Wild Arms (1996)

Wild Arms is one of those "hidden gems" I've heard of for awhile. Framed as this often looked over JRPG worth the time and consideration of gamers, unfortunately eclipsed by the release of Final Fantasy VII. I am curious of how it got this reputation. I hate to make accusations like: "People are blinded by nostalgia" because those same words have been used to disregard some of my own favorite pieces of media but I earnestly cannot help but feel that way after having experienced Wild Arms and what it had to offer.

During the half way point of my playthrough I had this feeling that my ending thoughts of the game were going to be something along the lines of: simple story, simple combat, but tight and not too difficult - makes for a nice casual playthrough for JRPG veterans or a beginners entry for those new to JRPGs. However three core things come together to make the experience begin to falter and really drained me by the end. These three things being:

1. The Encounter Rate: Wild Arms has an impressively high encounter rate. I am talking every few steps sometimes.

2. The Slow Pace of Battles: These battles can be painfully slow. The worst example of this happening with enemies who inflict status ailments, further slowing down the battle with LONG spell animations and wasting your subsequent turns healing the conditions.

3. The Labyrinthine Dungeon Design: This should be a HUGE positive for me. I love dungeons - they are some of my favorite parts of RPGs

Wild Arms has some incredibly interesting and fun dungeons. Puzzle focused with each character acquiring a number of tools to provide different layers and types of solutions to the puzzles within each dungeon. On top of these neatly designed puzzles comes these maze like corridors that test the player's awareness and memory - filled with a great amount of treasures that are always helpful and never feel like a waste during your playthrough. Seriously fantastically designed areas that are brain scratching and feel like more than just padding. If only you could explore them without so much struggle. When your dungeons are long and they are sprawling the worst thing you can do is make a player unable to explore them and take note of their environment. I had a reoccurring problem in Wild Arms where I was unable to create a mental map of the area I was exploring because of the amount of time I spent in battles. I would begin exploring an area, only to be hit with a random encounter, this battle would take a minute or two, then I would take a few steps and then be hit with another random encounter, after which I would retrace my steps a bit refamiliarize myself with where I was because my mental map of the area had began to blur after spending so much time in battle. Rinse and Repeat this process until I completed the area. This high encounter rate is further exacerbated by the fact that Wild Arms is simple. The battle system could even be called brain dead. I don't hate this on the surface - sometimes an affair of: Pick your strongest attack --> Heal when needed --> Repeat, is just what I want. But for the battles to be this simple yet take so long only serves to bore the player. This boredom became frustration when these battles kept me from progressing and being able to create a map of my environment with the dungeons.

I wanted to enjoy the game - but the game found it necessary to keep me from experiencing it most interesting aspects.

Wild Arms has ambition. It feels like it has some ideas it wants to show the player. The whole project feels like it comes from this place of excitement and inexperience. The wild west flavoring is inspired but is underutilized - the game largely feels like a standard JRPG fantasy - but with sprinklings of the steam powered machinery. While everyone is using Swords and Sorcery your main character will occasionally pull out a FUCKING ROCKET LAUNCHER. Its charming - but it doesn't go far enough. The designs of enemies are wild. Very little standard JRPG monster fodder - many of these creatures are terrifying or wacky beyond description.

Giant bipedal bird with metal hands and spiked purple shoes

Lizard Plant Maneater thing with tendrils???????

A Flatwoods Monster! That's like one of my favorite things ever! You have to understand how much I want to like this game.

Even the big bads have these really interesting designs - some of who fall into the realm of ninjas - super off kilter in comparison to the demon dark knights. I feel its obvious that the team had unique ideas and wanted to implement them into their own RPG but the ideas themselves never get to have the proper spotlight they deserve because of the simple combat and a high encounter rate beyond what was typical of older JRPGs. Re-balance and tweak some numbers and this game could work so much better. Truly a shame.

Just beat this! My late friend Ali gave this to me as a kid and something about it always fascinated me but I never got far in it. Ali always had the coolest anime and japanese games, even import games that needed special boot discs to play and he often gave me old games he wasn't playing anymore. A group of us all played Legend of Dragoon on our PS2s in middle school. I miss you bud.

Wild Arms is a pretty standard old school jrpg, but it's set in a very cool western tech fantasy settings with harmonicas, swords, and castles. Without the 3d battle scenes and cd music, this could have easily been on the SNES (and that's not a bad thing!) The music is great but the sound design is atrocious. It sounds like threw many of the sounds sounds on from a free sample library at the last minute.

I would love a retranslation because the writing is often pretty goofy, and in other parts serviceable. I didn't really understand some of the plot about 3/4 through the game either (though I wasn't playing close attention.)

Being able to remap the controls was sick and should be in every rpg! I set confirm, dash, and cancel to L1 and L2 which let me play most of the game one handed.

Overall a lovely jrpg. I understand there's a PS2 remake but I prefer the visual aesthetic of this one (sans the 3d battles, an entirely 2d Wild Arms would be preferable.) Does anyone know if the remake improved the story?

I am very pleasantly surprised at what a great adventure Wild Arms was. I'm almost tempted to give it 5 stars, but it does have some flaws. This review summed it up well: "What it does possess is a lovingly-crafted 2D universe, a charming cast of characters, and enough idiosyncratic gameplay features to ensure that it can stand on its own two feet."

Let's get this out of the way, the brightest star in Wild Arms' offerings is its incredible soundtrack. Michiko Naruke's score is breathtaking in its scope and emotional depth. The orchestra and choirs sound freaking excellent. Truly one of the great soundtracks, that regrettably gets overlooked for the Square Enix titles.

So, what about the world of the game? I found the characters likeable enough. There's silent Rudy, headstrong Jack, his mouse-thing companion Hanpan who plays the brains to his brawn, and the kind but mostly annoyingly self-serious princess turned sorceress Cecilia. The towns and dungeons are plentiful and varied. There's a good amount of challenging side questing. The story, while not anything groundbreaking, holds its own as a blend of fantasy and sci-fi thrown in to a wild west-esque setting. It nails the atmosphere and presentation of the world of Filgaia, its ecology, and the historical interactions and conflicts of the good guys and bad guys (and "good" guys and "bad" guys). There are some truly disturbing moments with the game's antagonists. I feel like dungeons include a lot more puzzles than we get from future games.

In remembering past play through attempts, I thought fighting was cumbersome and slow going. But once you start learning a few skills and get out into the world, it really does pick up. Combat reminds me a lot of Breath of Fire, with the cross shaped symbol menus and purely turn based battles. The game manages to keep it fresh by supplying each character with a steady stream of new abilities (and different ways to learn/get/upgrade them), a decent but not overwhelming array of armor and accessories, and summonable Guardian beasts that represent various elements or characteristics and boost your stats.

One pet peeve I have is this trope of the silent protagonist. Rudy, the blue haired dude who was featured front and center in the game's art and promotional materials, says all of 2 lines of dialogue in the whole game. He has an interesting enough story arc, but he absolutely doesn't do anything to establish himself as more important than the other two.

The game's major drawback is that the 3D combat looks. fricking. awful. It's not at all nice to look at. On the flip side, the rest of the game looks like a SNES game - a very nice one, but still, a SNES game. So you're flipping between this smooth 2D world, exploring towns and dungeons, blowing stuff up or bopping animals with your magic wand, and then you're plunged into the grainiest, ugliest battles I've seen. I wonder what this would have been like if it was all just super polished 2D sprite based, and battles did look more like Breath of Fire. The game is bookended with some very nice anime-style scenes.

SPEAKING of cut scenes, the game's prologue is awesome. The problem with it is that I imagine most people don't know it exists. Every time the game boots up, you start with the anime intro. After this, you're greeted by the title screen which tells you to push start. DID YOU KNOW that if you wait, there's a six and a half minute prologue scene!? Because, world, I did not until maybe a year ago. And I've had this since 1998.

Playing this on a PS2 led to a LOT of crashes, so I cheated a bit to avoid having to grind levels, since random battles seemed to make the game freeze up the most. I regret that a bit because the game tends towards the easier side, and most battles (including the hard ones) weren't challenging.

Anyways, the very sweet ending is icing on the cake. Wild Arms is a treasure largely lost to time, buried by the Final Fantasies and Xenogears that would follow. If you're at all a fan of JRPGs, you should definitely give this a go.

Wild Arms is a game that gets you excited on the outside for its Western aesthetic mixed with the grand adventure of a JRPG.

While you get the grand adventure, it feels fairly similar to a Final Fantasy game (with the exception of the ARM system, gimmicky at best). A bit too similar. The Western aesthetic is also unfortunately downplayed, as it's easy to feel like you're in a bare-bones Final Fantasy game with only three characters and little-to-no Western feel with only vaguely adventurous music to convince you otherwise.

It follows plenty of the same routes in a lot of JRPGs, right up to the mysterious pasts and the flying machines, and takes a little too much time in doing so. Fortunately it picks up the pace past the whole flying machine part.

Other than that, there's not much to complain about or treasure. It's a very competent, fairly straightforward RPG, with a balanced curve that won't force you to grind and systems that are quite simple to pick up. JRPG enthusiasts are welcome, but people looking for something actually Western-themed may want to try the sequels.