Wild Arms (1996)

Beat 100%, including all side quests and optional bosses. I adored Wild Arms 3 and it was interesting to see where the series began. I liked the solo prologues for each character, even though it was done far better in Dragon Quest 4 on the NES. I wish more rpgs used this. I liked the tools and creative puzzles involving them, which seen me often switching which character was in the lead. I would have preferred more intricate puzzles involving multiple tools, and cutting the tired generic puzzles like block pushing and the activate all the switches when they deactivate adjacent ones. I played the prologues in order and thought the princess was the main character because of her chosen one status and will to drive the plot forward. The 2 men just seemed to be wandering along for the ride. I was a little confused after the prologues because the men were not in town and I clearly needed them to progress. Where were they? Eventually I figured out about the change option at the save point and got everyone together. The game even made creative use of this mechanic with multiple dungeons that split the characters up.

This game seemed like lower budget indy project, and more like a SNES game, when compared to the top PS1 jrpgs. The worst offender was the battle graphics; not just how it looked but the ponderous speed of the very lackluster animations and effects. And the enemy sound that was clearly a cat. Why even put that in a game? I can understand the Daggerfall ancient vampire snarl, which still gives me shivers. Must be copyright free sound clips. The music was top quality though. I did enjoy the story, dialogue and characters, though they paled in comparison to even the top SNES jrpgs. I found the game a little too easy until about the time I acquired the ship, and I absolutely hate random battles while sailing. I did like the rarer enemies that were much stronger than their contemporaries. They were not overwhelming but just hard enough to encourage use of special abilities. I even wiped to one of those just before the final boss. Some of the optional bosses took multiple attempts to beat (always due to powerful hit all attacks), and I certainly did not fight them in the optimal order for getting the best gear sooner. I did the majority of the game blind, only checking a walkthrough around the mid game to find out what each spell did. I did what side content I found on my own, then went through the final dungeon to right before the final boss, then used a walkthrough to finish every side quest. In particular, Barbados and Lucifer gave me trouble and it was about repeating them until the RNG on their powerful hit all attacks went in my favor. The ultimate optional boss took a few attempts. I spent time grinding in the abyss to steal the frog badge needed to survive the ultimate attack. I used the guitar for instant battles, ran away from all I could, and tried luck and speed boosting but never succeed. I tried the boss without any badges and discovered Rudy had over 7000hp with the +50% hp accessory, which allowed him to survive. I then did the arena to farm goat dolls for the other 2 though I didn't actually need them as I only used 4 before winning. After all this powering up the final boss was laughably easy.

Ths most engaging aspect of the game was the princess's magic system. It was exciting to find a new crest graph and decide which spell to add to her repertoire. Early on I focused on the core white mage spells while letting her keep fire for attack. It was quite interesting that status recovery magic was not available until late game, making recovery items much more valuable. After covering the essential white spells I improved her offensive variety. Unfortunately, some of the spells were not very useful at all, and the vague in game descriptions led to me looking them up online. Some of those spells I never even bothered to get even after having a surplus of graphs. During random battles I had her using analyze to find out elemental weaknesses and then using the appropriate nuke to 1 shot an enemy. Or at least do decent damage to a powerful foe. The basic elemental spells were still good after getting the advanced because they were far more mana efficient. I did not keep basic lighting or blast because the hi version hit all enemies. I did not often use the non elemental blast and was very disappointed that the rainbow spell did not do the best damage against enemies with no weakness; there was no point for that spell to even exist then. Saint was the most useful nuke and I had a holy ring and dark ring to cast saint and darkness for free using mystic. Mystic also came in handy for healing and status recovering the entire party in 1 move. During boss fights she mostly used support magic: slow, armor down, hyper to boost Jack's attack, shield, life guard for auto resurrect, and hide on herself. Hide was great for massively boosting her evasion but it wore off upon physical attacks, including random counterattacks. Curse increased random battles and was good for farming, while invisibility did the opposite. I even used that to bee line to some optional bosses without having to fight any random battles, including the ultimate secret boss. Heal was great for topping up hp both in and outside battles, while hi heal was for critical single target heals. Group healing was lacking though, with remedy being only slightly better than mystic potion berry, and even summoning the love guardian was not enough to deal with those powerful hit all attacks on the optional bosses. For the ultimate optional boss I used a few ambrosia to completely heal the party, and could have done the same with mystic nectar but never did. I cheaped out by not buying her new weapons until the end of the game. I should not have bought her any weapons at all because her top 3 or 4 rods were free. I switched her accessory and runes around as needed and absolutely loved being able to freely change equipment during battle, especially to swap in status immune accessories. The mind gem was the best with passive mp regen, which I used during dungeons and random battles. I even found some areas in the final dungeon without random battles where I could spend minutes just moving back and forth to get all mp and hp to full. For boss fights she used +max hp or that talisman with its sweet hp regen to help her stay alive and focus more on supporting the men. When it came time to nuke she broke out the necronomicon for the highest damage. I used runes similarly, with defensive ones while supporting (triton then castle), magic boosting for nuking and random battles (water, death, hades and Chrono as the best), and love just to summon for heals. I fairly often summoned for damage rather than healing, with her having little trouble hitting for 7k to 9999 with Chrono. She ended at level 58.

Jack was a high offense fighter mage with a few cool abilities. I really liked the way he learned new abilities because each was a scripted unique event. Most of the time I had him do regular attacks in random battles to save mp for boss fights, but some nasty enemies warranted spending the mp to kill faster. I mostly used meteor dive because it took forever to unlock his better single target attacks; I even had a lot of optional bosses killed without those better attacks. I did not use his multi target attacks much, especially after princess got advanced magic. I spent secret signs on meteor dive, trump card and trickster (which I got down to 1 mp), though I did not find stealing very useful. His heal + status recovery was good but could not be used outside battle. I do wish there was a little more variety in his skills. I usually gave him the talisman to keep his hp up during random battles, otherwise giving defense. He got the sheriff star because as a hybrid he got the most benefit out of it. Also it did not restore mp or boost magic as much as the book for princess. At first I balanced him out by giving him a defensive rune (earth and Triton), until I realized that he was best off with raw attack power. He used the sword rune instead of courage. He had the best characterization in the game, with his tragic love story and sacrifice at the end. Would have been nice to see a hint of them getting back together in the ending. He ended at level 59.

Rudy was the least interesting, being the silent protagonist tank, slow but tough. His normal damage was mediocre but his gun damage was better than Jack. I did some basic cheap upgrades on the first few guns until I found the rocket launcher and pumped that up. By the end I had almost every gun maxed out, though the only times I needed more than 2 or 3 were when I forgot to buy ammo. I never used a single bullet clip though. During random battles I had him attack with his sword to save ammo, though the game probably expected otherwise. He was too slow to kill enemies before they got a turn, but some very strong enemies were worth the occasional bullet. I had him use the pouch during random battles for long term money gain, though switched it to Jack when I found the attack power boost accessory just before the ultimate optional boss. He used the force accessory for boss fights for more frequent fury shots. I usually used the arc smash and phaser until he built up enough force, then fury shot with the rocket, bazooka or phaser. The basic lock on force was best used with the poor accuracy wild smash. If I managed to run out of ammo for all those guns then it was back to the basic hand cannon and twin orbs. Early on I gave him attack power runes, then later switching to whatever was best after Jack took the best attack; ice, life and hope. Even after getting hope I occasionally switched to life so he could help heal. I did like the plot twist of him being an android and I was glad the game did not get into any romance. The standard trope would be for him and the princess to romance, but it seemed like Jane had a crush on him and was frustrated when she found he was not human. Jane was the hottest girl, and it was disappointing that her and the other side characters were not shown in the ending. He ended at level 60.

Wild Arms was a solid Jrpg that did not do anything critically bad, but was simple and lackluster when compared to even the top SNES Jrpgs.

7.8/10

To anyone who plays the original disc on a PS2, this isn't on the list of incompatible games, but it freezes ALL THE TIME. It's frustrating for sure, but mostly fine as long as you save frequently. I did lose some major progress a couple of times now but nothing to make me give up yet.

The culprit seems to be random battles, so after this happened a few times, I used the 255 item trick to avoid having to grind levels too much.