it is if you send your family or roommate on a week long vacation, lock yourself in the basement, and then seal the door with five or six layers of concrete and steel. Thousand Arms is one of those titles.
Thousand arms is a JRPG with a very interesting take on upgrading weapons, spells, and abilities. How do you do it? You date the female characters of your party. The smoother you are with the ladies the more benefits you get. While the rest of the game plays like a below average JRPG with strategy pretty much amounting to spamming the attack command until you win, the dating portion of the game is rather, well, unique. You ask girls on dates using MP (Manly Points?) that you gain from battles. Once you choose a suitable location for your date, the girl will ask you a variety of questions. Early on these questions are fairly basic like “what do you think of me?” or “how do I look today?” As your relationship progresses, the questions get more difficult. For example, “would you still like me if I was a guy?” Answer too many questions wrong and your date bails on you. But if you answer enough questions right, your TV screen wins a kiss!
Sexy dating starts at :35
Some of the answers to the question seem a bit off. I mean, I’m not some one to ask for dating advice, but I don’t think telling women that they remind you of your mother is exactly a compliment. I could be wrong though.
The cutscenes themselves in the game are pretty generic and low budget – they look like they were made in MS paint. The awful dialogue and voice acting doesn’t exactly help it either. I can’t say I was exactly comfortable with someone standing by me and having a virtual lady asking me what I think the meaning of love is or if I think she looks good today. And when they kiss you, your television screen, your main character, what ever you want to think their kissing, it puts the cherry on top of the embarrassment cake. It just isn’t something you want to play around other people unless they’re joking about it with you.
As much as I’ve torn it apart just labeling it as embarrassing, the dating concept to power up is an interesting idea you won’t find in many other games outside of Japan. More games like Thousand Arms have been hitting stateside recently, but they usually don’t have the horrible dialogue and voice acting Thousand Arms has.
If the concept sounds interesting and you don’t expect a above average game along with it, the game may be worth checking out. If you are hard-pressed for money though, this title might not be a good use for it. The game is a little pricey nowadays, so don’t expect to just throw down a few bucks on it.
