Though it's the fourth entry in the Wild West-themed RPG series,
you'd never know it from all of the changes that were made to
the story and presentation. Though there are a few new twists on the
mechanics, Wild Arms 4 keeps a lot of the console turn-based RPG
conventions. You control a small, rag-tag group of youngsters that
randomly encounters hordes of monstrous enemies. Each party member
specializes in a particular area, like fighting, magic, or support
skills. You level up as you beat enemies, gain new abilities, get more
powerful weapons, and go off to the next dungeon. There's a lot of
dialogue, a lot of towns to see, and ultimately a world destroying plot
to unravel.
As this particular story begins, you’ll find yourself in the shoes of
Jude, a plucky young go getter from the secluded and peaceful Ciel
Village. You're the only boy in the village, who has a loving mother, a
stern martial arts trainer, and a town that’s suspiciously full of old
people treat you like a grandson. Naturally, this geriatric utopia is
upset, as a military force moves in and starts wreaking havoc. You
eventually learn that you’re a "gene driver", a person with the genetic
makeup needed to control sophisticated guns known as ARMs. Once you
start packing heat, you leave Ciel Village, pick up a few traveling
companions, and go off on a whirlwind adventure across the desolate
world of Filgaia. The planet is still ravaged from a war that ended a
decade ago, but left Filgaia a dead and dreary place. Over the course
of your adventure, your party gets wrapped up in saving the world, all
the while learning valuable lessons about friendship, sacrifice, and
helping others. Does any of this story sound remotely original? It
shouldn't, because this is the plot to every RPG ever made.
The overly-clichéd plot could be forgiven if it weren’t for the rest of
Wild Arms 4’s glaring problems. To start with, the overall presentation
of this game is very unimpressive. While Wild Arms 3 had a unique
cel-shaded Wild West look art style, Wild Arms 4 looks like a cheesy
anime from Cartoon Network. The characters have huge eyes, big mouths,
wild hairdos, and ridiculous weapons. You’ll be reading a lot of text
in this game that expounds on the plot and characters, but rather than
popping up a text box and showing some character animations, the game
switches to anime-style still portraits. It's a jarring transition
every time it happens, and the same six or seven portraits are used
over the 30 hours that you’ll be playing. It also doesn’t help that the
dialogue is so repetitive. The only three conversations you’ll see are
"adults don't understand kids,” “kids don't understand adults," and
"peace is worth fighting for." These are extremely boring to read, and
with no decent graphics to distract you, it quickly becomes a chore to
go through a dialogue section. In the few cases where there is a
rendered cutscene, it looks ugly, as though the developers used the in
game engine to render the scene and then dialed-down the resolution for
playback. Also, the characters' mouths are obviously moving to sync
with the Japanese voices, which means that the English voices pause
awkwardly to match up with the mouths. This is common in anime, but
just looks odd here.
Wild Arms 4 also has some of the worst voiceover you’ll hear. Jude’s
ear-splitting voice is maddening. Since almost all dialogue involves
him, you’ll find yourself cringing as you prepare to hear his shriek
during every dialogue section. The main antagonist sounds like some
sort of surfer instead of a military captain. It’s hard to take him
seriously when you’re mentally comparing him to a beach bum. His crew
isn’t much better, as a few of them are so completely over the top that
it's laugh out loud funny.
Not everything is a waste, though. The battle system in Wild Arms 4 is
different than most RPGs, and it’s certainly the game’s strongest
feature. This is a big relief, since the random encounter rate is
pretty high. At the beginning of battle, your characters and the
enemies are positioned randomly in a set of seven hexagons, three of
which have elemental powers attached to them. So, instead of lining up
against your enemies and just picking from "attack, magic, special,
item, defend", you have to pick a strategic position to strike by
moving within range of your target. This adds some depth to the
gameplay, as you'll usually want to control one of the elemental hexes
to exploit an enemy’s weakness, but not spread yourself out too thing
or get surrounded by your enemies. Also, status effects like haste,
poison, and magic resistance are planted on the hex, not the character,
making it an interesting tradeoff of where to put your fighter. The
system works very well, but you'll find that putting your melee fighter
in the middle, your ranged fighter behind her, and the two magic users
on the elemental hexes flanking them is almost always the best strategy
that you can employ. Even still, there's a lot going on in battles and
you'll find yourself trying new deployments and spells to better stay
on top of your enemies, even if you don’t stick with them long term.
Character customization is also very well done. The skill system is
especially deep and fun to play around with. Each character has a list
of specific skills that they can learn, including attack abilities,
healing spells, stat boosts, and other various abilities. As you level
up, you'll learn these skills automatically. However, you also get one
growth point each time that you level up. These can be applied to any
skill, so you can master skills earlier than by leveling up alone.
However, keeping growth points in reserve boosts your HP and MP. You’ll
have an interesting tradeoff between acquiring skills and keeping your
character strong at the same time. If you accidentally make a paper
tiger who can deal damage but not take any, you’re able to readjust all
of your skills and growth points on the fly, so you're never locked
into a bad setup for your character. You'll be rewarded for playing
around with your skills when you match up against enemies that have
certain attack patterns and weaknesses to your specific abilities.
Unfortunately, the battle system and character customization just don’t
make up for the rest of the game. You'll spend most of your time
getting from point A to point B by moving across large linear expanses
while solving some very boring puzzles. This could have been
interesting, since you do have the ability to jump on ledges, stomp on
crates, climb up pipes, and pick up tools to get through the next
section. It’s not, though, because you'll mostly just be running in a
relatively straight line all of the time. Every now and again, Wild
Arms 4 takes this linearity literally by throwing in a 2-D platforming
area, almost like mixing Super Mario Brothers with an RPG. These
sections are always tedious, as it just takes too long to get through
them and they don’t add any fun to the game. Neither does the set of
puzzles that you'll have to solve to get through each dungeon. There
are a lot of switches to be thrown, torches to be lit, and platforms to
scale. While the puzzles themselves aren't so bad, they're totally
nonsensical. Why would you have to light torches to get through a door
of an orphanage? Why is there a switch to move platforms across molten
lava in a temple? Why do they use disappearing blocks in a tower? The
poor level design really takes you out of the game and makes you wonder
just what the developers were thinking.
Wild Arms 4 is such a step in the wrong direction for this series. The
developers can be commended for tossing a few RPG conventions to the
side in favor of some new ideas, but a lot of them just aren’t any fun.
After about 20 hours, you'll want to forgo sidequests and power
leveling in favor of beating the game and moving on. Wild Arms 4 should
be avoided, even if you're a fan of RPGs and especially if you're a fan
of the Wild Arms series.
