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shoujoboy's Wild Arms Game Review

Wild Arms

Wild Arms game Review

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

Comments

  1. Akaiken Feb 15, 2008

    Honestly, after playing Wild Arms 2 (which I consider the best among the Wild Arms games), I've been looking forward with the Wild Arms installments on PS2. But after seeing Wild Arms 3 and 4's graphics, I'm kinda disappointed. True, Wild Arms 3's graphics may be an experiment for further improvements (which now can be seen on Wild Arms 4 and 5). Sorry if I kinda sound like an antagonist here even though I haven't really played those games (no PS2, can't help).

    Quote: 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.


    This is sooo damn true. XD

    Anyways, a great description on the graphics. The graphics really "evolved" on this game, so much details. On the battle system, what I don't like about is when the characters engage on battles. The HEX System is really disappointing for me. I'd rather go with the battle system of Wild Arms 3. And right about the general gameplay. Really sucks wandering and searching on the World Map more than having battles. ^_^'

    Good review. Wish I have the proper dictionary to write one like you and Jak.

  2. BossMac Feb 19, 2008

    See, there you go again. All parts were traditional shoujoboy but then we get to the early sound part and you replace your descriptive figures of speech with plain, in your face adjectives.

    Should I say "well done"... naaaahhhh... you're conceited. You already know you're good... :)

  3. beryl0402 Mar 15, 2009

    i really enjoy your reviews! keep writing :D

  4. Ishikawa91 Mar 22, 2009

    seems like a neat game. review was really descriptive. Nice job!

  5. ryanwho Mar 29, 2009

    Big fan of the franchise. Doesn't get enough credit, while bigger names fill their games with bullshit filler and dungeon crawls WA games manage to be actually fun. Remember fun, Japan?

  6. pmgbapm Jun 23, 2009

    It is a game only?

  7. ResonantSoul Jul 23, 2009

    I wanna play this -w-

  8. lordryo Jul 28, 2009

    Good review.

  9. Onlyrockman Aug 01, 2009

    I've never play this game before, but I downloaded its artworks, they're awesome! Guess I'll try it out!

  10. SchRita Aug 24, 2009

    Thanks for the review!

  11. Fanatik007 Nov 03, 2009

    wonderful review

  12. kazelenna Mute Member Jul 15, 2010

    genial

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