Wild Arms 3

"An Acquired Taste or a Strange Flavor?"

A vast majority of people that write a walkthrough or a review for a specific game tend to like that title. And there are always people that like a certain game, just as people tend to each have a different favorite food. Of course, there are always those foods that everyone agrees is of excellent taste, but in this case, we have a debate as to rather Wild Arms 3 is wonderful or just bland with too much spice.

Why give Wild Arms 3 a 30% out of a 100?
In my opinion, this game earned that rating. Firstly, as the reviewer, I will tell you what games are my favorites. I liked Xenogears and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Final Fantasy 6,7 and 8, Harvest Moon, Suikoden, Onimusha, Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Breath of Fire, Summoner, Secret of Mana, Legend of Legaia 2, Dragon Warrior, Fire Emblem and a lot of the good, classic roleplaying, as well as strategy or action/role-playing games. I am NOT a big fan of games like Resident Evil, Diablo, classic Zelda, or puzzle RPGs like Monstania.

I will not evaluate this game in standard, graphic, music, sound, story outline. Instead I'll be brief and tell you the neutral benefits and disadvantages of the game. If you decide to buy it, at least the community on gamefaqs.com where you'll find this review is very good about helping if you are lost in the game or not sure what to do in a certain place.

Positive Wild Arms 3
*Unique setting: the wild west, late 1800s, early 1900s western United States and mideast feeling minus the prejudices of that time. Throw in a little classic roleplaying element with the villian, and you have something no other game has at this point.
*Save anywhere: well it costs you a 'gimel coin' to save anywhere, but you have to earn these by fighting in battles. You should never run out since you battle 90% of the time or more.
*Translation: Do grammar errors bother you? Could you never get 'all your base are belong to us' out of your mind? Well, this translation is well done, and in fact, cheers to Squaresoft Inc. for actually being the translators of this project.
*Music: It is not my style, but it DOES follow the scenery and overall game atmosphere. Full of whistling jigs and cowboy tunes.
*Control: Well, anything that makes good use of the analog stick belongs here. Some games have control issues but this one does well with camera angle adjustment and control.
*Load Times: There are no load times, unless you count the time it takes you to bat an eyelash.

Negative Wild Arms 3
*Story: I am going to give a very, very minor spoiler here, as some reviews do. In this game, you have control of four characters, called Drifters. They are really like 3 cowboys and a cowgirl, but not quite.
You see, this game is made to depict a group of 4 wranglers but their characters do not match their roles or historys. The girl is 18, named Virginia, a sharp shooter with two guns. She had never killed anyone until the opening of the game when you begin with her killing goblins. She comments, ''so this is what it is like to kill someone.'' And we have Jet, a platnium haired young man with a ' I don't need anyone, I just need myself and money, so stay out of my way' disposition.
Yet, he follows this girl, along with a native man who is an apparent roughneck from his background but inevitably acts like an old dog looking at a new pan. He is unsure rather to bark, bite or run-away.
Then the 30 year old gunslinger, law-abiding, Billy the Kid with a neutral-good alignment. He seems to do well, but how he got to be 30 is beyond me when he regularly relies on 18 year old girls as the 'leader', as he dubs her.
Compared to the sotryline, these things are trivial and you may not notice them. But here is the story. Your motley crew of 4 drifters wind up working together because they take the hunch of an old villiage woman to heart. They then follow the girl around through a barrage of old ruins, repetatively I will add, until you start to think dark cloud was just a walk through the clouds and not a dungeon crawler at all.
I can not begin to explain how sugar-coated this plot is, and it alone is enough to make you want to just press the power button on your PS2 and use your game as a target for a little sharp-shooting of your own.
*Fun: This game is boring. If you skipped my storyline desription, know this:
Unless you enjoy puzzles like the classic SNES Zelda or Nes Startropics, you will not enjoy these puzzles either.
Unless you enjoy seeing the SAME game tiles used in mutiple dungeons that are very azure dream-looking, you will not enjoy it in this game, I am quite sure.
Ah yes, and battles...I do not need to explain in depth, but how can battles be so limited in strategy but the game itself is like a giant rubix cube? What that means is, compared to how difficult the game is, the boss battles are about the only thing you will ever need to think about ahead of time. Only the really big boss battles, because like everything else in this game, you get to be repetative and fight the same enemy more than one time.
Towns: I like games that include towns and villages, or now days, we have went past the classic flat little village look with red and green roofs all lines up with a neat little fence inclosing it all. We have cities and such, but even if we have a good game that has no cities, it's okay. As long as there is character there, it is a nice thing to look forward to, getting to that new villiage.
In the words of famous city-simulation creator Will Wright who once said cities were empty without personality, ''Cities need character''
As do towns, as do villiages. I do not like Wild Arms 3 lack of people in towns. In fact, that is my biggest complaint about the game. The first villiage in the game is the biggest town of them all, people wise. In every town you enter, you have a barwoman, or maybe a villager to tell you your next move. You have one upgrade shop, and lastly, you have the traveling merchant. They all will talk to you, but there is nothing like saving a world when all the towns in your world only have 3-4 people in them.

Some people like this game, and you may very well like it too. But I highly, highly advise a rental first. This game is cell-shaded which turns some people off, though it was never an issue with me. (Harvest Moon, save the homeland was cell-shaded and I liked it moderately well.)
This game is a western. If you do not like T.V. Westerns, you may not like this either. I know that is one reason I did not care for it.
This game does not have a great plot at all. It is really terrible and aside from the vacancy of people in this fantasy world, the story-line was very poor indeed. It was somewhat original, but that does not make it good by any means.
This game is done in anime, which I like. It is a little like Trigun, nothing like Cowboy Bebop if that is what you are thinking.
So in closing, mix one part Old West, one part rushed anime, another part creativity with gunpowder, stir in a touch of puzzles and hardcore random encounter, not to mention full-fledged cell-shading with a dash of chile pepper and you come out with a batch of stale, but carbon copy, Martha Stewert certified cookies with rainbow sprinkles. You will need a lot of time to eat them though, but if you sit down to play this game, it should be no trouble. It kind of takes a long time to sludge through those same-old, same-old dungeons.
Not recommended, even though it is still an rpg, I have to give it this rating. :(

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/02, Updated 10/21/02