Wild Arms

"Bad graphics? Check. Cliched plotline? Check. Horrible game mechanics? Check. Bad game? You bet!"

Bad graphics? Check. Cliched plotline? Check. Horrible game mechanics? Check. Bad game? You bet!

Wild ARMS might have been a good game, had there been no other RPGs on the planet. As it stands, Wild ARMS manages to be perfectly average in most areas, and sub-average in a few others, making for a pretty BLAH game. This game is one of those that can be written off pretty easily as ''just another RPG.'' There just isn't anything special about it, nothing that really sticks out in my mind. When I think about it, all I can really remember of my experience with this game was the opening FMV, which is never a good sign. If all you can remember is one movie sequence, then something is obviously wrong.

So where does Wild ARMS fail to perform? Let's start at the storyline. A thousand years ago a great calamity struck the land, and although it was defeated, it left scars on the land. The people who defeated this evil are gone, as well as the magical forces that allowed them to defeat this evil, so, of course, this evil is going to rise again. (stolen from Final Fantasy VI, War of the Magi, Espers, etc., also stolen from any other game that has a great evil that was once defeated long ago, but is now on the rebound) The only thing standing in the way of this evil, is, of course, some wild haired punk kid and his eclectic group of friends, who always manage to run the gamut of personality types. (Crono Trigger comes to mind, as do a lot of other games... why is the HERO of an RPG always some kid from some small village somewhere?) These companions must band together to save the world from this scourge, that somehow can be defeated not by all the armies in the world, but by a small group of young kids. Nothing we haven't seen before, and will likely see many times after this.

At first, though, I thought this game would be much better than it turned out to be. At the start, when you control each character separately, I thought it would be quite refreshing. And it was, until the characters met up about 20 minutes later, and stayed together. After that it was back to the standard RPG plot.

However, an RPG can survive having a bad plot, if there is something else in the game to recommend it, either the battles are interesting, the gameplay is fun, or whatnot, but nothing at all is worth it in this game. The battles are a tedious farce, that force you to press far too many buttons to do anything. (although Legend of Legaia did this far worse) The puzzles are standard, go here, do that, do this, find that fare, that really isn't all that interesting.

Oh well.

And that plot! Ugh! This wouldn't have been so bad, had I not played this game a hundred times before! I've already beaten back the evil hordes, in a party made up of young misfits. I've done it several times! Dozens! And it was done ever so much better in those games, far more creatively in Crono Trigger, for example.

Graphically this game looks like it was half made. The field/town graphics are fine 2D graphics, I have nothing really against those, but then the battles graphics are so poorly made to completely ruin any chance at realism. When you enter a battle, you see supershort, superdeformed characters who seem to be created with only a few polygons. They look very blockish, with very few colors in them, no real shading to speak of, and no real lighting effects. In other words, you're seeing the minimal 3D effort. They just couldn't do anything to beat a better game, so they decided not to even try. ''If anyone says that they don't like our graphics, then they're a graphics snob.'' Please!

I liked some of the music, but mostly just the first song that plays at the intro.

Wild ARMS shoots low, and hits it. It doesn't try to be the greatest game of all time, it just tries to be a game, and that is the wrong tactic to try. It's plot is so standard as to be boring. It's graphics so bad they look like they didn't even try to make them even decent. The makers of this game just didn't care to make a great game, and so they haven't even made a decent game.

I rated Wild ARMS a 4 because it's a sub-average game, with a horrible plot, bad graphics, but somewhat neat music.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/14/00, Updated 04/14/00