A look back at: Wild Arms

You see me doing all these look backs and are wondering why not revamp your original reviews, well I kinda want to keep them as they are. The look backs are what I remember most about these games. Wild Arms is an example of a JRPG series I wanted to quickly get at after looking at it for the first time, and it's mediocre at worst but rather good at best.

Right off the bat, I will say Michiko Naruke did a fantastic job with the soundtrack, capturing the adventurous feels of the overall game and the general atmosphere of the towns and dungeon treks. As for everything else, we've got the standard turn-based RPG mechanics, a few puzzles using different tools that different characters can use, quite a few good sidequests to accomplish, yeah it all seems worthwhile. Though one thing does bother me, only one of the three playable characters here is a gunslinger and there's not a whole lot else on the other character's parts, being both a swordsman and a mage. They try to do interesting things to make up for it, like using MP for Fast Draw moves or spells, and two collectables allow players to get more uses out of them. Meanwhile, Rudy's got to keep ammunition stock in good shape all the time for his numerous weapons he gains.

Plot-wise, it's pretty complex. Jack has this awful past being a failed knight, then there's Rudy's exile from his village just because he has a gun. They end up meeting Cecilia at a wrong time, where there's always that one thing that the apparent enemy always seems to seek, her tear drop, so they terrorize the entire kingdom, not to mention a few other towns in-game. The rule of four applies to the main enemies, although Mother along with Zed don't necessary qualify due to one being the leader and the other being a comical low rank. I have to hand it to Alhazad for being the most devious, especially with the body horror thing done to humans and dogs in one particular part of the game. Unfortunately that and a few other parts are basically failure setups, in that the heroes are too late to reach what they need before the villains get there first.

I guess one thing I liked was how the four demons found out that Mother's intentions weren't what they had expected, and that she just flat out told them her plan after she was resurrected. It's pretty much agreeable for the demons that it's better to conquer rather than to destroy, they then use the obvious plot of setting the heroes up to take down Mother for their conquest. Other neat things? Well there's the whole Elw dimension, Rudy losing his arm to Zeikfried, and the prospect that even after being saved from yet another giant satellite, Filgaia is essentially still a wasteland.

Yet despite all these things, Wild Arms seems to be a Western-styled JRPG in name only. Apart from the gunslinging that Rudy or Jane does, most everything is typical faux-fantasy style with dashes of technology and it really shows. The setting of Filgaia honestly needs to be more Western in nature if I were to enjoy it more. At least it's not too bad.