Wild Arms 4

"Wild Arms For Dummies"

For me, Wild Arms is a series that is comparable to Breath Of Fire in the way that it is commonly overlooked, and I've never understood why, considering they are better than average for the most part, certainly better than most the overrated Final Fantasy games. However, if I was going to use any game from the series as an example for this statement, I don't think I'd be choosing this one. In the end I settled on a five, but I really can't decide whether it should have been a four (the average came to 4.8 hence I went with five >_>), since the game, while not being unplayable, just isn't that enjoyable.

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Storyline (3/10)
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Games are often criticised for having scripts comparable to B-Movies and unfortunately, this game does nothing that's going to change that perception and in places, it's outright awful. The basic premise of the game is fine, being that a of child who had powers he didn't know of, swears to protect a girl after just meeting her, and subsequently blowing up his home town due to not being able to control his powers and being thrown to the planet beneath that he never knew about; a war-scorched Filgaia. After living a pastoral existence in his floating home town and now being presented with this situation you'd expect him to be somewhat upset, but he takes it on the chin and chirpily wanders to the nearby town. The script and characters are so unrealistic it pained me to play the game and made me cringe with every upbeat sentence Jude had to say when he should have been writhing in misery for the umpteenth time in the game. You meet characters that have such obvious ulterior motives when they're "helping" you, but for some reason none of the party ever question any of the, in all honesty, stupid events that happen during the game, the most annoying example of which being Gawn. Someone you meet at random and then can't get rid of, despite the many times he and your party decide it's time to go your separate ways, ten minutes later he's back... and it's all just coincidence >_>

I love games that have a deep and involving storyline especially when it's deeply involved in the motivation of the game, but Wild Arms 4 takes this far too far. Each area you go to is split up into a variety of different screens, so basically; you go from one room to another, but every time you do you're greeted to a cutscene of what is for the most part irrelevant and boring dialog with no way of skipping it. At first I was really interested, but the moment I realised, about twenty minutes in, that this is what was in store every time I went onto a new screen I just couldn't bring myself to listen / read anymore of it. Involving the player in the storyline does not mean shoving it into their face especially when what is being discussed are not the topics that anyone who was actually in their situation would talk about. In the end for every minutes gameplay you get outside battle (about 5-10 minutes including them) you get anywhere between 1 and 5 minutes dialog / cutscenes... and they feel a lot longer than that. Although I did like the comic book style of splitting the screen up into panels for everyone who was speaking.

All in all, a BIG disappointment for a series that I love purely for the storyline.

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Gameplay (7/10)
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There are quite a few changes between this instalment and previous instalments. Starting with the map, because it's the easiest :), they removed being able to stroll around on it, and now instead you just get places you can click on and you go there. It has the advantage of now you don't have to wander on the map for ages pressing square just trying to find the next city / dungeon, and it's a lot quicker to get to where you want. Another change is the battle system, which now uses a series of hexagons laid out in a grid, which you use to move about within, and instead of choosing characters to perform actions on, you choose one of the hexagons, and the actions effects all players / enemies that are currently occupying that spot. It works very well and while it takes a while to get used to, it provides a lot more strategy into what has become quite a dull part of games recently, and since battles occur so often it's something that needs refreshing. Other changes include "accelerator" which can be used at anytime in-game to slow down time and also, if there are any there, uncover gella hidden on the map, which if you collect in succession before the gauge runs out you can build up a chain resulting in more gella. However, gella isn't that useful in the game, since the enemies drop very little of it, and the only use it has it buying new weapons, so most of the time you never find yourself lacking, especially since you can learn steal and start hoarding potions berrys quite early on. The puzzles have always played a part in Wild Arms, and they're thankfully not that bad in this one, there are quite a few that don't have an obvious solution, and involving running backwards and forwards between screens to solve, but eventually you'll get there without having to resort to a guide hopefully.

Overall, gameplay-wise, there's enough in this game to keep people occupied, especially with the battle system, which in a way reminds me of a scaled down Breath Of Fire V's. There aren't a HUGE amount of side quests / mini games that I discovered and the ones that were there weren't that good, so it's probably just as well there aren't many of them. It seems odd to me that I'm praising a game just because it has a good battle system :D But in truth, most parts of the game outside the script work pretty well.

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Graphics (6/10)
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Pretty enough and the character portraits are done well, the level designs are alright, but I'd prefer to have fewer levels and for them to be longer and have a lot of little areas like this game does. I know why they do it though, it's so they can give you a new cut scene when you go into a new area, but sans cut scenes, the levels in their take less than a minute to get through, which isn't very long.

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Sounds (3/10)
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For the most part it just sounds like generic music, which is fine, but there's nothing you're going to find yourself humming or thinking "I really like this song" to. The voice acting however, is another matter, as in places it's just terrible, and whoever decided to have Jude sound like Ash from Pokemon needs shooting, repeatedly. I tried to find out, without success, if it's the same VA, but even if they're not the same, he sounds a lot like him and that's enough, since the cutscenes are bad enough that there's so many of them, but they're worse when you're having to put up with the VA. The in-battle sounds bites are awful as well, which led to me having to turn their VA off, simply because I couldn't bring myself to play the game with them on, it's that bad.

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Lifespan (5/10)
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The game lasts a decent enough amount of time, but it's certainly not a completely enjoyable experience. Furthermore, once you've finished, while there are optional bosses to go out and fight, I'd just had enough of the game. Most the parts of the game work, but for some reason I can't quite explain, the resulting product is just... boring and devoid of any kind of charm.

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Summary (5/10)
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By all means, it's worth at least trying and hopefully you'll find it's something you can get into, but unfortunately, the likelihood of that happening is slim, and the game's definitely not going to pull in any new players from outside the fans of the series. It's annoying that they dumbed down the game so much, but quite frankly I can't imagine kids even wanting to sit there playing this, since despite the plot being as basic as counting to ten, the battle system requires a lot of thought to win some of the boss battles. To be completely honest, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if all the problems with the plot's dullness and inconsistencies was down to poor translation, since everything else in game seems to be fine to me, but it shows how being sloppy with that kind of stuff can really destroy a game. Whoever they got to do the localisation for this, I just pray don't get their hands on Vth Vanguard.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/01/07