Being the second game in a newly created series is pretty tough. It’s a fine line to walk between alienating the fan base with too much innovation and not attracting any new players with new features. Wild Arms 2 (The 2nd Ignition) tends to err on the side of the former. There are some changes, but most of the gameplay follows pretty directly from the first game. For all that, there is a totally different approach to the story. With a mix of old and new, it’s an intriguing game to look into.
The story starts off, like the first Wild Arms, with a separate intro for each of the three main characters. Ashley gets his stuff together as a dungeon explorer, Lilka shows off as the puzzle solving magical girl she is, and Brad tries to escape capture for the war cries he didn’t really commit. Say what? Yeah, in an attempt to keep up interest among older players, there’s some really darker themes in this story, with more nuances to the villains than there were in the previous game. Not bad, considering the villains of the previous game were a diverse lot. And there’s all sorts of political maneuvering in the story of Wild Arms 2. The main problem with the story is the format it takes. Rather than have players follow a relatively straight path, wandering from objective point to objective point for most of the game, Wild Arms 2 casts you as the members of a paramilitary organization, Operation Arms. As such, you get orders from your direct superior/founder of the organization, Vincefelt. You do everything from stop terrorist organizations to unearth ancient artifacts to, yes, save the world from destruction. This makes the pacing pretty choppy, as you frequently don’t see the link between one mission and the next. There’s also the issue of an extremely poor localization. Grammar, spelling, and syntax are strained beyond credibility in a fair number of instances, leaving you wondering what is really going on in the game’s complex storyline.
On the other hand, the characters are excellent. Boasting the largest roster of characters in the main series (if you include guest characters) and tied with the remake, the game’s eight characters are all moderately well developed. One of the most notable is Brad, who is a gristly old war veteran from the losing side who might just be gay, but certainly has some deep issues to deal with. Kanon is a bounty hunter who has replaced nearly all her body parts with cybernetic implants in an attempt to live up to the feats performed by her highly renowned distant ancestor, Anastasia the sword princess. Even Maribel, the optional character, has development regarding her loneliness as a crimson noble (read: vampire) who has outlived all her friends by hundreds of years. She even has the only cameo in the series before the fifth game came along.
Each character has a number of interesting attributes. They have their own force abilities, usable at the expenditure of 25% increments on the force gauge. They also have their own set of special attacks, which are learned in different ways for each character. Ashley finds his in chests, Lilka combines two elements together on each crest graph she obtains, Brad gets his out of chests that only he can open, Maribel sucks the blood of certain enemies enough times to learn a spell, and Tim learns his by defeating enemies with a certain medium equipped. The mediums make a return, acting as summon spirits. However, each also has its own custom command, like steal, invincibility (for one turn) or a killer blow (which does double damage if it hits). The only catch is that mediums can only be summoned when Tim is on the battlefield. You can only have three members out at a time, so you have to switch party-members in and out of battle to succeed. With magic points abolished, a character’s force level is what gives them access to special attacks, giving a little bit more strategic management to the combat system. All in all, it’s a lot more of a strategic affair than the first game, which had a relatively simple battle system. Apart from these changes, the basic format of battles remains much the same. You enter all your commands at once, and then they play out in order of the response attribute of the combatants. Unfortunately, since you can skip random battles around 75% of the time by pressing a button, the strategy is to some degree optional.
Each character also gets three tools, which function for puzzle solving much like they did in the first game. However, because there’s so many characters, there are a lot more tools, and a lot of them only get used a couple times. Even so, the puzzles in this game are excellent, and in some cases even a little more interesting than the puzzles in the first game. One particular example comes to mind, which involves the gods after whom the days of the week were named. The word puzzles you encounter can be really tricky, and add an element of difficulty to an otherwise pretty easy game (not counting optional bosses, who are custom made to be extremely difficult).
The replay value in this game is pretty limited. Despite the mission format of the story, it’s pretty linear until the very end. You do get to give your characters certain abilities when they level up. Basically, you get a certain number of points to spend on passive character enhancements like increased attack power or resistance to poison. That’s all fine and dandy, but it has little effect on the game. Especially since there’s only a few good options. Hmnmm, I could get an ability that blocks physical attacks, which basically every enemy in the game uses, or I could be immune to this one status ailment I’ve never seen before except in one boss fight, when said boss only rarely even used the attack. So, I’d say this game’s rating is “Replayable only for the truly obsessive or the criminally bad at managing.” There’s really no point in playing the game again, apart from nostalgia that you can get for any game.
Overall, Wild Arms 2 somehow just doesn’t fare as well as the first game. Maybe it’s the poor localization, maybe it’s the pacing of the story, maybe it’s just that it’s no longer a fresh concept. It’s still a great game, and has some of the best characters in the series, but it’s just not quite as fun as the first game. It ranks in at 8.0. Solid, dependable, and pretty much the middle point of what you get in an RPG. Better than mediocre, but not great either.
Quick Tip: The blocker skill is really useful. It blocks physical attacks with certain probability based on the level of the skill. Though it’s a good choice for all characters, it’s a must for all you squishy omnimages.
Fun Fact: In an unusual multigenre crossover, Ashley has a poster of Vash the Stampede in his room. The creators of Wild Arms have admitted that Trigun was a creative influence for the series.
If you liked this game, you should try one of these games. Wild Arms: Alter Code f has just as many playable characters and a pretty similar battle system, while Wild Arms 5 has cameos from playable characters in Wild Arms 2. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete is in a lot of ways a sister game, being an evolution on the first game in its series that added a significant amount of content. Final Fantasy VIII has some its share of unique character attributes, and also has a similarly sci-fi world.
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