Thousand Arms, like other games on this weekly feature, is not prohibitively expensive. If you are willing to gamble with your money on “resurfaced discs”, you can get the game on Amazon for about $189.00. This (the price point) is a whopping $169.00 more than I paid for my physical copy of the game about 20 years ago at GameStop.
However, finding a used copy with all of the included materials in good condition can turn into a kidney worthy affair.
Why is Thousand Arms an Expensive Game?
Thousand Arms is a 1990s Japanese Role-Playing Game. Like some other JRPGs of the time that weren’t published by Squaresoft, Thousand Arms struggled to sell well. The game moved 120,000 units worldwide, with 60,000 of those units sold in North America. Thus, Thousand Arms is a rare game.
Then there is the issue that, as far as I can tell, the game has never been made available on PSN. This would increase its physical price, as it is the only ‘honest’ way to play the game.
Apart from the game being a scarce commodity, TA also happened to be quite good, but not good enough to have garnered great critical reception. In those days, great critical reception meant recognition and positive sales (for the most part).
With a 77% GameRankings’ score, Thousand Arms did not make a huge a splash. It was certainly not a game aimed towards the (at the time) newly minted JRPG fanzine. Thousand Arms was aimed at western gamers who had fallen in love with Japanese games and anime that wanted to experience a friendly dating simulator in the midst of an epic quest.
In truth, at least in my personal opinion, Thousand Arms is probably one of the best 7/10 games that I have ever played. It was funny, charming, and nice looking in terms of artwork, plus the voice acting was decent for the era. However, the game was overly simplistic. Its dating component was not as deep as it could have been, and the entire quest was short.
Thousand Arms came packed within two discs thanks to the large amount of voice acting present in the game.
Is Thousand Arms Worth the Price?
I think the game is short and humorous enough that most gamers will enjoy their first playthrough. The game’s dialog and voice acting remains serviceable today. Both of these things working in tandem have helped Thousand Arms to age well.
The character sprites are well done, especially during battles, and the game takes after Grandia and Xenogears in terms of its graphical style.
Whether the above paragraphs are enough to justify paying nearly $200 for the title is another matter. There are better games out there, even within the JRPG genre. Thousand Arms is a worthy purchase for collectors, but collectors will want the original case with all of the included materials inside, something that can easily cost over $300.
The game’s dating component was passable back in 1999, but today, I feel like it is too basic for most grown-ups to really justify the game’s price tag. The dating sim component was the one thing that separated the game from the rest of the JRPG pack.
TA is a relic from the 1990s. Quirky and perverted characters are everywhere in the game. I cannot stress enough that the game has aged well in terms of its humor and near ‘visual novel’ like presentation during the game’s dialogue scenes.
Thousand Arms is worth a playthrough, but in my opinion, that playthrough is not worth anything over $150. I don’t think that I am “hating” on the game with that statement. As I have stated on numerous occasions, across different articles, Thousand Arms is a fun and funny game. I am glad to own a copy of it and that I was able to play it to its conclusion, but again, I payed $19.99 for it.
Thousand Arms was a decent budgeted title in its hey day, not totally AAA material, but the type of game out of Japan that we do not see today unless it is a low budgeted digital only release. In that sense, if you yearn for 90s Anime cheeky humor, with some cleverly done ‘sexual’ references that might get ‘canceled’ in today’s society, then Thousand Arms might be worth the price of admission.
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