 Acid... kicking... in... |
As always, the battle system draws particular attention from this reviewer. I'm a stickler for turn-based combat in RPGs- I dislike battle bars, I hate active-time, I dislike battle systems that compromise strategy in favor of a hokey, super-fast button mashing exercise. |
Jamming my greasy, Cheetos·stained fingers against a piece of molded plastic to click through menus at a slightly faster rate does not make me feel like I'm closer to actually stabbing a gigantic ,talking head of lettuce with a piece of wood; rather, it makes me sad. It makes me want to go outside, which is something no self-respecting video game should ever do. Therefore, I am pleased to report that Wild Arms 3 offers blessed, glorious, wonderful, spiritually-satisfying TURN BASED COMBAT!! That's right kids, break out the champagne and light the candles, because Wild Arms 3 bucks the trend of introducing worthless, infantile click-fest mechanisms into combat. They break boundaries by NOT breaking boundaries, refusing to give in to the trend of the Ritalin-fueled kiddies that hate a little strategy with their supper. Wild Arms 3 gives a variety of tactical options - you can end most encounters with either guns or mediums, or a nice combination of the two. Battles are just the right length, though the encounter rate is a little high. However, these is a mechanism to relieve the "random encounter blues" - an encounter gauge that will let you sometimes skip battles. It's a great system that I'd like to see in other games. Generally, the battles are pretty easy for moderately experienced roleplayers - it's doubtful that any boss will take you more than 1 or 2 tries to kill.
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The battle system is quite a treat for the turn-based lover - it's an initiative based block system (For more information, just click on the link at the start of the review, or here, to learn more about the battle breakdowns). Characters take their turns based on initiative, but you enter the commands for everyone at the beginning of a round. "
|  A zucchini with multiple penises. - Yep, it's a Japanese RPG. |
This is probably my favorite permutation of turn based combat; it allows for a cinematic, moving feel to combat (a la Skies of Arcadia), while preserving the strategy inherent in individual activation systems (a la Chrono Cross). If you grew up on Dragon Warrior and Phantasy Star, you'll have no complaints.
Graphically,, Wild Arms 3 is quite attractive - the thick black bordered, not-quite-cel-shaded characters are attractive and easy on the eyes. Town graphics are especially pleasant, and the layout of buildings, while sparse, mimics that of what you might expect in a small shanty-town. Dungeons are well crafted as well, though the occassional "which level of floor am I on?" problem sometimes crops its head. It's no Final Fantasy X, visually, but it's fine to look at and gets the job done, both functionally and artistically.
Musically, Wild Arms 3 fares well. The sound production is clean and crisp, and the songs have a refreshing western flavor that doesn't rely on a load of bass and techno-synth stuff. The battle theme is a little bit cheesy, but not bad enough to make you want to turn it off. Sound effects are functional, though a bit of variety in enemy vocalizations would have been nice.
 Virginia shares a personal moment with her friends. | Puzzles, as with the combat, are generally on the easy side - but still interesting. Each character has a special ability - a freezing ray, a flaming ray, etc., that is useful in certain situations. The bomb effect is particularly well done - excellent animation and sound will have you leaving bombs all over the place just for the fun of it. |
With a tap of the L2 key, you can switch lead characters - and thus special abilities - making it easy to find the right tool for the job. The only BIG complaint that I have about the puzzles is that puzzle rooms still feature random encounters - so you will often find yourself continually attacked whilst trying to figure out a particulary devious puzzle, distracting you from the puzzle itself. That's a bad design decision. Boooo!
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Cuteness Factor: 8/10 (higher is worse) Sadly, RPG gamers have to bear the brunt of The inevitable Cuteness Factor - always something you have to be careful about with RPGs, especially Japanese RPGs. |
The cuteness can take many forms; be it adorable giggles from female protaganists that giggle like school girls and say "that was fun!" after killing people (aka Skies of Arcadia Legends), or, emptying round after round of high-caliber ammunition into someone and having them stand up afterwards and offer a stirring monologue (aka Wild Arms 3). There's a lot of that going around, unfortunately - people talking after being shot continuously at close range. I'd like to see it more like Fallout 2 for the PC - where shooting someone with a gun, instead of making them slightly agitated, instead kills them, sending charred, smoking fragments of bone and brain flying everywhere. I'm not saying it's nice or good to shoot people; rather, I think it's important to show that when you do shoot a guy, he won't smile and thank you for bringing him to his senses. Rather, he'll die. Horribly. In a pool of his own fluids, begging for mercy as the pain and blood loss makes him lapse into unconciousness. Sadly, you'll find battles where emptying magazine after magazine of ammunition into conversational foes merely makes them talkative, rather than dead. I yearn for the day when we can get the mechanics, seriousness, and damage sensitivity of a game like Fallout 2 (as in, when you shoot someone, it will probably KILL them. Not make them unconcious. And it certainly won't make them your friend.) into a console RPG.
I found Wild Arms 3 to be a game with potential that became bogged down a bit by the inevitable "everyone's happy and smiley even after being shot" and 'let's have encounters in puzzle rooms" syndrome. It doesn't do anything terribly new or innovative, but various tweaks to the character development and combat system keep it interesting. Its fatal flaw is one that could have easily been avoided - no way to escape combat, and combat in puzzle rooms. These two detractors significantly impacted the amount of fun I had with this game, and eventually drop me to stop playing it.
Grade: 6/10