xeno3998's Full Review: Wild Arms for PlayStation 1
Before the poor FFVII came about, Playstation enjoyed some rather nice RPGs that were even called legendary by some. Titles like Beyond the Beyond, Suikoden, Ogre Battle, Brigandine, Tactics Ogre and ARMs all enjoyed success in both sales and reception, but still nothing to match SNES. But while Suikoden was a pretty damned good RPG altogether, the other non Square romp popped out that year fell short of my expectations. While Wild ARMs certainly has a lot of likable qualities in it, the extremely repetitive gameplay and lack of a coherent plotline cuts this game in half, and makes Sony's first US published RPG more than a little underwhelming.
The story is nothing special because unless you're new to RPGing, you've definetly seen this before. A lonely warrior who feels unaccepted by humanity sets off looking for a place where he can belong. While working in a town for some cash, this young buck goes into a cave to help a lost boy and possibly gain some face for it. Instead, after he shows off his big ass Wild ARMS gun to all the NPC villagers who meet him and the lost boy at the cave, they banish him away from the town because they're afraid of his power. So off goes our young walking sprite cliche into another dungeon to look for a reason to belong, again.
Since the devlopers wanted EVERY GODDAMN CLICHE EVERY INVENTED FOR THIS GENRE pumped into ARMS, they threw in two other characters that should immediately throw you into a phase of deja vu. One of these other two playable cliches is Cecilia, a princess who is searching for something or other and wants magic and power (whoopee...). Oh...and don't forget Jack, a treasure hunter with a rat that has goals relative to wealth, oh goodie...
So with those three potentially awesome characters in hand, the devlopers could have made a truly brilliant plotline that developed these little monsters very well and did what RPGs were born to do in the first place: endear and inspire. But rather than sit down and think up a creative plot, whoever made this game (I'm getting sick of saying "the developers" ) decided to steal the plot from every half-assed "save the princess and then the world" RPG and dump it into ARMS, a game that could have been legendary had there been a decent story. But alas, a story was compiled that was so uninteresting I won't even describe the jist of it because I'm afraid you'll fall asleep or vomit.
Before I get to the few good parts of this title, I will round out the f**k ups just because that is where my vocab' shines the bestest.
Now I'm sure that you wouldn't mind 2D sugar in your RPG latte right? Most purists don't care, I don't, and you shouldn't either, if an RPG is 2D or 3D because it's the actual RPG elements that make or break the game.
But in the case of ARMS, I must say I'm thoroughly disgusted. I'm not even considering that this game was done in 1997-Chrono Trigger, an RPG that was made in 1995 on SNES looks ages ahead of the 2D monstrosity that is ARMS. Most of the towns and dungeons never shy away from one or two hues and therefore, become horribly dry and monotonous rather quickly. This game looks a lot like Terranigma, the long-preached king of RPGs on SNES, but that's still a 2D system, this is Playstation, a 32 bit system, in other words, the devlopers could have done so much more in this category.
The 3D battling, while basically average, still shows more clipping than most games in 1997 on Playstation did, and considering that you don't actually have to control the on-screen characters, a LOT more should have been done about this also.
A shining hallmark for many an RPG has always been the music. Ever since Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior powered up the soul aurally, and intensified the experience that much more, RPGs have relied on sound moreso than visuals to entrace the gamer. This is where ARMS succeeds the most-providing some of the best tunes around at that time on the Playstation. The western-based themes and awesome dungeon music help make this one of the Playstation's best performances in this area up until recently.
But where ARMS could have been saved the most, is in the gameplay. The gameplay revolves around going from town to dungeon, back to a town, back to a dungeon then into a boss fight. This disastrous cycle continues throughout the length of the game and only occasionally has something to break up the boredom. Worst of all, most of the towns have hardly anything good about them-they're mostly just a few plateaus with random buildings dropped in. The NPCs rarely have anything interesting to say, and most only tell you what the other one already did. The towns are boring and the World Map is equally frustrating, so it's up to the dungeons to save ARMS from the Xeno3998 hate list.
Thankfully, the dungeons, while totally frustrating and mindless sometimes, provide a "dungeoning" challenge I haven't experienced since Lufia II and the Oasis games. Puzzles can be difficult, that's why there are always hints scattered around dungeons and towns, just to enforce your visiting every part of the game no mattah' what, to clean up all the clues. Probably the only problem I had with the dungeons was the frequency and ramped up challenge of the random battles. Sometimes if you don't level up enough, random encounters can be the death of your party. Other than that, this is one awesome showing of innovative dungeons that should be in the next ARMS game if I have anything to say about it.
Overall a good RPG, just not a great one. ARMS is enough to satiate your thirsting for dungeons, but in terms of plotline and characters, this one falls short. Recommended, but not as much as other games in this genre.
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