A review written by a bored man at work
Introduction
Not since the first Wild Arms on PSX have I enjoyed an entry from this series. For a bit of personal history with the series I gave WA2 & 3 a chance but both failed to keep my attention very long. Even Alter Code F which was a remake of the orginal didn't do much for me. I never even gave WA4 a try. I offically washed my hands of the series, I was done. Fast forward to a few months ago. I was chatting with some buddies about what RPG I should play next. I wanted to try something I never played before and Wild Arms 5 came up. It was gonna take some A+ convincing to get me back into this series but ultimatly I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did because I enjoyed this as much *if not more* than the first.
Story
I had a fever and the perscription was Wild Arms 5. After I completed it I had a great feeling of pride and a general sense of warm fuzziness afterward. Almost like I had actually done something useful with my 80 hours. While it's not a ground-breaking story it does finish up nicely and I felt 100% satisfied afterwards. I actually got heartbroken at the end which ment I really did care about these characters. Not surprisingly it has it's fare share of cliche's (justice driven teen main character, all the chicks have a crush on him, plot to destroy the world, mysterious girl falls from the sky) but for some reason they never bothered me. Maybe because it wasn't caked with cliche' after cliche'. It is a Japanese RPG so a few sterotypes are bound to squeak in. I found a striking similarity between the 3 main characters of this game (Dean, Rebecca, Avril) and that of Skies of Arcadia (Vyse, Aika, Fina)
I'm dedicating an entire paragraph for the villians because it needs to be stressed: they rock. While I did like the main cast of characters the villians stole the spotlight. I was itching to see more of them through the entire game. Each hero has their respective villian/rival which near the end they face off "one on one" in a dramatic style. You got a bad-ass cyber ninja, the sexy/busty female with a skin tight techno leotard, a professor who looks like Einstein fused w/ Heihachi Mishima, etc... Each one a purpose and a reason.
Gameplay
Wild Arms 5 essentially plays like your typical JRPG. Towns, world map, dungeons, sidequests, hidden treasure, puzzles, puzzles & puzzles. One aspect I fondly remembered about the first WA were the great puzzles and WA5 doesn't disapoint. There are also little side-puzzles in the form of "puzzle boxes" where Dean (the MC) is teleported to some puzle heaven in the sky where he is forced to move around diffrent colored boxes trying to match them up so they all vanish. My wife enjoyed helping me do these, she would come running in whenever she heard the little "puzzle theme song" going on. In fact she was better at it than me so... win/win. If you want to deviate from the main story then there are side missions a-plenty. It's got everything from fetch quests to hidden bosses. Later in the game these side missions really pay off since they net you some nice EXP & the best weapons/armor in the game.
You'll be backtracking if you wish to obtain some of the more luxurious items. Don't worry, later on you can just teleport. During dungeon exploration you'll notice inaccessible areas you can't access right away. To get past these Dean acquires diffrent bullet types for his Arm (ie Ice, Grapple, etc) Many puzzles also use these bullets to progress through the levels. Some puzzles actually had me stumped and I had to refer to my trusty guide to get me through. I know I cheat.
WA5 takes many of the tedious aspects of a JRPG and throws them out the window. Several examples are no random battles in areas with complex puzzles. The option to turn off random enounters in an area once you defeat a certian (kinda racist) enemy. Being able to retry a fight instead of loading from a previous check point. One very unique feature is your party completly recovers their HP after every battle. That's right folks, no need to endlessly browse through the menu system after every fight to keep your heroes in tip top shape. This might sound too easy but the game balances this by having the enemies deal more damage. If you're not careful your team could be blown-out. With that said the game is fairly easy. I only died once and that was while fighting the most powerful hidden boss in the game.
The battle system is strategic yet simple. You move around on a grid shaped of hexes. Some hexes have magic atributes to help buff your magic spells, or make you more vulnerable to enemy attacks. It's your typical Fire vs Water, Wind vs Earth sorta thing. You equip your characters with "mediums" and depending on which medium diffrent attacks/spells are learned. There are 6 diffrent kinds but to be honest you'll only be using 3 of them. Everyone has a team attack with all of the other members featured in nice little dynamic cutscenes (which can be skipped.) Early in the game team attacks will be your bread n' butter for taking out enemies quickly. However later on they lose thier effectivness in favor for equiping your characters with items to make them uber strong. The items I'm refering to are called "badges" and lets the player form some creative combinations.
Graphics & Sound
The graphics are standard for a PS2 game. The characters have some nice facial expressions however the NPC's are pretty ugly. No flashy anime or FMV cutscenes, everything is in-game graphics. The voice acting is good, however Carol (the little girl) has an annoying hi-pitch voice (this is the main reason why I hate little kids in JRPGs) but for the most part it's all done very well. Unfortuantly there aren't many spoken cutscenes so you'll be reading a greater portion of the story. The music is great. Pretty much every dungeon/town/area of the world has a diffrent theme so nothing gets old or overused except the normal battle music. As expected from a Wild Arms game the soundtrack has a heavy "old west" feel (whistling, acoustic guitar, harmonica) but not every song is limited by it. One of my favorite songs is the boss battle music for Persephone (the female villian I mentioned above) If you're into video game music I recomend it. The opening & ending themes are also nice vocal works done by some Japanese singer. Another cosmetic aspect I liked is that some armor gives your characters a different appearance. It's not a big deal but it's nice for change every once n' a while. Some of these costumes are reminiscent of characters in other games of the series. There are even outfits where everyone dresses in Japanese school attire. Joshikousei!!!
Negatives
While I enjoyed this game from start to finish there are a few rough edges that need to be addressed. For one it was a bit too easy for my tastes. There where only a handful of boss fights that took some brain power. For the most part it's simply spam their weakness. If you do a tiny bit of level grinding the difficulty shouldn't give you any problems. As I mentioned before I wish there were more spoken cutscenes. Loading can sometimes be tedious if you're in that teleporting or exploring mood. Battles are generally a little slow when compared to other games. One thing I really hated was the fact you can't control your Golem buddy, Asgard, in battle. Instead you program him with moves and he'll execute them at random. He seems to be retarded cause the big dummy constantly wastes turns by doing useless actions over & over. He rarely aims for an enemeis weakness and becasue of this the golem battles drag. Fortunatly you're not forced to do too many. So I say make a cup of tea, fix up a tasty sandwhich, mow the yard, and come back to see how ol' Asgard is doing.
If you're like me then you've been disapointed by the quality of JRPGs in this generation of consoles. So "Pardner" I say strap on your spurs, arm yourself with a PS2 controller and fire up a game of Wild Arms 5.
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