I’ve missed a few weeks now, but to make up for it, I’ve got a special feature. This week, I’m going to review the entire Wild Arms main series, back-to-back. Today starts off with Wild Arms. This game came out for the Playstation in 1997. It was the first rpg on the system to use 3d battle graphics. The story follows a protagonist who, though largely silent, speaks a little bit over the course of the game. This shows that this game is not exactly your older brother’s jrpg. The plot runs that the planet is dying, due to the loss of mystical energy necessary to sustain life. In addition there’s an ambiguous stranger who at some points helps the party, but ultimately helps an extraterrestrial terror, whom he addresses as “Mother,” in her attempts to destroy the world. Sound just a tad familiar? Well, Wild Arms came out before Final Fantasy VII (well duh, given when FFVII was released). Yep, all of those “revolutionary, never before seen” story elements in FFVII were already out. Was Wild Arms a better game? I guess you’ll just have to find out.
When you begin the game, you do a brief prelude with each of the game’s three playable characters. Rudy, the blue-haired protagonist, saves a town from a horrible monster, but in so doing reveals his terrible power. Jack, the treasure hunter, narrowly escapes from a ruin filled with traps, helped by his companion Hanpan, the spirit mouse. Cecilia, princess of Adlehyde, undergoes a test of her magical power, ingenuity, and compassion in the Curan Abbey. It’s a cool way to introduce the three characters, and also gives you a tutorial for various gameplay elements, as well as introducing the various segments of this Wild West themed world. Rudy does a lot of dungeon crawling, Jack has to deal with traps, and Cecilia has a lot of puzzles to solve. In honor of these preludes, I’m going to look at each of the aforementioned sections in turn, taking a break from my usual format.
Dungeon crawling. Most rpgs have some. Battles in Wild Arms are random, so you’ll get into a fair few during your romps. The way battles play out is that you enter commands for all of your characters at the beginning of the turn, and they act in order of their Response attribute. In addition to basic attacks and items, each character has force abilities and special attacks that they can use. Special attacks involve attacking the enemy with magic, sword techniques, or guns, respective to Cecilia, Jack, and Rudy. Force abilities are a little more complicated. As you take actions in combat, the force gauge increases. Successful attacks, dodges, and parries all increase the force gauge. The higher the gauge, the more powerful your character. However, you can use the force gauge to power certain abilities, which consume 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of the gauge. For example, Jack’s 25% ability, accelerator, ensures that he acts first in combat, and also powers up his special attacks. At 100% force, each character enters “condition green” and all their status effects are cured.
Traps. This game has them. To avoid them you’ll need a decent amount of skill, which gets this game its dubious “action rpg” reputation alluded to on the case. It’s not really an action rpg, but the traps add a minor action element. To run, you hold down the x button, which charges up, and release, which starts you going. You can only run in a straight line, which makes things pretty difficult at times. Still, it makes thing interesting when you’re not even in a battle.
Puzzles. Ah, now this is where the game shines. Each character has an assortment of tools, which allows them to perform certain tasks. Rudy’s bomb’s blow stuff up, Jack’s grappling hook gets him across gaps (only when there’s a hook shot post nearby) and Cecilia’s pocket watch reverses time, resetting traps and boxes. Plus, each character can throw boxes, allowing for “hit the crystal” puzzles. There’s also a fair number of word-based puzzles, but a number of those are optional. Most puzzles are reasonably doable, but some are pretty tough. Expect to scratch your head over some puzzles for quite a while.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at the replay value on this guy. There’s no new game plus, or even bonuses at the end of the game, but you can set your characters up with different accessories and summoning mediums. But really, this game gets “play it once, and then, if you feel like you want to play it again, play the remake instead.” It’s solid, but the remake was made especially for fans, so take advantage of it.
Time to get to the thing I’ve hinted at since the beginning. Is this game better than Final Fantasy VII? Well, the short answer is no. Wild Arms is a fun game, and has a lot to recommend about it, but it’s not really comparable to Final Fantasy VII except insofar as the latter has a plot that is suspiciously reminiscent of the former. Wild Arms ranks in at about 8.6 out of 10. The story, while pretty good most of the time, occasionally has some stutters and transration moments. And, when you get right down to it, battles are a bit on the slow side.
Quick Tips: Early in the game, there’s a girl in the middle of the fair grounds who sells tiny flowers. Buy 99 of these immediately. Go out and fight battles till you have enough gella. They increase luck, and after a certain climactic point early in the game, they are exceptionally rare.
How I Broke Game: There’s an Item duplication glitch. If you only have one of an item, when you get into a battle, you can have the first two characters use heal berries on themselves, then have the third character switch the place (in your inventory) of the heal berry and the item to be duplicated, and then attack, you’ll get 255 of the duplicated item. I did this, and beat Ragu Ragla. The final boss was unfortunately easy after this. It’s cheap, but it is the only time I’ve ever beaten Ragu Ragla.
If you liked this game, you should try out one of these games. Wild Arms 2 is almost exactly the same system, with exactly the same font J. Wild Arms Alter Code: F is the remake of this game for the Playstation 2. It’s completely faithful to the original, the story isn’t changed significantly, and has more playable characters. Wild Arms 5 is basically filled with nostalgic sidequests involving older Wild Arms games, so that’s another good choice. As far as other series go, well, Final Fantasy VII is basically the same plot with a different setting (sci-punk instead of sci-western), and is an excellent game in its own right. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete fall into a slightly more traditional battle system, but in the end not so different that you can’t see the similarities. Tales of Destiny is a completely different battle system, being an action game and all, but the storytelling mode is not too far off.
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