Wild Arms

"How Wild Are Your Arms?"

Wild ARMs is an interesting RPG to say the least. Considering that this was one of the very first RPGs to appear on the playstation, you might expect Wild ARMs to be an experiment on the graphical capibilities of the system, not so, Wild ARMs looks like something on the SNES, but I don't consider that a bad thing. The field and overworld maps are all in 2D, which may cause people who began their RPG experience with games with top-notch graphics, like the later Final Fantasy games, to be put off. I really love the graphics, they're bright and colourful. This is nice when most games nowadays focus on darker and more depressing graphics.

Although I have a great liking for the graphics in the field, the battle graphics aren't that great. Unlike the rest of the game, the battle graphics are in full 3D. And things look all messed up. Your characters are short and blocky, and the enemy designs aren't up to scratch. Plus, the special moves don't really look that special...

Unlike Squaresoft's Final Fantasy VII, which has a science-fiction setting, Wild ARMs features a wild-western theme. This is quite interesting, and a refreshing change from the normal settings of RPGs. The storyline involves the world in which the game is set, Filgaia. The planet of Filgaia is dying, and it's up to your party of three (only three throughout the entire game) to put things right. Your three characters are made up of a swordsman, a magic-user and a boy who fires powerful weapons called ARMs, hence the title.

These characters all have decent backstories, but don't speak much. This is one of my main problems with the game, the characters fail to interact with each other. One character, Rudy, has the whopping amount of two lines of dialouge throughout the whole game. The other two characters speak more, but it's not nearly enough. What I find really interesting, though, is the fact that the villains of the game have more lines of dialogue than the heroes. The screen often switches to your foes as they have some really interesting conversations amongst each other. There are also some supporting characters who aid our heroes in their journey.

Music is outstanding. Wild ARMs is one of the few games where I actually bought the soundtrack before I even finished the game, it's that good. As I already said, the game features a wild-western theme throughout, and it's certainly reflected in the music. Of course, if every track was wild-western, you would get sick of the soundtrack pretty quickly. Thankfully, there are other tracks that aren't under the same umbrella. Overall, the soundtrack for Wild ARMs is top-notch.

SQUISH! Best. noise. ever. Sound-effects are not something that I'd pay great attention to, put that squish noise rules. You'll here it when enemies turn into blobs after you defeat them. The sound effects in this game are quite funny. They're not great sounding, just funny. I've nothing more to say on that subject. SQUISH!

The way you run around in Wild ARMs is actually pretty strange. You have to hold the X button to run, and let go to turn around corners. Although this may seem pretty cool for the first while, it quickly becomes annoying. That's just a little niggle that I had with the game. In terms of combat, Wild ARMs is very enjoyable. The battle-system is turn based, rather than using the ATB bar. I've always enjoyed turn based combat more, mainly because I like to think about what I'm doing and taking my time... rather than sitting around and waiting for a bar at the bottom of the screen to fill up. The menu for attacks is in the shape of a cross, you point the controller in the direction of the action you want to take and then press the X button to initiate the action you want.

One of the main characters, named Rudy, uses the weapons known as ARMs. Each ARM has a number of bullets and hit rate. You can alter these buy paying money to the ARMs dealers in most towns and villages. This is a nice and original idea. Another character uses magic, and is the only character who is able to use magic. The other character uses sword skills which he learns buy taking part in side-quests and progressing in the story. As I already said, having only three characters isn't that great, but it's easier than being forced to use a character that you haven't been training up, like in some other games.

One final gripe I have to mention is that the encounter rate is freakishly high. It's not that the monsters are too difficult, it's just annoying when you're trying to progress through a dungeon. The battle theme also starts to get repetive after a while, too. I've yet to play a game where you have the option to change the battle music to your liking, or a game where you can turn off random encounters.

Wild ARMs is a pretty decent game, if you can find it. If you're not put off by ancient graphics and the lack of dialouge between characters, I recommend this title to you. And if you do like this one, check out part II and III if you haven't already. As I said, this is a pretty rare game, so you will need some look to come across it. In any case, Wild ARMs deserves a place on my shelf.

Rundown

Graphics: 4.2/10
Music: 8.2/10
Storyline: 7/10
Gameplay:7.3/10
Overall: 6.4/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/04