As MANY other people and I have mentioned, during
the SNES and PS1 era the RPG was getting super popular. We had a huge library
of RPG’s, from turn-based to action, to even tactics-style RPG’s flooding both
systems. We had games like Chrono Trigger, Vanguard Bandits, Secret of Mana,
and you get the idea. There was just a flood of them during those times and
there was just so many to choose from that it can be intimidating knowing how
long each RPG can take to beat. However, we did have some bad ones that are
still loved, but are hard to recommend, like Lagoon, Shadow Madness, and Beyond
The Beyond. We also had some hidden gems that sold well and are still around,
but do not get the same amount of love that other franchises like Dragon Quest
and Final Fantasy get. One of these series is Wild Arms. The Wild Arms series
is a series of RPG’s spanning 7 games, including a remake of the first game,
that are all only on Playstation consoles. They are extremely solid RPG’s and I
can recommend the first two since I haven’t played the other games in this
series. In fact, let us talk about this hidden gem of a game that came out
before FF7 and was suppose to be the FF7 killer, but it didn’t kill FF7. It did
however gain a solid fan base and it still a very solid RPG to play today, Wild
Arms for the PS1. Just a warning, this review will be very wordy and long, just
like any of my RPG reviews.
The story is
unique since you get 3 main characters and you can play all of them in these
little mini-story arcs that then combine into one whole story. It’s hard to
explain to newcomers to the series, but let’s go over each of the 3 main
heroes’ story arc. The first hero you play as is a 15-year-old named Rudy
Roughknight, but you never really hear him called by that name since he is set
up very much like Chrono from Chrono Trigger, and you might not know this, but
I don’t really like how this character is set up, but I will explain later. You
start out with Rudy in a small village that he calls home, and he helps people around
in the village to earn his way in life. One day, he hears the news that a child
from the village has run off into a cave and you go in and save him from an
evil demon that was sealed there using the power of an ancient machine called
ARMS. Weird name for a gun, no? After you save the boy, the village finds out
that you have an ARM, which is forbidden in the village, and you are cast out.
I don’t know why you would just cast out the guy who saved one of your
villagers, but whatever. The second story revolves around a swordsman named
Jack Van Burace. He is a treasure hunter who is looking for artifacts from a
lost civilization called the Ewl. A small mouse-like animal named Hanpan also
accompanies him and acts as his moral compass. After finding something amazing
in a dungeon that had a lot of old artifacts of the Ewl, he sets off to a town
to find out more info of said artifacts and where to go next. The final story
revolves around you playing a magic user named Cecilia Lynn Adlehyde. She lives
in and goes to a sort of school of magic to learn spells and such. On her 17th
birthday, she has to go through a trial to be a part of the royal Adlehyde
family, and of course succeeds after a rather tough trial that is hidden in the
school with a tough boss fight at the end of said trial. I say it’s tough
because she is the typical magic user who doesn’t do a lot of damage with melee
attacks, and she needs to watch out how many times she uses spells. After she
leaves the school she heads to the same town as Jack and Rudy are heading to,
and of course, their paths meet up and they team up to explore the world and of
course, go through many different trials from the main bad guy force and save
the land. It has your typical RPG clichés storywise, with deeper plans unfolding
and old technology being used for evil, but it has some memorable characters
and is overall a pretty good story. It might not be as charming as Dragon Quest
8’s story or as good as Final Fantasy 9’s story, but it gets the job done and
has that same kind of Lunar and Grandia charm. A company called Media Vision
made the game. If you are an importer, you would recognize their work from a
PS1 shoot em’ up called Rapid Reload/Gunners Heaven. They have also made other
games like Heavy Metal Thunder, Sneakers for the Xbox, and Valkyria Chronicles
3 for the PSP.
The gameplay is
your typical Japanese turn-based RPG. You’ve got your turn-based battles and
random encounters that you experience in the overworld and dungeon areas of the
game. The typical formula is there, but there are a few tweaks to the system
that gives it its own flair. While your main silent hero does carry a sword,
his key special moves revolve around his gun. You can gain new attacks and
upgrades through the gun that he carries around, like raising his attack power
to how many bullets he carries. Your swordsman character at different points in
the game’s story will learn new sword attacks that you have to use over and
over again to fully unlock them. You could ask why you can use them when you
need to unlock their full names, but whatever. The magic-using female doesn’t
learn spells by leveling up or buying them, but gains them when you combine
charms together to make all sorts of spells from the typical healing and attack
spells to defense raising or lowering. The other two things that make this game
somewhat unique are the guardians you can summon and the puzzle-solving in the
dungeons. About a quarter of the way through the game, you gain guardians that
you can equip your character that will not only get you stat boosts, but the
ability to summon the giant beasts in battle for a quick, but strong attack.
The puzzles are definitely unique in this RPG since your characters can wield
different items to help them get through the dungeon, from bombs to blow up
stuff, to a lighter to light up dark areas of the cave that happens to have a
maze in it. Overall, there is enough stuff here to give this game a unique feel
with the fantasy mixed in with western vibes. This leads us to the graphical
and musical presentation of the game.
The graphics,
while by today’s standards are simple and a bit dated, were pretty amazing back
then for an early PS1 turn-based RPG. I think relatively they look better than
the graphics in FF7, which today look ugly and are not fun to look at when your
characters look like a bunch of Lego blocks put together. This game was unique,
since it had the 16-bit feel, but showed that you could do RPG’s in 3D. The
music on the other hand is amazing. This is where a lot of the western vibe
comes in with the amazing opening song from the animated intro to the overworld
music being the tracks I remember the most. The composer of this awesome music
is Michiko Naruke. She is mostly known for working on the Wild Arms series, but
has done some other stuff like help arrange music in games like Super Smash
Brothers Brawl, and help compose music for games like Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki
Tsubasa No Iroi (say that 3 times fast) and Valis 3. Overall, it’s a solid
package even if the graphics don’t look as good as today’s graphics, but that’s
a minor complaint.
So, what did I
find wrong with this game? I mean, it’s a JRPG. It’s one of my favorite genres
and it will give you 20-30 hours of gameplay with fun characters, solid
turn-based mechanics, and great music, but there are a few things I find wrong
with the game. After the main girl’s kingdom was almost taken down, there is an
annoying-as-heck stealth segment where you need to sneak past the guards to get
from point A to point B. These never work in RPG’s. I HATE THEM. It doesn’t
help that the D pad controls make your character’s movements awkward, and it
took me like 9 tries to get past this part, and it’s not that fun. Another part
that annoyed me was a dungeon later in the game that was basically a big puzzle
maze. After you finish it, you have to
hightail it out of there in a certain amount of time before it explodes, and
that is not fun. I mean seriously, it isn’t fun to combine a puzzle maze into a
dungeon. I also don’t like how my main character is silent. I mean again, I
understand that it’s supposed to be you, but he has no character trait that
makes him memorable. He is just a blue-haired youth with a gun. They do fix
this in the sequel, which we will get to at another time, but I am a part of
that small minority that hates having silent protagonists. The only one I
really enjoy being silent is Link from the Zelda series. I also feel like they
played the whole thing with ARMS, and the whole western theme that stayed more
in a fantasy setting than the Wild West. It’s rather disappointing that the
western look doesn’t come into play until the third game.
So, how does this
RPG hold up overall? I think it holds up pretty darn well. I think it holds up
better than games like Final Fantasy 8 and Suikoden 1. There are surprisingly a
lot of ways to get this game. The first one is getting a hard copy. The hard
copy of PS1 goes from about 6 dollars to the highest being 12 dollars. If you
pay more than that for it, you got ripped off. You can also get it on the
download store on the PS3 for 6 dollars. The other alternative is getting the
PS2 remake that fixes a few things and adds some new stuff. Either way, you’ve
got a couple of ways of getting this wonderful early PS1 RPG.
This
game gets an 8 out of 10.
Comments