A great RPG with a few problems, but not enough to ruin your memories of it!
Although Wild Arms was released back in 1997 for the PS1, I'm reviewing the game now in 2010 having played it as a PS1 Classic from the Playstation Network on the PSP. I haven't played too many modern console RPGs, so this game brought me back to my younger days playing RPGs like Legend of Legaia, Chrono Cross, and Final Fantasy VII-IX.
Wild Arms features three main characters, a lone traveler, a princess, and a treasure hunter. The first few hours of game play will be with these characters on their own as they perform individual tasks. When they finally meet up, you will have this party of three for the rest of the game, with only a few short points where the party must split up. Although there are other RPGs that feature a wide cast of more than three characters, I did not once get bored with the three main characters in Wild Arms. They are different enough in personality and on the battle-field to keep you engaged.
The battle system is not spectacularly innovative, but it gives plenty of different options. Each character has the basic attack, defend, and item commands, as well as a command called FORCE, and one command unique to each character. For the lonely traveler, Rudy, this command is a set of guns, or ARMS, that you will find throughout the game that do much more damage than your regular attack. They require bullets, however, so you have to save them for the tougher enemies. You can upgrade the guns in almost any city or village, which is a feature I loved. For the princess, Cecilia, this command is a set of magic spells that you learn by finding items called Crest Graphs throughout the world and bringing them to a mage in almost any city or town who will allow you to make new spells. These spells are a mix of white and black magic for healing the party, damaging enemies, and causing multiple buffs and debuffs on party and foe. Finally, for the treasure hunter, Jack, this command is a set of attacks called QUICK DRAW, which use MP (like magic) and can do anything from steal from an enemy, to cut an enemies HP in half. Each character will also get four FORCE abilities during the game. These abilities are powerful ones which will charge up as you get attacked. Once you have enough FORCE, you can use these abilities and empty your FORCE meter. Another thing I like about the Wild Arms battle system is the ability to change your equipment in battle between every turn. Although the battle system is simple, I was never bored with it, even after doing a few sidequests and leveling up for a few hours.
The graphics in Wild Arms are not spectacular. The world map and city environments have a slightly SNES era look to them, similar to maybe a Chrono Trigger era game. However, during battles, the 3-D animation looks great, nothing is blurry or blocky, and the colors are very nice. I had a little lag on world map battles, but this may just be because of the port to the PSP system.
The music is simply great, with a world map theme taken from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and great tracks in villages and dungeons. You'll have these songs stuck in your head all day and they'll surely keep you playing. The sound effects during battles are also solid, although repetitive, and fit the action well.
So I'm raving about this game, but why not a perfect 10? I'll now point out a few bad things about this game. The first thing is an attribute your characters have called LUCK. It is very important for landing critical hits, stealing from enemies, and landing combos with a few attacks that Rudy and Jack have. The problem is, there is only one way that I know of in the game to improve LUCK, although it seemed to go up and down randomly at times, and this was tedious in itself. For this slight imperfection in design I took away .5 points. Another bad thing is that the game actually was a bit too easy. I don't love hard games, but I do like somewhat of a challenge, especially when facing bosses. This game is easy if you don't level up extra on the side or do any sidequests, and it's super easy if you do. I always ended up killing the bosses before I was able to use my more powerful FORCE abilities. I would have liked the bosses to do a little more damage and have a little more HP, just to stretch them out a bit and give me a chance to experiment different tactics and use different abilities. For this I took away about .6 points. The final thing that I took a whole point for was the puzzles. Some of the puzzles in this game are great, but others are just silly. There is a difference between a puzzle that requires cleverness and intelligence and a puzzle that just requires random luck. There are several times in this game where you will be scratching your head and thinking "damn, what do I do?" The game gives inadequate, and sometimes irrelevant, hints, and I felt that this seriously took away from the greatness of this game. There are also times where you will finish an objective and be given no information on what to do next, so you'll be left wandering the world map hoping you stumble upon the next dungeon.
As far as the story, it's nothing new. As bunch of demons is threatening to destroy the world and your party must stop them. I was never really sucked in by the story, but the characters are definitely where this game stands out. They each have their own personality, and as a team they fit perfectly. I grew attached to them through my 45+ hours with the game, and almost shed a few tears during the ending sequence. While you will certainly forget the villains who starred in this game, the heroes will stay with you forever.
If you play straight through the game, you can probably finish it in around 35 hours or so. I took the time to level up my characters a bit, explore the world, and find some optional treasure and bosses, and finished in around 50 hours. I'm pretty sure I didn't find every optional boss or all of the characters ultimate equipment, so this game could most likely bring you into the 60 hour range if you wanted it to. Overall, if you are looking for (even though it's almost 15 years later) a great RPG to give you a month or two of great fun and a lifetime of memory, $6 on the Playstation Network is beyond worth it.