Wild Arms 3

"Awesome game that lives well up to the Wild Arms standards!"

Wild Arms 3 is about a world, Filgaia, that has little water, very little greenery and forestry, and basically a wasteland. You control a girl named Virginia and a team of 3, loaded up with their ARMs (weapons), to uncover the reasons why this is and How it all happened.

Story - 10/10
This is where the game shines! The story was amazing just as well as the first 2 Wild Arms were. It has great character development, really big plot twists, and a story that has you gripped to the very end. I've also never seen such good character development in a game besides the first 2 Wild Arms (but I'm not here to compare them to the first 2, so I'll stop that now!). Anyways, it gets in very detailed pasts of the characters to get a good established character. There are even some dungeons that are devoted, just to character development, that you'll find throughout the game.

Music/Sound - 12/10
Sorry, but if you want a crazy good soundtrack for a game, that has perfect music that goes with each scene that it's put into, then this is your game. One of THE greatest soundtracks ever is right here, on this game and your here reading this not listening to it.... tsk tsk. Anyways, the music is so good that sometimes I wouldn't even go on with a certain dialogue for a minute, just to listen to the music. PLUS, you also get to listen to every song in the game that you have already heard, at a sallon in one of the early towns. Also, the sound effects are great. When in a battle, if you shoot with 1 bullet Arm, you'll here the bang! Then if you shoot a 6 bullet Arm, you'll here the chained gun shots. Absolutely marvelous.

Graphics - 8/10
Not much to say here... The graphics are great for the mood of the game, but don't go expecting the FFX, MGS2, or GT3, type of graphics. It's Cel-shaded!! but because of the 2d feel of the game that the series is going for, cel-shading fits perfect for the game. I've never played a Cel-shaded game before, but this game convinced me to want to play another one!

Gameplay - 9/10
This game is devided into 4 chapters. For the first 3 Chapters of the game the gameplay is great! In dungeons, each character has they're own tools that you have to switch between to solve MANY puzzles. And you're always finding new tools which are fun to use, in and out of dungeons! Then we move on to the battles! The ECM gauge is a great new thing that allows you to skip a battle before it even starts by collecting Migrant seals to level it up! HOWEVER, what if you miss a migrant seal... or a couple? then battles will become impossible to avoid, and you CANNOT escape the battles until later on in the game. Well, after you get into a battle, you have the option of choosing an Arcana spell (magic), one of your special skills (gatling, summoning and each character has their own SS), Attack, Gaurd/reload, and choose an item. But instead of MP, you have FP (force points) which determine what you can/cannot operate. each Arcana has a certain needed amount of FP and so do Special skills. You raise your FP by attacking, getting attacked or evading an attack OR by using a force carrot. Now, this is where the ''For the first 3 Chapters of the game the gameplay is great'' comes in. At last you get your final tool, and all is great until you have to repeatedly do the same puzzles over and over with the same tools. Then, battles almost seem like a chore to do, since all you're doing is feeding out force carrots, then gattling, then reload then repeat.

Replay Value - 8/10
I'm giving a fair score for this beause of the crazy length of the game and all the extras to do. I'm guessing it's around 40-60 hours long depending on how much you want to accomplish. My main gripe here, is that the sidequests can be quite tedious and boring. Some of them, you will actually get something useful, like an endless supply of healing items, or an item that gives you higher attack, but for the long boring ones, all you get are these Ex-file keys that can be used at the end of the game to unlock stuff. All that you can unlock, is what your character stats were juring the game, the anime openings that you see more than enough while playing the game, the exiting movies that you can also watch any time during the game, and a chance to restart the game with your same level and money. That's the only one that's not so bad, but wouldn't you want to restart the game and play through it without utterly crushing the bosses?

Conclusion:
All in all Wild Arms 3 is a GREAT game, with only a few problems, that all RPG players should have on their shelves. If you're not a big RPG player, I would still recommend trying this out, and desiding if you like it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/22/02, Updated 11/22/02