Story & Playability
Over the years Wild Arms has found itself quite the cult following among RPG players. It never reached the heights of
Final Fantasy popularity but then again what has? Wild Arms is back and celebrating it's 10 years of existence in
this 5th installment. Welcome once again to Filgaia in Wild Arms 5 for the Playstation 2.
12,000 years ago the planet of Filgaia was on the edge of destruction. Resources were at a minimum and the planet was
to the point of rejecting all its inhabitants. Because of this, humans split into two groups: the radicals and the
moderates. The radicals left the planet to find another one to inhabit whilst the moderates chose to stay behind and
fix the problem they had caused. Fast forward to present day. Those who left the planet before have returned and are
now considered a different race; the veruni. The veruni are considered by all to be a kind of royalty and as such,
treat humans like slaves and underlings. Now the world once again stands on the brink of destruction and this divide is
making it much harder to fix the problem.
On to our protagonist, Dean Stark. Dean is your average over-zelous teenager with an obsession with golems. He and his
friend Rebecca live in a small village devoid of the veruni/human struggle, Capo Bronco. One day while out on an
adventure, a golem arm crashes from the sky carrying with it a young girl. When they take the girl away they find she
has lost her memory. The only thing she can remember is the words "Johnny Appleseed". She knows those words
are important, so Dean and Rebecca set out with this mysterious girl to find out the meaning of those words.
From this point on the story boils down to town and dungeon hopping all the while piecing together bits of information
in relation to Johnny Appleseed. Of course while you are getting a taste for adventure, more sinister things are going
on the background. The leader of the Radicals, Volsung, and his sentinels are out to wipe humans off of Filgaia. Their
way of fixing the planet is by removing what they see as the problem. The one thing they need is... Johnny Appleseed.
*cue dramatic music*.
Wild Arms real downfall is the speed at which it gets interesting. In the early part of the game it is actually pretty
monotonous and boring. You go place to place trying to figure out Avril's lost memories only to be greeted with
"I still can't remember... we'll just have to keep going." You get little pieces of the story here
and there but don't really get to the interesting portions until far too late into the game. I feel that only Wild
Arms or RPG diehards will ever actually care enough to play all the way through the game. It's too bad really when
the latter portion of the game is actually quite engaging, albeit a bit cliche.
If you've played a Wild Arms before it's going to seem quite familiar. If you are a frequent RPG player,
you'll probably feel like you've played it before. Villain wants to destroy the world and your strapping
teenager is the only one who can stop it.
Rating: 6
Graphics
Beings that many of us are already aboard the next generation of consoles train (IE XBOX 360 or PS3 {I do not
acknowledge the Wii as next gen}) it may be hard to look at this game objectively. Graphically the game passes the eye
test quite well. Characters and monsters throughout are all well done and many of them original. You won't have
instances of running into the same monster over and over again just with color changes (Dragon Quest 8) and your
characters aren't just static throughout. You can actually change outfits! Little attention to detail like that
really makes it a much better game to look at. Even some of the spells you cast will have detailed animations... even
though some spells take FARRR too long to cast.
The biggest gripe comes in the backgrounds and city/dungeon layouts. Backgrounds that involve dirt, rocks or mountains
is just plain ugly. They are muddy beyond belief and are just plain distracting. Since the first part of the game
mostly involves these types of backgrounds it never really gets a chance to shine when the details actually come out in
the latter portions. Aside of the horrid backgrounds, many of the city and dungeon layouts are very uninspired. You
will go into a mine and pass the same screen 2 or three times and many of the walls will look the exact same. Then
you'll arrive in the "biggest city on Filgaia" only to be greeted by buildings that all look exactly the
same with only 3 of them actually being able to entered into. After playing Wild Arms 4, I just tend to believe that 5
was an afterthought only used to milk the namesake a bit more.
Rating: 6
Sound
The good: NANA MIZUKI! I feel like I'm doing an anime review here saying that the opening (Justice to Believe)
and closing (Crystal Letter) are both performed by the legendary Nana Mizuki... well legendary in my book at least. The
opening is also used as the final boss music, which will probably be met with mixed reactions. Most people like that
epic, blood-pumping final boss music, so they'll find J-pop playing to be quite anticlimactic. But I'm a Nana
nut, so it could have been her just reading the newspaper and I would have been giddy. The other is the great music
selection in key battles. Towards the end of the game, you get to battle the important generals of the radicals each
with their own music to match their personality. The overacting scientist gets the zany music while the insane murderer
gets a hard rock accompaniment. It actually made me consider hunting down the soundtrack to the game.
The bad: Much of the other background music is boring or annoying. Since this game is a western/sci-fi hybrid, it
tries as hard as it can to incorporate that old west whistling into many of its songs. The worse offender of this is
the main battle music. The whistling just gets old when battles are as frequent as they are. Then when you think you
are free from it, you will enter a town that has similar whistling.
The questionable: Voice acting! First and foremost, no language selection which is a big no-no in my book. The other
is that the voice acting is extremely hit or miss. I'll admit that in the beginning, every voice I heard somehow
managed to scratch at my soul. But as the game progressed, many of the voice actors grew on me and I thought they did a
fine job. Others... well others suck the whole time. I point directly at Mona Marshall as Carol. Carol is the little
girl of the group and Miss Mona just seems to try way too damn hard to make her sound like a kid. I'm not sure if
it's overacting or just plain bad acting, but that voice in particular... along with other lackluster performances,
made the voice acting the mixed bag that it is.
Rating: 7
Fun
Battle System: If you've played Wild Arms 4, then you can skip this section. It's the exact same. The
battle system takes place on a board of 7 hexagons... cleverly called HEXs. Each turn you can make a move and attack
other HEXs. You can occupy the same HEX with your teammates, but not the enemy. 3 of these HEXs have elements to them
called Ley Points. 2 of these will always be opposing elements (IE water-fire or wind-earth). So sometimes you can
manuever your people to corner an enemy who is say weak to wind onto an earth ley point, and then send your attacker
back to a wind and just spam them to oblivion. Very rarely will you need any kind of strategy though as just attack,
heal, rinse and repeat should work for the majority of the game. As you level up you receive more abilities that make
better use of your teammates and HEXs.
General Gameplay: Besides battles (which at times are far too frequent), you'll spend most of your time searching
the world map for hidden items and dungeon crawling. There are a few sidequests here and there but not as many as
RPG's usually have. Not only that, but a few are missable and many of the others you just won't find without
a strategy guide. The real gem comes in that just before you go off to the final area, many things open up for you to
explore. 4 new dungeons with difficult bosses. Hidden treasure chests and other hidden bosses with rare items. Even
the ability to trade your hard earned levels for helpful items. My team was 3 level 100's and 3 level 1's...
those poor three... just level em up and trade their levels for goods.
Closing thoughts: The overall scores with this review is going to make the game seem like it's an easy pass, but
all in all it is a good and fun game. As a long time RPG veteran, I found some of the things done in this game to be a
refreshing change from other games and enjoyed the story even though it has been done many times before. But based on
the merits of the game on it's own, it really only deserves slightly above average. But if you are an RPG nut like
I am, and want to go for all the items and all the power... and have 50 or so hours to waste, you couldn't do worse
than Wild Arms 5.
Rating: 7
Final Verdict
6.5000 (above average)
Reviewed by shoujoboy, Feb 15, 2008