Name: Meis Occupation: Blacksmith Alignment: Chaotic Horny Despite it's flaws, this is near the top of my most wanted PSone games list, it has charm for days. To this day, I'm in shock that this got a North American release back in the day, especially with real production value
@@raogzero1842 Got this off the shelf in a video games exchange back in the day when you could go in and Not know every game on the shelf. Man Im glad i picked it up.
It's not a pure "dating sim" it's a hybrid of turn-based RPG with a dating sim, and it's a great damn game; one of the most under-rated JRPGs on the PS one
It's hard to imagine this being pulled off on a PS1. JRPGs with so much voicework came a lot during the PS2 era. That plus the detailed portraits during conversations. And this premise is certainly interesting, with focus on the journey than destination.
... This a very underrated RPG with genuinely funny dialogue and fun dating sim elements. And also one of the main male characthers looks just like Sakura from Sakura wars ain't that amusing. ... It also has ayumi hamasaki's opening song fully uncut. That was impressive back then.
Fun fact: The world map was based on the Komodo National Park islands. Years ago, I was surprised when I was looking for that island and it looks like a whole RPG world map placed IRL
@@Bojanglez667 you mean the saturn one? Havent play that one yet because well... Saturn. Popful mail is the closest we'll ever got to a good slayers game
I actually have this game fully completed and retired and I think the biggest thing I took out of this game is that it was one of the most humorous rpg's that I've ever played. This game gave me plenty of laugh out loud moments and it was actually a fun filled experience. The game wasn't hard to complete either and by the time I got the intimacy level maxed for each lady my party level was up to level 99 which made the final boss a bit of a joke. I didn't really have many gripes with the game and the over the top characters with their hilarious antics definitely made up for the amount of grinding I had to do. I really do love the opening theme song of this game and the boss battle theme is one of my favourite boss battle theme's out of the jrpg's that I have played. It's crazy the amount of voiced dialogue this game had and it actually had a lot of great voice actors that were common in a lot of big anime during the 90's such as: Amanda Winn Lee (Sodina/Nelsha, but also Rei from neon genesis evangelion) Lia Sargent (Kyleen, but also milly thompson from trigun and chun li from the street fighter II animated movie) You do have to be careful when you do complete it because certain towns with unique items won't be available after a certain amount of time, and getting those one of a kind weapons that have to sit in the flame can take an incredibly long time.
I got this game back in the day at the local video store for like $10 used. At the time, this was an amazing RPG. Voice acting for a lot of the characters, that was unheard of in those days. The 2D + 3D style was incredible and this was pre-Ragnarok online which really became known for this style. Dating Sims were fairly new as well, another good one for the PS1 was Azure Dreams, which had a very similar look to it. The criticisms are fair, the dungeons are a maze, the battle system is solid, but can feel unnecessarily difficult or limited with 2 characters as support. The game had a presentation though that felt like an anime more than a game. It was pretty wonderful and I come back to it through the years. A little known PS1 classic 👍
This is a fun game to play through. I remember this being a weekly, weekend rently that I beat back in the day. The dating sim aspect definitely made it unique, and suprising that it got a US release. Now, many years later I own it and play it when I have the chance. Great review.
kek i remember seeing this in a magazine when i was a kid and thinking it looked awesome, HAPPENED to find it used at a local gamestore (crazy back before the internet) no new copies to be found of course around here, fell in love with ayumi hamasaki and her music. probably shaped who i am today to some extent, the type of music i enjoy at the least. great memories of this game as a kid
I am glad someone knows about the existence of this gem xD ,keep hitting us with more of this hidden gems it's so great to hear soemoen talk about them
I love how growing up I just liked unpopular shit. Now they're all "hidden gems". :P But yeah, I'm going to stay with the Psone for a little bit, I have a few games I've been wanting to replay.
One of the things that struck me about Thousand Arns was the mix between 2D sprites and 3D environments. Oh, and how much voice acting there was in that game. For a PS1 Era game it was amongst the highest. Kinda surprised you didn't mention the music or at least the opening song "Depend on you". Overall a fair review (I always liked that Wyna's eyepatch was just for show).
@@DariaPlaysRPGs from presentation alone it is fun, this and grandia was my favourites back then, mostly because of how wacky all the characters are. Also this may sound weird but what makes me love this is the seamless sprite transition to full anime talking body along with the apropriate 3d background prespective shift whenever custcenes start(the one early on where we saw weis's sword and see the dirt from his presoective blew me away) and I think to this day this is the only game that use this kind of trick that I know of.
Yeah that perspective shift was really clever. A great example of visual polish that wasn't possible with a standard 2D game. I didn't really touch on it in the video but I thought Thousand Arms elegantly married its 2D artistry with 3D technology. It's the kind of experience you could only find on a 32bit era machine. And it's crudely beautiful.
I kind of...actually LIKE when RPGs force me to get lost in a place with only limited healing items, as long as there’s a reasonable chance I’ll make it out if I play smart. Makes it feel more rewarding when my dungeon instincts guide me to a few of the good chests, then the boss, and I beat them just barely. :D I miss that level of challenge and try to rush through some RPGs to get it. Your review on this one was well-timed as it’s currently topping my to-buy list and I had wondered if it belonged there. Doubts erased! Looks like a hilarious blast.
You forgot to mention the mechanic where women are more likely to respond positively during different times of the month. Where each one has a time of the month where you cannot please them no matter what you do or say. I was about 15 when I played this so it went completely over my head.
Someone commented on the RU-vid video of Ayumi Hamsaaki singing Depend on you about coming to that video to Thousand Arms. I guess due to the comment I traveled in the opposite direction and found your review of Thousand Arms.
i may have sold my old copy of Thousand Arms, but I still have emulators :D my legaia disk broke when I was a kid, I was so happy to finally replace it. Then I came home one day and my dog had taken the box out of the suitcase, opened the case and chewed the disk itself into tiny little pieces in front of the door while I was at work...
I'm trying to find the title of a PS1 title from atlus that was about going up on a tower , JRPG with a mix of ecchi dating sim, I remember buying it for like 4.99 , you'd start over and over from level one and each time your playthrough would take you a bit further
This...was interesting. Haha. I enjoyed the art and the comedic looking sprites. Though this made me think...I dont really play a lot of dating sim games...I think the last I played was Doki Doki...but...is that *really* a dating sim? Lol Informative video as always. I appreciate you talkin' games I've never heard of!
Hey Daria, I'm doing an LP of this right now and I'm nearing the end and I haven't obtained an airship yet and I've noticed there's roughly 3 locations on the world map I haven't explored yet? Any clue how to get to these places? There all islands that I can't land the langoud at.
I've seen this games box tons of times, and always dismissed it. Thanks for making this review cause the content looks very mid 90s Working design which is obvious a good thing. Will check it out.
I remember borrowing this game in middle school I didn’t make it past the first dungeon as I thought the battles were slow. However watching this retrospective I think I’ll be picking this up and trying it again.
This is a game I should have kept (and completed) back when it first was released...but...my ex-wife really dogged Thousand Arms every time I played it, especially the dating sequences (I've never seen anyone hate a game that much), so I gave up on it about halfway through.
For the longest time, I thought this was in the Wild Arms series. When I saw it in blockbuster, I figured I'd need to play Wild Arms first...boy would I have been in for a surprise!
Oh man, played this briefly when it was new, always found it really interesting but unfortunately never got the chance to complete it. I'd like to go back and do that sometime, even if its 90s harem anime schtick is a little bit aged now -- nostalgic, if anything? Also I really don't think Wyna's statement was meant to be homophobic, just a jab at "weak" guys. She'd rather have a total meat-eating barbarian, is the point, probably.
"Light in the loafers" is a homophobic colloquialism. Very 90s and very outdated. I mostly included it in the script as humor at Wyna's expense, but also because it was hard to ignore while playing because she just kept saying it. Some questions while dating get repeated a lot. This was one of them.
I just watched this entire thing and didn't pay any attention. gonna watch it again. i actully had this game and am very interested. i just keep texting on my phone.
Glad you're back, and very glad you reviewed this game! I played it for a while back when it came out, but got distracted less than half way through it. Perhaps I need to give it another swing?
I find it weird and quite unpleasant to keep hearing from western players things like "JRPG trope, stereotypical plot" and the likes when they wanna talk about bad story telling yet they never mention anything comparable when they talk about western RPG which for the most part, have story far less engaging and generally focusing on character creation and nothing more. It would be wise to create an equivalent for those games too in order to re-establish some balance so that things wouldn't look like it's just easy bashing against japanese games. And it would look a bit less racist too because from my point of view, I've seen numerous times in videos this type of one way dissing which is just very offensive to this type of game when people clearly know that western rpg are no better in comparison when some quests, in those games, to save the world are simply fetch quests like "go pick some salt at the other hand of the map" and whatnot in order to progress in the story which is just the paramount of silliness when you think about it (much more than any JRPG trope).
I've reviewed other JRPGs that I've praised for their storytelling (see Koudelka, Rhapsody, Royal Stone, Treasures of the Rudra, etc). But I'm not going to pretend a game is something that it isn't. Thousand Arms might have a throw-away story, but so what? The strength of the game lies with it's ensemble cast. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a fun adventure. Edit: I never claimed western games had better stories. Not sure where that is coming from?
Definitely a game I've seen mentioned for years but only vague notions about, glad to see someone covering it a bit more in depth. From what was said looks like it would be short term fun for like a long weekend or something but mostly forgettable after.
I bought Thousand Arms from a video rental store for $10 because I liked JRPGs and the screenshots looked like Grandia. But it was way different than what I expected and things like the dating sim aspects of the game were really surprising to me. Anyway I loved this video and as usual, it was a great assessment. I think you were more favorable than I would have been, but I agree about how generic the plot was.
@@DariaPlaysRPGs We can agree that both are equally untrustworthy though. If you ever see a man lift a cheek after Mexican, or shove his hand into a lolly jar, you get the gun and never look back!
I always wanted to play this just based on the cover art, I always thought it was just another PS1 RPG, I had no clue about the dating sim aspects. Looks fun!
This is one of the few localized PS1 RPGs that I never played. I don't think I had any idea what dating sims were during my PS1 days (I don't think I even knew what Visual Novels were at all until 2007-ish?), so this would've been an interesting introduction. Pretty solid-looking battle system too. And yeah, we apparently have similar tastes in Thousands Arms girls - Mil looks by far the cutest to me.
@@DariaPlaysRPGs Ohh, right, I forgot about Harvest Moon. I've gotten so used to associating dating sims with visual novels that I've mostly forgotten other types exist.
would be interested to hear something about sexism of lunar vs thousand arms. i mean. obvi thousand arms its much more of a dating sim than a love story but what about the bromides in lunar. ... kinda turns the tides slightly i guess? who knows.
Actually you can still download on emupadadise, you just need to download a plugin on your chrome or firefox, try googling it on how to download on emuparadise. Ive just learned it in reddit.
If it wasn't for this awesome game I would not have discovered Ayumi Hamasaki. I remember getting the soundtrack for free by mail. I remember replaying song "Depend on You" so many times i memorized that song. Good video by the way. Good memories 😄
I remember thinking about picking this up for like 40-50 a decade or so ago and passed for something else(my crap memory is also the reason it took my over 2 weeks to get around to watching this lol). Don't remember what the something else was and if I made a good choice or not. Seems wacky enough that I'd like it but probably not finish it.
This is one of the very few PS1 RPG's I don't have. And I feel like I enjoyed this review more then I will enjoy the game :P So maybe it's better that I keep it off my list. Thanks for the review!!
All i remembered years back was the dating part being unique to me at the time. The game was just different to me. I had no clue who made it.. now so many years later, after playing games like the persona series, i find out it's atlus. of course it is. bless you atlus, bless you.
I remember playing this as a young teen, didn't get far. There was this ice cave I got stuck at. I don't quite remember why, but I recall I couldn't figure out where to go at a certain part of the cave. And since we didn't get the Internet till around 2000 or so no Gamefaqs. Well if Gamefaqs even existed back then. 5:20 There is it! That's the ice cave I think. Somewhat glad I wasn't the only one who got lost, hah.
I know why you got stuck. It's because that ice cave is a confusing asshole. I got stuck in there because the overlapping bridges are hard to see which platforms they start from.
What would Thousand Arms have looked like if it was VERY dark and bloody in tone with no humor whatsoever and was more like Xenogears in terms of its tone?
thank you for the video, I haven't dated in so long I think I've forgotten how, look forward to picking up some tips from playing the game, thanks a million ;)
