Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Wild Arms 3

Written by Chris Reiter on November 06, 2002

Full Review: When East meets West, they head North up to the Southern most point.

Howdy strangers. This here's ya regular brand o' Sony RPG goodness, from the company that brought you fella's Wild Arms an' Wild Arms: 2nd Ignition. Yep, them came out back then on the ol' PlayStation front. Wild Arms introduced to us hombres an original concept -- to give a 2D/3D aspect to an original RPG story, amongst other great things, like that Anime stuff that's so famous over them parts in Japan. Novel Wild Arms was. But it had to face the consequences of being brought out the summer before that other big RPG game came out, called Final Fantasy VII. Forgotten by some, but not all, Wild Arms got its second chance years later in, oh, I'd say 2000. Unfortunately for it, the game was not nearly as good as that first one there. It's some two years later, an' I reckon it's time for a third showdown, to present to you here folks what greatness can come from an aspiring game, that should, an' hopefully will make it to those top charts like them Fantasies do.

For the land of Filgaia, the future is a grim one. Time has passed on since way back when the war of demons against humans waged itself into the ruin of the planet. Now all that is left is a desert wasteland. Still though, riches lie in ancient ruins across the barren plains. Those who dare brave the monster rich world are called drifters. Drifters aren't necessarily good people, nor are they bad. They're primarily guns for hire, and do what they want to do when they want to do it, and only seek the life of riches. Wild Arms 3 gives you the role of four such starring loners, out on the quest of their own reason. What they'll find is that that reason is one vastly more important in the path to becoming not only a drifter by name, but also a savior of their planet's destiny in memory.

Teamwork is what puts the emphasis on most any RPG through battle. Wild Arms 3 on the other hand, like with its two predecessors, uses teamwork in or out of a fight. This system is one of the game's major draw-ins. Your team consists of Virginia -- a wannabe drifter who seeks adventure in hopes of becoming like her father, also a drifter; Clive -- a perfectionist when it comes to getting the job done, he's a drifter starting out in the world and wanting to know about Filgaia's past; Jet -- he cares for money, and that's about it, but wherever his buddies go, he'll follow as long as there's rewards involved; and Gallows -- is all about freedom, in wanting to escape the life of a to-be-priest in order to make his own gain for himself out in the open.

Each character carries a persona and skills of their own. Through use of tool abilities, your characters are able to do different things in very different ways inside Wild Arms 3's variety of dungeons to embark into. Virginia for example starts out with the power to throw red cards to further ignite candles or melt away ice. In turn, whatever object wasn't but now is functioning will open up any inaccessible doorway. If there's a different objective however, with the press of the L2 button, character switching is demonstrated easily on the fly. But there's also more to just opening doors in these dungeons. To get past any lair the game throws in your direction, you'll have to think and fight your way room by room in an isometric, 3D perspective. Other such puzzles consist of moving blocks into place, pulling levers, or even rotating multiple wheels to get across a single stretch of area. Plus, there's a multitude of treasure to be found upon your ventures into the unknown. Within every ruin lie chests to be found, opened, and vacated. Such useful items included are health, status ailments, and gimel coins. One thing to note is that without a gimel coin, your game can't be saved unless you're inside a town. And without the ability to buy any, dungeon uncasing becomes a new high point in playing the game.

Battles this time around have changed order. Instead of giving out the standard 3D turn based engine like was done in the past titles, Sony has opted for a similar, but distinctive combat environment for you to play in. It's here that the turn based affect takes shapes through a sort of free for all range in melee, weapon, and magic offense operation. From the beginning of a battle, both your characters and the enemies face off on opposing sides. Once you've selected what your characters can do, they'll focus their attacks on the target they're after, while setting into motion throughout an open ended surrounding. Depending on where the enemy goes, and your character goes, a strategy is involved in placement. If you're facing in one direction towards an enemy, a second one may be close by off to the side. If the second enemy hits you, your defenses will be down, because in order to better your guard, it matters on if the character's view is in line with what's ahead, not the back or the side. Distance is yet another factor to think about. Whether you're far off or up close, the space between the character and the enemy affects the impact of an attack.

Sometimes though a fight isn't as easy as hitting and getting hit until one side wins. Sometimes you may have to rely on just magical attacks, or in other cases, regular ones. Every enemy has their own strengths and weaknesses to abide by, and you with it have to figure out a way to counter every possible element. And much of what the second game featured is accounted for in the third game, only better. The battle system for starters uses Force Points. These are basically what drive almost everything to do with an enemy encounter -- with special abilities, anyway. On one end of the battle menu you've got Arcana (elemental magic), and on the other you've got Force Abilities (allowing characters to perform more devastating attacks or even summon creatures, provided you have a Medium equipped). Costly, but effective, these extra areas beyond your standard attack (the way of the gun) only arrive once your Force Point ability level is up to snuff. To get there though, you'll either have to use rare consumable specialty items that boost your meter, or wait until you attack or get attacked regularly enough for the measurement to rise to the limit. Because enhanced abilities and magic attacks are juiced by a certain amount of Force Points, there's a lot of strategy involved in balancing between what you can do, when you can do it, and if you can do what it is you're set out to do to defeat the defying forces of bad.

Regular attacks on the other hand come only in a shoot 'em up style. Your team is all equipped with an arm type of their own, but what weapon they use doesn't matter: It's in the game's ARMs shop is where it does. Here you can pay to have your guns upgraded in many ways -- from the number of bullets it carries, to how powerful its attack affects its target. As the weapons get better, the prices for upgrading costs skyrocket; an unfortunate catch that will have you wanting to go into battle more times than you have to. Even if you aren't fond of fighting, there's always a way to avoid it. An exclamation point will appear each time a random battle will occur. You have the option to stop it from happening simply by pressing the circle button. Unlike in the second game though, you're now limited to the number of times you're capable of neglecting to fight, and once your migrant gauge lowers to the bottom, the next fight you must encounter. There's even ways in the game to build up your migrant scale in order to edge around battles more frequently...and ways to get around just about everything; even the battle system can be set to an automatic configuration for the AI to handle all the dirty work.

While I feel Wild Arms 3 is a major improvement over the second game, there are still some things that continue to get in the way of making it any better. Randomly scouting around for the location of towns and dungeons is done in the same way as the last game's -- where you must manually circle open ended areas and press the square button repeatedly only after you're given vague directions from townspeople you've spoken to. Another thing is that the character control can be a bit annoying when using the camera control. Controlling your team is easy enough, with using the X button to dash, talk, or operate switches and such in combination with the left analog stick to freely guide them around the laid out area. Where it's confusing is the camera angle that rotates to the left or right with the L1 and R1 buttons. Since the camera is usually focused from a higher point up in the air than normal, experiencing losing your character behind solid objects is a common quality when walking out of a town's building for example. Add to that fact that rotating the view is loose in its hinges, and there are enough tidbits in the game to make you want to reconsider stepping any further at least some of the time.

If you're seeking something new instead of something old, then allow me to redirect you over to Wild Arms 3's ASK system. Character dialogue will never be the same! ASK allows you to dig deeper into the meaning of highlighted green text strewn within the game's spoken language. Whenever you take the ASK course, the actual conversation flows in a different direction: one that may or may not prove useful. Switching between your character selections may also have a different effect in talking with townspeople. For instance, in the town of Baskar where Gallows resides, the townspeople react to Gallows differently in conversation than they do with your other team members. The outcome isn't a relevant issue, but can be for those seeking answers to what might happen if a particular character were to speak to that one teammate, and so on.

At first, I was one of the many skeptical of Wild Arms 3's visuals. Those penciled in cel-shaded characters thrown in a western themed RPG world seemed like they may have become a turn off for the whole. Then popping the game into the PlayStation 2 changed my mind entirely. The cel-shading technique used to craft the latest Wild Arms is in a state of its own -- and what a place it is. To start out with, every character pops out uniquely in a way that's almost as if the game's an Anime in motion. Characters move fluently in the tilted overhead world they're in, with added effects like dust kicking up behind them after they've dashed, or flapping loose clothing in the wind. Inside battles too, the game really pushes the most out of itself. When in motion, the battle scene is a frantic place, with the camera setting itself up to highlight all the action in truly awe-inspiring form. Roughly, there's a ton of light and shade effects afflicted from Arcana spells that not only change the color and darken its surroundings perfectly, but it makes the one who casts it the central point of attention with clothes that sway to and forth and rings of mystical light encase the user in a whirl of wonderment.

As for the game environments themselves, they're pleasing to notice. Even with the isometric view involved, there's a ton of tiny modeling scaled just right in both towns and dungeons. Amongst crates, fountains, animals, stones, trees, fences, candles, and lots of other stuff, what you'll see is brushed to perfection in its tinier size. The texture quality too makes the RPG feel somewhat like you're inside a cartoon itself, wanting to look everywhere around you. But most of all though: the gritty cinemas of the story bring forth a style unlike any other. Here is where you can see everything in a better perspective, and where character animations and emotions look realer than real. So, even with a simplified format, it's understandable that cel-shading can take technology to its farthest reaches and beyond.

Music is one aspect that the series of Wild Arms has never yet failed on. With Wild Arms 3, it's proven true once more. Effectively and assuredly, you can listen to characters pounding the ground across the way they'll run or walk across it. Slam into a wall, and you'll hear that to. Step near a roaring fire, and it's sure to crackle. During battle even, the snaps of gunshot fire, and strange noises of a monster taking the hit all sound lifelike to the extent of their own RPG reality. Unfortunately for long time fans of the series, there still isn't any voice acting to provide the game's story to its fullest, but what you'll get instead is more of that great emotional background music. Mostly the soundtrack consists of guitar strums and flutes, with an added mix of synthesized tunes that keep the game influenced at a steady rate. The battle themes on the other end heat up the ear drums faster, and again, sound exceptionally great for what they do best: which is to make you want to listen again and again.