Wild Arms 4

"Wild Arms 4 Saved By The Gameplay."

Wild Arms 4 the fourth of the currently five game series was a disappointment. Considering, Wild Arms 3 was a masterpiece I was anticipating this game greatly. When I got it the game did not live up to my expectations or even close. Yet, the game was still decent and worth beating...

Graphics:9/10:Wild Arms 4 has pretty good Graphics. Not the very best on the PS2, but still extremely good. The Graphics mimic a anime art style. Character designs are pretty good, but could have been a little better as well. Area designs were a little bland though and I noticed several designs repeating themselves throughout areas. In battle the Graphics were pretty good and the attacks had nice animations. Graphics score 9.0/10. All they needed was some better character designs, less bland area designs and no repeating pattern designs in dungeons. With that covered it's onto Wild Arms 4's saving grace it's Gameplay.

Gameplay:8.5/10:Wild Arms 4 is like a RPG on rails. It's very straightforward and quite linear, but done well. You'll go from town to dungeon. Doing the same typical shopping and Inn resting at towns. Then proceeding onto the next dungeon via the World Map. Wild Arms 4 World Map is the more recent kind. Where you simply select a location and go there instead of actually having to travel across the World Map to reach your destination. Battles and exploration are done with a four man party. Exploration in dungeons is a nice twist to RPG's. Instead of just typical running around going from floor to floor Wild Arms 4 takes a new fun approach. Think of it as making side scrolling dungeons with platforming. Personally, I thought this was a extremely good idea and I thought it made traveling through dungeons less monotonous. While platforming you can slow down time for a temporary amount of time. This aspect is used to solve certain platforming puzzles and to get by areas that you normally could not without slowing down time. As with nearly every RPG out there Wild Arms 4 has random encounters. You walk a few steps and randomly go through a transition into a battle screen.

Battles are a bit unique in Wild Arms 4. The game uses a different battle system. Instead of the typical tired and true traditional turn based system Wild Arms 4 uses the Hex system. In battle you have six spaces. Each one is called a Hex. Hex's are positions you can move onto with your characters. More then one party member may occupy a Hex. To make battles more strategic you can use status effects and such to poison a Hex or etc. So, anyone who is on or goes onto that Hex gets effected by poison. Now, in practice this is a good battle system. The Hex battle system makes positioning of your party members important and buffs/debuffs extremely important. As mentioned before in practice a good battle system, but the major lack of difficulty ruins the potential this battle system had. Random battles are usually a joke and so are most of the boss fights. However, the last few bosses of the game did put up a good fight admittedly and took a decent strategy. On the positive side, there is another innovative good feature to the battles. The Force Points gauge.

FP Gauge in battle was raised by attacking your enemies. If it got full one or two characters may perform a Force Skill. Force Skills were kind of like special skills that were extremely useful in certain ways. The FP Gauge was another great innovation due to it adding more strategy because of how you can utilize it to turn the tide of battle in your favor. Like most PS2 Rpg's Wild Arms also had customization and pretty good customization too.

The customization Wild Arms 4 allowed you was great. Each time you gained a level you obtained some Skill Points. Which could then be distributed into Skills you could learn. Most of the Skills added more strategy and customization possibilities for your party members which was great. You could also sacrifice lowering the HP/MP your characters had to gain a few more Skill Points as well. Overall, the Gameplay in Wild Arms 4 was very good. It only had two really minor problems which were the difficulty and sometimes the game dragged on. The Gameplay and Graphics are great, but aside from that is where Wild Arms 4 goes downhill...

Storyline:4/10:Media Vision WHAT IS THIS!? HUH!? Wild Arms 4 Storyline was terrible. To begin with the cast of characters are generic and boring. Combine that with the writing was terrible and the antagonists were not very interesting too. There's also very little character development in the game. At least the end of the game had one or two interesting plot twists. One thing that really confused me was the ending. The ending was perhaps one of the best ever in a RPG yet, the writer who made that ending couldn't make a good Storyline? So, the Storyline receives a 4/10 from me. It was just very mediocre in my honest opinion. Last, in Wild Arms 4 is the Music.

Music:7/10:Most of the Music in the game was generic fare that to be honest I didn't care for. As a matter of fact there wasn't really one song that I liked a lot. None of the songs were bad, just not amazing. The Voice Acting in the game was pretty good to be honest though. Overall, the Music was nothing really to write home about. Music gets a 7/10 from me. How is Wild Arms 4 overall?

Overall:7/10:It's disappointing in certain ways. On the positive side, the Gameplay was pretty good. It had some minor issues, but it was the saving grace of the game. Graphics were extremely good as well. Now, for the negatives... Wild Arms 4 Storyline was inexcusable and just flat out terrible. The Music was disappointing as well. Not bad, but just nothing about the soundtrack really stood out. Overall, Wild Arms 4 gets a 7/10 from Lord_Kefka.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/26/08

Game Release: Wild Arms 4 (US, 01/10/06)