tanta07's Full Review: Wild Arms 3 for PlayStation 2
To me, the Wild Arms franchise has always been an interesting one. While the games have never typically burned up the sales charts, they do have a steady, loyal following that will go wherever the series takes them. The original Wild Arms was a quirky, fun little RPG that had the unfortunate fate of being released around the same time as Final Fantasy VII. It seen by many gamers as being a pale imitation, and didn’t get the recognition it deserved, because it was a great game. The sequel solidified the series’ reputation as being a strong series in its own right, and was starting to become known for its western themes, great music, and fun dungeon puzzles. The series has now exploded onto the Playstation 2 with the third game in the series, aptly titled Wild Arms 3. While it does contain many of the classic elements from the previous installments in the series, Wild Arms 3 takes enough chances to not only keep things fresh, but it also loses focus in a few key areas. While it is by no means a failure in any sense of the word, it strays enough from some key strengths in the series to put off a few of its old fans.
When I first popped in the disc for Wild Arms 3 and began playing it, and even through the first 20 hours or so, it seemed to me to be every bit a 4 star, great RPG. However, at about the afore-mentioned 20-hour mark or so, I started to notice a few little details that were starting to bother me. For instance, character development does not really take center stage in this installment; most of the main characters get a shell of a backstory, but you only get little glimpses into it from time to time, usually with no rhyme or reason to it. Also, the gameplay seemed to get very repetitive to me, to the point that I pretty much knew exactly what I would be doing next in the game.
In Wild Arms 3, you will take on the roles of Virginia, Clive, Jet, and Gallows. As you might expect, they get together in the most unusual way and decide that they have a common goal of adventuring, and eventually ridding the world of a terrible evil. The way you get introduced to them is actually very cool; at the beginning of the game, each character runs into each other on board a train. You must one by one take control of each character and lead them through a brief introduction that will explain how they got to that point. It’s a very slick way of getting to know your main characters, and I applaud that. While they all originally get together just to have a few adventures and make a little cash, they soon discover that mysteries of the past are coming to light, and old legends are starting to become a horrible reality. Yes, it is a little thin, but I will get to that later.
Graphics-wise, this game is a beauty, but probably not in your traditional sense. As some might have pointed out already, everything in Wild Arms 3 is cel-shaded. For those not hip to video game geek lingo, this basically means that everything looks like a cartoon. It’s a look that is being incorporated more and more in video games, with varying results. I am happy to say that Wild Arms 3 uses cel-shading extremely well; while the world does have an overly-colorful cartoon look to it, it never gets distracting after the first 15 minutes, and it is actually used to spectacular effect during the battle sequences. It would have been very easy for this technique to suddenly fall apart when you had to put your characters into fast-paced battles that required tricky lighting effects and awkward angles, but everything runs smoothly, and the spell and lighting effects during fights are gorgeous. The towns and dungeons themselves are also given a very high level of detail, and to me, great graphics in a game means that you will get so accustomed to the look that you will start failing to notice the graphics at all, and this game does a great job of that. The world map is also very detailed and simply oozes the whole Wild West vibe that the game goes for, as do the towns themselves. Save for the magic, monsters, and technology, this would be a fantastic rendition of the old west.
The Wild Arms series has always been know for its great music and having soundtracks that always fit the mood. Wild Arms 3 carries on that tradition, with spicy guitar themes and western-flavored tunes that feature whistling as a main instrument (an obvious nod to the past soundtracks). My only complaint here would be that a few of the dungeons have very sparse, minimalistic arrangements that fail to get any sort of emotion out of me, and sometimes just get annoying when I’m stuck in a particularly difficult dungeon. This is actually a pretty common malady of RPG’s, so it’s nothing to really get in a bind over. The 99% of the soundtrack that is great more than makes up for the 1% that does not quite live up the aural splendor of the other games.
As far as the gameplay goes, they made the wise move of not trying to reinvent the wheel with the third edition. Your control of the characters throughout the game is almost note-for-note identical to the controls from the original game. While exploring dungeons, the best part of the Wild Arms series has always been your ability to access different tools with your different characters in order to make your way through, and the wise decision was made to leave this alone. Each character will have his own inherent tools that he will pick up along the way that you will need in order to get through each dungeon. For instance, Clive will have bombs that he can use to blow up walls, Jet can throw a boomerang to hit hard-to-reach switches, and Virginia can light candles with a special fire ability. Each character will pick up new tools as you go through the game, and the beauty of this setup is that you will have to incorporate each character’s tools at one time or another to get through any given dungeon. It’s a beautiful gameplay design that makes going through dungeons fun and interesting.
As far as the battles go, this is also pretty much unchanged, with your normal turn-based combat in which you choose to attack with ARMs (guns), use items, use magic, or use summons. The weapons themselves are upgradeable throughout the game, but the most customization is with the various magical items you can equip to each character. Once equipped, your character will have access to a number of new spells that can be learned with points that are gained through combat. Once you have learned the spell, it can be used in combat with “force points.” Force points are gained by performing actions in battle, leveling up, or just getting smacked in mid-battle. Kind of like the Limit Break feature in Final Fantasy VII, your force points will slowly build in battle and can then be used for magic spells. Save up enough points, and you can unleash a punishing summon on your foes.
There is another area here that I didn’t particularly like, and that happens to be the haphazard way that the game has to wander around for all eternity to get to the next mission. Someone somewhere must have decided that giving the gamer clear objectives is a bad idea, and we really like to just wander around for a few hours to see what we’re supposed to do next. Basically, once you have completed an objective in the game, random characters will give you some vague directions on what to do next. They will sometimes even give you a destination you should head for (you will be tipped off because physical locations will appear in red in the text box). The problem is that the new location is actually not on the world map yet, so you will have to wander around the general vicinity you think it is in, and then keep hitting your square button to “search” for the location. In other words, you will spend an insane amount of time simply wandering around the world map, hitting square constantly, like a goon, in search of your next dungeon. Definitely not a well-thought-out plan, if you ask me. Oh, yes, and random battles keep happening while you are doing all of this wandering around.
Yes, there are random battles in the game, but they are not completely random. To give you sort of a “bail out” option if you just happen to be sick of fighting, an exclamation point will appear over your character’s head as a random battle approaches. You have about a second or two to hit your circle button to avoid the battle completely. Sounds great, eh? Well, the problem is that every time you avoid a battle, you will lose a certain amount of points, and once they’re exhausted, you can no longer avoid any battles until you get some more points. All in all, it’s not a bad system, but the end result is that you will be so afraid of avoiding battles because you want to save your points for when you really need them, you will basically end up fighting almost all of the random battles anyway. As far as the frequency of the battles goes, I would say it lies in the medium/fairly high range. There’s enough of them to be annoying when you’re lost (and you will be lost a lot), but not insanely high to the point where you’ll have to find an inn every few minutes.
For the story and characters, this is where I will deduct the most points for this game. Like I had mentioned before, the main characters get little in the way of deep development that will have you feeling their pain and understanding their intentions. Virginia, for instance, does get a lot of background, but none of it turns out to be all that interesting. She comes off as being a slightly cliche, “daddy didn’t love me,” figure. Not to mention that she wants to be the leader of the group, when it seems she never has anything leader-like to say to rally the troops, or any idea of what do to next. Jet is your average messed up RPG protagonist. He is the bitter loner who claims to only be interested in money, but really has a lot of pain buried below the surface from past scars. Gallows gets an interesting beginning to his story in that he is a priest in his village who actually shuns his teachings in order to go off into the world and see what it’s all about. Unfortunately, the avenue is never really explored, and is actually pretty much abandoned when he quietly follows the group wherever they go, ditching the “rebel without a cause” attitude seen at the beginning. Clive is by far the most charismatic and interesting of the bunch; he has a dark and mysterious past, but it is really only hinted at, and kept in shadows for most of the game. These are the playable characters you are given to use the entire game, and sad as it may be, development keeps getting played with for them throughout the game, but nothing that deep or riveting ever really develops. Essentially only little details are added to the character sketches you get at the beginning of the game.
While weak character development is something that can sometimes be overlooked if the story is great enough, Wild Arms 3 does not really deliver in that category, either. There were many times during the game where I would have absolutely no clue what was happening in the storyline; I would just know that I had to go to the next destination, and hopefully something would develop there. What starts out as a band of travelers seeking adventure and stumbling upon some ancient ruins quickly flashes to them chasing an ancient legend and some family ghosts, and then just as quickly, introduces aliens bent on world domination. Granted that going from plot point A to B to C is usually half the fun with a great RPG, this many seemingly different plot elements might mean that you cover a lot of ground, storytelling-wise. But sadly, this is not the case. This game literally inserts these new developments almost haphazardly, with only a few minor details scattered around to roughly connect them. Granted, things do finally start to come together towards the end, but that’s only if you have managed to hang on that long (and taken notes). Xenogears offered what could be the most convoluted and confusing plot ever in the history of RPG’s, but millions of fans followed it avidly because it was properly paced and thought out. In comparison, Wild Arms 3 seems like a half-finished draft that was quickly chopped and edited into place to fit the length of the game, as if there are some vital pieces missing.
One last gripe, and then I’m Audi 5000. The game established a pretty rigid structure near the beginning that is fun and original for the first few hours, but quickly becomes tiresome by the time you are dragging to the end of the game. You see, you will wander into a town, and talk to the locals. The locals will give you clues about where to go next. You will wander around the world map until you find this place. You will then explore the location and solve all of the puzzles before fighting a boss at the end. When it’s over, you will then wander to the next town, and talk to the locals. The locals will give you clues about where to go next. You will wander around the world map until you find this place. You will then explore the location and solve all of the puzzles before fighting a boss at the end. When it’s over, you will then wander to the next town, and talk to the locals. The locals will give you clues about where to go next. You will wander around the world map until you find this place. You will then explore the location and solve all of the puzzles before fighting a boss at the end. When it’s over, you will then wander to the next town, and talk to the locals. The locals will give you clues about where to go next. You will wander around the world map until you find this place. You will then explore the location and solve all of the puzzles before fighting a boss at the end. When it’s over, you will then wander to the next town, and talk to the locals.
Annoyed? Yes, that’s pretty much the effect this had on me, too, only over about 40 hours. The game RIGIDLY sticks to this formula. At first, it seems kind of refreshing and fun to always have an idea of what you’re doing, and what you should be doing next. However, after several hours, it becomes stale.
Looking back on what I wrote about this game, it seems that I ragged on it far more than I really intended to. Honestly, for most of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and found the game to be a nice breath of fresh air from the smoky room that is the average RPG world. Actually, I first reviewed this game over at www.netjak.com (shameless plug), when I was a little over halfway through with it, and the annoyances hadn’t really started to pile up yet, so I gave it a pretty favorable review. In the end, that’s probably the best review I can give of Wild Arms 3: it is a great concept that is stretched too far over too many hours. The plot is not deep enough for a 40 hour game, nor is the rigid design meant to be stretched that long. Had they cut out some massive segments of it and been satisfied with a 20-30 hour game, it would have been a much more complete and enjoyable experience. As it stands, it’s probably more worth a rental, because over the course of a weekend, you’re more likely to get out if this game what’s so good about it, while not having enough time to get bothered with what’s wrong with it.
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