Wild Arms 3

"Saddle up"

Ever since 1997 Final Fantasy has overshadowed most other RPGs. Perfectly good games like Shadow Hearts and Shin Megami Tensai meet their doom in the bargain bin of EB Games and Game Stop, only to be bought by some Ebay scalper and sold and resold until they're damaged to an unplayable state. Wild ARMs 3 is one of those games.

Story: 8/10
Four drifters meet up on a train and decide to travel into the nearest town together. Upon reaching the Baskar colony, they are asked to go and retrieve something called a medium from a place called the fallen sanctuary. Shortly after they retrieve the mediums and learn that they contain the power of the guardians, circumstance force them to stick together and take on a group called the Prophets who plan on transforming the land of Filgaia with the “Wisdom of Haydes.”

As the game progresses it will switch villains a lot. At first the game sets up a bandit named Janus Cascade as the villain, then the prophets become the main villain, then a demon named Siegfried, then one more force that's been manipulating the last person you would expect. The last twist is really good too, and there is hidden in dialogue and such to hint at this beings existence, and it all comes together nicely in the end.

One of the major flaws from Wild ARMs 2 is fixed in this game too; Wild ARMs 2 had a very low quality localization. So Sony had Squaresoft handle the localization for this game, and they did an awesome job.

Characterization is handled well too.

Game play: 8/10
So what happens when you take game play that was perfect and try to make it better? It often gets tedious and over done; this is an example of that. With previous WA games characters learned their abilities through different methods, such as crest sorcery charts, or stealing them from foes. In this game however there are 12 mediums, each medium has four spells attached to it. Any character can use any medium, summon whenever you want, all that jazz. Not to mention each character has one unique force ability instead of four. The other two abilities are generic and belong each character. This new system has its ups and downs. On the up side, this allows for huge amounts of customization, each character is what you want. It also helps that spells like heal and revive are no longer strapped to one character, if you have the medium containing revive on jet and jet dies, simply remove the medium, put it on someone else, revive jet and away you go. If you like strategizing, this system can be loads of fun for you as you can spen hour experimenting with different combinations. On the down side, there is practically no difference between characters in battle. With the exception of one skill and base stats they can all do the same stuff. This takes a lot of fun away from battles.

Also all characters now wield ARMs. ARMs can be upgraded at specific shops. Luckily they also give the option to remove upgrades incase you don't like how something turned out, which should have been included in WA2. Other than that the battle system remains pretty much the same from previous games.

Another notable addition is the sand craft battles and the dragon fights that have been added. In the sand craft battles you place each of your characters in a different post on the ship (helm, gun, harpoon, assistant) The helmsman determines the evasion of the ship, the gunner determines the attack power of the ship, the harpooner can make pull the enemy closer to increase the chance of a hit, and the assistant can do multiple tasks around the ship (reload, repair, and give another member of the crew an extra turn.) Each member of the party is best suited for a different position. The ships equipment such as armor, engine, gun, and harpoon can be upgraded too. Dragon fights unfold in a similar manor but are much more challenging.

Out side of battle you have to ask villagers for information, which is almost always required to progress. Someone has to tell you the general location of a new area before it will appear when you search for it. Speaking of the search system, it makes its comeback, and stay pretty much the same. While on the world map, areas do not appear automatically, you have to search them out, in order to do this press the square button, waves will be emitted from your character, if you are near a undiscovered area, it will appear on the map, then you may enter it.

The encounter system has been reworked to make it harder to avoid every encounter you come across as well. Now you have a migrant level and a specific number of points, using certain items can increase both. Every time you avoid an encounter you lose points from your meter, the migrant level effect how many points you'll lose when running from enemies.

Sound: 7.5/10

Effects: 8/10
Most the effect is really nice, guns sound like guns and such, no complaints here. Voice acting would have been nice though.

Music: 7/10
Michiko Naruke must have been in a slump, none of the music is bad, but there aren't nearly as many memorable tracks on this game. There are a few here and there, but not as many as other games in the series. Take for example, the final battle. A last battle should have an awesome emotional song playing in the background to help it feel so climactic. Instead we get the exact opposite. Overall the music is above average.

Graphics: 8/10
The graphics in this game a really good. It uses an overly cartoony cell-shaded look. There are a few glitches here and there but they're only noticeable if you look very hard for them. Also if you look closely the developers added this nice effect that makes it look as if the game was being played on a piece of parchment, it's not easy to notice but it's there if you look. This really helped establish the western mood that has made the series a cult hit.

Overall: 8/10
A must have for any fan of the series. I highly recommend it to newcomers too. It's a very solid game and copies are readily available online at ridiculously low prices (I got mine new for $14.00 plus shipping). I clocked in at a little over 68 hours so you'll be in for a nice lengthy treat.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/06