Wild Arms

"An OK RPG but not that exceptionnal"

Wild Arms is your average RPG where an unlikely party of three, a rogue kid, a cowboy treasure hunter and a magic wielding princess assemble, to save the world I guess. The graphics are nice, but not great. There is a strong difference between the style of the box, that of the intro (an impeccable anime sequence) and the rest of the game. The characters are too tiny and too cute to give credibility to the epic nature of the storyline. The 3-D battles are similar to those of Final Fantasy 7. You can adjust the camera angle which is amusing. Ennemies are barely OK, definitely less ugly than their Granstream Saga counterparts but much less detailed than in Final Fantasy. That's really damaging to the game, because with some extra efforts in that domain it would have been much greater. The game system is by no way revolutionnary, except magic which is kind of cool. Basically, you research your own spells by combining elements and even get to name them. The strongest element of the game is its soundtrack which is definitely way above standard. Not only does it support the game flow nicely, but it really adds to the athmosphere. I don't know how well the localization guys did in English, but let me tell you that in French their job has been extremely poor - I would even add painful.

All in all it's an OK game, if your interest in RPGs doesn't come from a fascination for the FF7 computer graphics.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99